Conservatism: An Ideological Obituary

Topic: Perspective

“…this is called the Republican Party.  It’s not called the Conservative Party.”

Donald Trump uttered those lines in 2016 when fending off critics from within the GOP who expressed their displeasure at the party’s presumptive nominee shortly after he had smoked out John Kasich and Ted Cruz in Indiana’s primary, and though they are less memorable than many of his zingers during that campaign, I have never forgotten them.  Why, you ask?

That is the year I became fully aware of and disgusted by the machinations of what I now refer to as the VichyRepublican Party.  I have been a right-winger since before I could vote, no doubt because I grew up a white Southern boy in a private Christian school, raised by a mother from Kansas and a father who was the son of a first-generation Austrian immigrant that preached anti-communism in his Pennsylvania home while playing checkers.  As I grew older, I refined my views into Republican ones, simply because those evil Democratstalked badly about George W. Bush, promoted ideas (especially social ones) I considered repulsive, and whined about everything under the sun.  I was finally old enough to vote in the November 2004 election, and voted an all-Republican ballot, including for Bush’s re-election, in Mississippi.

I was still stuck on party loyalty in 2008, even though I had encountered some older thinkers in college who discussed some strange idea of both parties being mostly aligned – a uniparty of sorts, specialized only in casting illusions that the political landscape of America was hotly contested and full of vigorous debate. Obama was absolutely a divisive and horrible president, but Mitt Romney was the only option to get rid of him in 2012, so back on the ride I went.  Once Romney rolled over like a dog after the first debate, which he won impressively, I started to smell smoke.  Things got smokier for me when the GOP took an even larger Congressional majority in 2014 but allowed Obama to run roughshod over their checks and balances from the Resolute Desk.  The fire, a raging inferno, was evident in the next campaign when the GOP spent more time, energy, and money trying to rid itself of Trump than it did on preventing a Hillary Clinton presidency.  I appreciated then-candidate Trump because I saw him ridding the stage of the Republican elite as early as the 2015 debates and was only mildly impacted by the Trump-hating conservatives, and even then, because I lived in Texas, home to Ted Cruz.  By June 2016, I was all-in on Trump, and wound up predicting his victory perfectly.

As we know, Trump faced no legitimate competition in the 2020 Republican primary, and wound up garnering 94% of the GOP primary share, the fourth largest share for either party since primaries began in 1912 (this also happens to be one of the irrefutable points supporting a 2020 victory); clearly, the plan was to take him out in the General Election by manipulating the very legal fabric of said election, and not to try and squeeze blood from a turnip by knocking him out in primaries when bureaucrats were too busy trying to have moms arrested for taking kids to playgrounds.

Now that the 2024 campaign is upon us, the boobirds are out again on the right, and they are proving to be insufferable.

Trump pushed the jab and lockdowns!

Trump can’t win the General Election! (a particularly irritating one, since this one requires affirmation of the most corrupt election of all time)

My candidate has a successful marriage and isn’t being indicted!

And, if those aren’t enough, the insult that takes the cake:

Trump isn’t a TRUE CONSERVATIVE!

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Pardon me, but I wasn’t under the impression that the U.S. Constitution provides only selective protections based upon political ideology, or that our ultimate engagement as citizens is not to uphold said Constitution, but to protect and defend an ideology.  That is what was going on when conservative talking heads like Ben Shapiro were threatening to not vote for Trump in 2016 because four more years of an authoritarian Democrat president, as if Clinton would have self-limited to four years, would be better for… you guessed it, conservatism.

GOP voters were blamed for Trump becoming the party’s nominee, showing us just how quickly the party brass forgot that at least 85% of Trump’s base voted for both Bushes, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and John Boehner’s congressional slates.  Trump didn’t bring division, but division brought him.  He had endorsed and voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, and before then, had held membership in both major parties, and at least one minor party.  Even Trump tried to make the corrupt status quo work, all the way up until the collapse of the country to globalism became evident.

The insistence on defending conservatism reminds me of when left-wing college students, when confronted with the failures of socialism and communism, which have historically brought about tremendous misery and death, dismiss concerns by saying real socialism has never been tried.

So, has anyone seen a true conservative?  Will he or she be standing at the end of a rainbow by a pot of gold when found, or perhaps riding gallantly on a unicorn?  Wait, I know one – Ronald Reagan!

Well, not Reagan – Reagan allowed for a large amnesty when he signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which has been a major contributing factor to California’s political woes.

