What Republicans say about Democrats when no one is around.
Buckle up. Trumpism is now a dogma called 'National Conservatism'
Welcome to The Experiment—and Happy Thanksgiving to all you new subscribers. Maybe you’re like me in this way: Whenever a Republican says something about a Democrat, such as Ted Cruz saying, “Democrats Do Not Believe In Democracy,” I immediately discount it because a) it’s Ted Cruz, who seems more performance art than politician these days, and b) we do care about democracy. And I assume like a dunderhead that insulting Democrats is just a façade. It’s got to be an act, right?
As always, we recommend what to do (combat hate speech with politeness), read (Andrea Grimes on the University of Austin, aka “Pity Party University”), watch (Netflix’s The Harder They Fall), and listen to (Ancient Methods, the instrumental hip-hop album by Spectacular Diagnostics).
But first, it turns out that Trumpism has become the governing philosophy of the Republican Party.
Shortly after Donald Trump got accidentally elected president (“There may never be a safer election in which to vote for a third option.” -Moscow resident Edward Snowden), Republican higher-ups knew they had a problem. Reagan was a laissez-faire Republican product of the Conservative Movement. George H.W. Bush was the kinder, gentler internationalist of the New World Order. Clinton was the Third Way Democrat espousing what is now called neoliberalism. Bush’s son talked about Compassionate Conservatism but blundered into wars without having a step two, let alone an exit strategy, and became subsumed by neoconservatism. Obama was all about Hope and Change and “not doing stupid stuff.”
How, then, was the Republican think tank battalion to give a name to Trumpism? He was not the first nationalist leader to rely upon aggressive militarism, naked xenophobia, racism, and sexism, churlish behavior, flaunted corruption, anti-intellectualism, and taking delight in the horrified lamentations of one’s opposition, but “Being a Dick” was too non-specific and National Socialism was taken. So, National Conservatism.
And so, in July 2019, the first National Conservatism Conference was held in Washington as, in the words of Park MacDougald in an New York magazine article, “an attempt to synthesize some of the disparate strands of Trump-era populism and nationalism into something representing a coherent – and intellectually respectable – part of the conservative movement.”
This is not the way it’s supposed to work. Normally, it’s exactly the other way around. The conservative movement rose as a reaction to the anti-war, pro-civil rights, feminist liberalism of the ‘60s and ‘70s — and then elected Ronald Reagan. They didn’t elect Ronald Reagan and say, “Hey guys, what do we call what we’re for again?” But getting things exactly backwards seems appropriate for Trump, who once looked at an eclipse when he was supposed to look literally anywhere else on earth.
So when you hear about National Conservatism, know that this is the name they came up with so six-figure Republicans could get five-figure speaking gigs by giving a patina of chin-stroking intellectualism to conferences of hooting businessmen. Like Trump, National Conservatism is intended to make dumb people feel smart. Bless their hearts.
But here’s where I want you to huddle up and focus: Unless you work in Republican Party circles, you are not the audience for National Conservatism. National Conservatives are trying to win over other Republicans. This is how Republicans talk when it’s just family.
“Natcons are conservatives who have been mugged by reality,” said Christopher DeMuth in his keynote. DeMuth, the former head of the American Enterprise Institute, is a graybeard of the conservative movement. His definition, of course, is a play on neo-conservative Irvin Kristol’s aphorism, “A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” Conservatives are no longer interested in our conversion.
Hey, you! Get back here. I didn’t break huddle. OK, arms on shoulders, focus up: I’ve become used to incendiary comments intended to provoke a reaction. Those Republicans love them some liberal tears. The more we roared our terrible roars and gnashed our terrible teeth and roll our terrible eyes and show our terrible claws, the more Republicans could point to us and say, “See! The wild liberals hate me! I am just like you!” This is not that. Your reaction is optional; they don’t care about what you think here.
Right now, they are just talking to each other about what they’re talking about when they’re talking about National Conservatism. And when they’re laying the foundation for their governing philosophy, they talk about liberals the same way Reagan talked about the Soviet Union or W talked about the Axis of Evil.
Here’s is what DeMuth says has come from Democrats’ “communism”: “Mayhem and misery at an open national border. Riot and murder in lawless city neighborhoods. Political indoctrination of schoolchildren. Government by executive ukase. Shortages throughout the world’s richest economy. Suppression of religion and private association. Regulation of everyday language—complete with contrived redefinitions of familiar words and ritual recantations for offenders.
OK, OK, hold up. Did your brain do that thing, too? Did you start arguing that this does not accurately apply to Democrats? Or worse, that it’s true but Republicans did it first? Put that aside for now. You can pick up childish things later. For now, what we’re doing is trying to hear them as they truly see us.
