Kevin Williamson is roving correspondent for the conservative magazine National Review and author of a new Encounter Broadsides pamphlet The Case Against Trump. Williamson corresponded with the Washington Examiner Thursday about Trump, his followers and what will happen to the conservative movement if the billionaire winds up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I had forgotten this but The Case Against Trump reminded me that Donald Trump flip-flopped on the Syrian refugees issue from roughly “let them in” earlier in the year to “ban all Muslims” in December. Did this surprise you?
WILLIAMSON: No, Trump has a way of being on three sides of a two-sided issue, so, no surprise on flip-flops.
EXAMINER: Undecided voter elevator pitch: What is the case against Donald Trump?
WILLIAMSON: If you are thinking about the case against Trump, first consider the case for Trump. He is an heir who came into possession of a vast fortune based on real estate and later becomes a tabloid celebrity following a messy public sex scandal. He leveraged that into a successful reality-television career, which he further leveraged into a series of profitable merchandizing and licensing deals. He has a famous blond coiffure.
Which is to say, the case for Trump is indistinguishable from the case for Paris Hilton, who seems to be a marginally more savvy business operator. But nobody seriously thinks that Paris Hilton should be president of the United States, which isn’t an entry-level job.
EXAMINER: Has he personally responded to your case against him?
WILLIAMSON: Trump has not responded to me personally in any way.
EXAMINER: Why do people support Trump?
WILLIAMSON: Trump’s support comes from fantasy-fulfillment, mainly. We have a generation of American men whose place on the social-economic hierarchy (and thus on the sexual hierarchy) is low, unstable and downwardly mobile. They celebrate Trump in exuberantly gonadal terms, e.g. describing in some detail the likely dimension of his scrotum. It bleeds over into fairly open homoeroticism, a kind of Tom of Finland cartoon of modern masculinity. His admirers like to imagine themselves on the other side of the desk saying “You’re fired!” rather than on the receiving end of a termination.
Republicans have of course left Trump an opening by refusing to deal seriously with the issue of immigration, particularly illegal immigration and the social pathologies associated with it. In this, they very much resemble Europe’s classical-liberal parties and center-right parties. Trump is in many ways the Marine Le Pen of American politics, except considerably less intelligent and less sophisticated. But much wealthier, of course.
EXAMINER: What could opponents do to take the wind out of his sails?
WILLIAMSON: I am not sure what Trump’s opponents can or should do to win away his support. Appealing to angry morons is a tricky business — what if you turn out to be really good at it?
EXAMINER: Would would candidate or president Trump mean for conservatism?
WILLIAMSON: I don’t think that a candidate Trump or a president Trump would mean anything at all to conservatism as such cases; he isn’t a conservative, but a contemptible, glib, dishonest populist. It would have some consequence of the Republican Party becomes a Trumpkin party, inasmuch as conservatives would be obliged in that instance to find a new electoral home.
But I do not think that is very likely. As with Ross Perot’s movement, the Trumpkin element will sink back into its accustomed torpor at some point, having discovered that politics is hard work, and that political life in reality comprises a series of complicated and unsatisfactory compromises. They’ll go back to whatever it is they do, presumably masturbating to Stormfront postings.
EXAMINER: How will you personally respond if Trump secures the nomination?
WILLIAMSON: With derision, I imagine.