His successor, George H.W. Bush, was the father of NAFTA, a trade deal that began shuttering factories in the Industrial Midwest, which is now referred to as the Rust Belt to reflect the economic devastation brought about by global free trade that many so-called conservatives gush over.  Mark him off the list of conservatives.

Bush 43’s administration, especially the second term, inflicted what would have been a mortal blow to the Republican Party’s national electability if not for the Trumpian renovation; with “W”, America experienced financial, housing, and economic collapses, watched on as the Patriot Act was signed, and sent sons and daughters to fight two unwinnable conflicts that pay horrific dividends of veteran suicide to this very day.  Sadly, W doesn’t appear to make the list of conservatives either, but his Department of Homeland Security lives on to assault your very dignity and threaten your existence as a free man.

Neither do the Congressional hacks who take constant trips to the Southern border, as if they need to see a dried-out riverbed one last time before they can decide on which technological grift to deploy, when a medieval solution would work as well as those have worked for millennia, or the pundits who think conservatism means doing the same things the left does, but with a sharper edge and more physically attractive or militaristic candidates carrying the message with better video production than their ideology-obsessed predecessors.

I would expect outcomes associated with conservative victories to conserve something, anything.  What have we conserved?  Can anyone point to a true conservative that held a major office since Calvin Coolidge? Personally, if I were to define conservative, it would be much simpler than most think and would relate to the ability to control the size and scope of government, particularly regarding spending, preservation of liberties, and economic growth.

Things Not Being Conserved

Southern Border – countless thousands of illegal aliens from all over the world flow into our nation daily, driving our own minority working class to poverty, flooding the streets with crime and deadly opioids, and entrenching violent cartels in our urban areas that enrichen themselves by trafficking human beings.  Texas has been run by Republicans for two decades in both legislative chambers, and governed by only Republicans since 1995, and to my knowledge, has bordered Mexico that entire time.  True conservatism has placed us in such a position that Texas is falling not only to domestic enemies, but to foreign ones at the same time.

Foreign Policy – True conservatism demands commitment to send America’s sons and daughters to die in unwinnable foreign conflicts fought at surface level to bring western freedoms to nations run by warlords who happen to think America is wrought with depravity.  Now that the Iraq and Afghanistan spigots have been shut off, Ukraine is the next honeypot for true conservatives like Dan Crenshaw and a handful of 2024 Republican candidates to lust after.

Trade – The opposite of conserving in any form, depleting our manufacturing and industrial bases has been a staple of true conservatives for decades, featuring blunders like NAFTA and the threatened Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Donald Trump shredded almost immediately after taking office.  So much conserving is done that no thought is given to the ability to operate in a state of total war, with our own manufacturing capabilities guaranteeing the survival of the nation as it did in World War II, if ever a major two-front war we didn’t want breaks out with today’s global powers having trained to destroy American armor, seacraft, and air for decades while we have worried about hurt feelings in our ranks.

Social Issues – I no longer believe in using a platform to influence social issues, and not because I don’t have an opinion.  I don’t believe it can be done short of a Gospel revival, and even then, that wouldn’t be the result of a political movement.  The best a political agenda can do to curtail the advancement of vile agendas is to (surprise) defend the basic freedoms guaranteed to all Americans.  I no longer oppose people who lead different lifestyles from a political stance, but rather, I oppose their agenda and insistence on teaching my kids how to think about said lifestyles, and what to tolerate, if that goes anything beyond the Golden Rule.  Social customs and norms are neither liberal nor conservative; in fact, the boldest communists and authoritarians have all known which bathrooms to use and who can get pregnant all the way up until intentional division was sown through social issues.  True conservatism doesn’t grasp this and has only yielded ground to progressive hissy fits.

Conclusion

You have finished reading the ideological manifesto of a right-wing mind that no longer cares to be branded as a true conservative.  Consider me an accelerationist who no longer believes this country can survive the red team versus blue team war that has been upon us for the last three decades.  We will accelerate actionable solutions and sink or swim while trying, because what we have been doing to oppose the left isn’t working, and isn’t founded in pragmatic, rational thought.  Populism, bound by allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, is our only way forward.

No, Donald Trump isn’t a true conservative.  And that’s why I like him.

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Author’s Note: I love to use my writing gift, which my Dad gave to me.  I want as many people as possible to open their minds to new possibilities and thought pathways.  That is why this article is open to all.  If you want to help support my mission as an independent voice in the battle to restore our liberties, I would be grateful for your support as a paying member to my SubStack journal.  Thank you!