More DeMuth: We are “taking America down … to promote instability” and “vilify any Democrat whose spending plan is less than revolutionary.”
That has led us to the problems of our working-class compatriots in declining regions whose interests had been ignored in national politics and policy. We need to turn in the same spirit to the problems of our African-American compatriots in poor, violent, fatherless urban precincts. If the elites would scuttle the nation, the rest of us will have to come together to rescue it.
The effort it takes to accept this at face value stuns me. My mind keeps engaging with the argument, rationalizing that no smart, honest broker could actually believe this hysterical vision of modern-day liberalism. But that road to crazy town is a round trip, and I end up right here: They really believe we are intent on destroying America.
It pains me to state what should be obvious, the shared assumption of good intentions: I love this country and have devoted most of my life to righting what wrongs my generation inherited. And I believe that even people who hate me can love this country.
But damn. David Brooks went to the NatCon conference and came away horrified, notably by a speaker he saw as indicative of the new movement:
“Woke elites—increasingly the mainstream left of this country—do not want what we want,” she told the National Conservatism Conference, which was held earlier this month in a bland hotel alongside theme parks in Orlando. “What they want is to destroy us,” she said. “Not only will they use every power at their disposal to achieve their goal,” but they’ve already been doing it for years “by dominating every cultural, intellectual, and political institution.”
We dominate every political institution? Has she met, I don’t know, Texas? Augh, there, I’m doing it, too. I’m granting the premise and arguing points that any rational person would assume were paper tigers. But they really believe that Big Tech, Hollywood, higher education, and government are in cahoots to exterminate the American way of life.
America is experiencing a rise in anti-Semitic attacks. Hate crimes are at a 12-year high, and domestic violence murders are up, too. For the first time, democracy is backsliding in the United States. Voting rights have been restricted in 18 states in 2021 alone because most Republicans have bought into the Big Lie that the 2020 election was crooked and that the January 6 insurrection was not an attack on our government. A third of Republicans believe violence might be necessary to “save” the United States.
And now they have a governing philosophy called National Socialism that explicitly identifies liberals as enemies of the state. Wait, sorry. I used the wrong word again. It’s called National Conservatism, a political philosophy that created to give cover to the next, perhaps more violent phase of Trumpism. Like Raymond Carver said, “That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they better be the right ones.”
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. He works at the Austin Independent School District as Chief of Communications and Community Engagement, though he would want to point out that these are his personal opinions and his alone, but you already knew that. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
How we’re getting through this
Making white chicken chili
Voting for the Goodreads Best Books of 2021
Searing scallops with jammy cherry tomatoes
Reducing hate speech by 10% with a gentle warning
Reducing hate speech by 20% with politely phrased warnings
Looking at “peak middle-aged misery” in the rearview mirror
Looking up the front page of the Washington Post for any day
What I’m reading
Dave Brooks: “The Terrifying Future of the American Right: What I saw at the National Conservatism Conference” - NO I DON’T FEEL ANY BETTER ABOUT LINKING TO DAVEBRO THAN YOU DO.
…there is something extremely off-putting about the NatCon public pose. In person, as I say, I find many of them charming, warm, and friendly. But their public posture is dominated by the psychology of threat and menace. If there was one expression of sympathy, kindness, or grace uttered from the podium in Orlando, I did not hear it. But I did hear callousness, invocations of combat, and whiffs of brutality.
Andrea Grimes: “Welcome to Pity Party University” - Back when I was a high school Republican I was never as bad as she was, nor as smart or clever.
You don’t start a university for people who hate universities because you feel cool, confident, and assured of your place in the world as nonconformists. That’s not upsetting the apple cart—that’s just building another fucking apple cart.
Atima Omara: “There’s Still More to Learn From Virginia” - Preach.
In order to win, Democrats must prioritize organizing their base of voters, especially voters of color and young people. Democrats can’t keep running to white swing voters to save them. The Democratic Party must fund and support their state and local committees and work with allied partners on the ground. And they must hire more Democratic staff and consultants who are Black and brown, and who reflect the base of the party and won’t recycle talking points for white voters from the 1990s or 2000s.
What I’m watching
Loved the stylish The Harder They Fall on Netflix. Great good fun. Rogerebert.com called it a “bloody pleasure.”
What I’m listening to
Kady Rain, an Austin-based pop singer, is out with a fun rocker called “Love Me Loud.”
Julie Doiron, a Canadian Gen X singer, is out with a new album called I Thought of You. “You Gave Me the Key” is my favorite song on the album.
Ancient Methods, the instrumental hip-hop album by Chicago-based producer Spectacular Diagnostics, is the soundtrack to a dinner party I’d love to go to.
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