OPINION:
Some folks in President Trump’s orbit of “influencers” have been engaged in an ongoing debate about which person or faction may be able to properly claim the mantle of conservatism.
Although I’m grateful that the conservative brand maintains some appeal, the idea that what has happened to the Republican Party over the past decade has been about conservatism or conservative policies is comical and a little bit sad.
Conservatism is all about a fairly well-defined set of principles that include a smaller, less active federal government, a reticence to the use of force, an emphasis on law and order (including due process as part of a necessary recognition that the government is sometimes wrong) and a conviction that the moral foundations of society are more important than whatever legal structures one can put into place.
Just about none of the grifters engaged in the tug-of-war can even describe those principles, let alone be accused of acting on them.
Although Mr. Trump does not seem very interested in being identified as conservative, he (correctly) views President Reagan as his only legitimate point of comparison and is aware of the generational shadow cast by the Gipper. Many of Mr. Trump’s followers, however, do not carry the same burden. They are able to explain neither what made the Reagan presidency successful nor how it differs from the Trump presidency.
Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Trump finally arrested the ever-evolving hagiography of Reagan that had prevented the Republicans from moving forward. Ironically, Mr. Trump will now take Reagan’s place as the benchmark for future Republican leaders.
Reagan won the Cold War, rebuilt the military, rescued the American economy from the disastrous Carter years and restored Americans’ confidence in the nation. That’s a pretty impressive set of accomplishments.
In 1988, Jack Kemp, Pat Robertson and Bob Dole ran for president as representatives of various factions of Reaganism. They lost to the fusion candidate and Vice President George H.W. Bush. The story does not have a happy ending. President Bush, having abandoned any pretense of restraint in international affairs and having yielded to the always-present urge to tax the citizenry, was beaten four years later by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.
Mr. Bush’s son, in turn, presided over the worst foreign policy disaster in the history of the nation.
We may now be headed for a similar electoral denouement. Trumpism is ineffable at best and inscrutable at worst, and it is impossible to imagine that anyone will be able to conduct the orchestra that Mr. Trump has assembled. Much of Trumpism is ad hoc and pragmatic rather than ideological or philosophical. That said, Vice President J.D. Vance feels very much like a fusion candidate who can appeal to the various elements of the Trump coalition.
The bad news is that without some grounding in something other than or in addition to Mr. Trump, it seems very likely that Republicans will wander for a considerable period of time after his presidency. Make no mistake: Even though he won’t be on the ballot in 2028, the next presidential election will be about Mr. Trump and his legacy. That means Republicans may not be able to address fundamental questions about the path forward until at least 2032.
It is usually very difficult to replace a strong leader, and it’s not uncommon for bad things to happen in the transition from a strong horse to a weaker horse. The challenging thing about a personality-driven movement is that discipline and coherence become difficult to sustain when the personality is no longer present.
As Louis XV — the last king of France before the French Revolution and an exceptionally strong leader — is said to have commented, “Apres moi, le deluge,” which means: After me, the flood. Personalities, especially powerful ones, are impossible to duplicate. Popularity is rarely transferable.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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