Who Are the Principled Conservatives?
Who Are the Principled Conservatives?
Principles are intensely personal things, and determining whether or not certain people are principled when there is so much disagreement over premises and narratives is a fraught effort.
When I talk to friends and colleagues who will be pulling the lever for Trump this fall, they can make an argument for why they are doing so based upon their conservative beliefs and their assessment that a Trump presidency would have conservative outcomes. I tend to disagree with their assessment, and I think they're making a mistake in trusting Donald Trump to deliver, but they can make that argument, and they make it as a separate argument from voting to keep Kamala Harris out of office.
On the other hand, I've yet to see a single argument for voting for Harris based upon conservative beliefs and an expectation that Harris will not advance policies in direct opposition to desired conservative governance, let alone that anything she does will score any meaningful conservative outcomes. And every argument for voting for Harris I've encountered from a professed conservative or Republican cannot be unraveled from their assertion that Trump must be stopped at all costs.
In comparing these two groups of reluctant 2024 voters, who are the more principled conservatives? I don't think the answer to that question is as easy to discern as so many think.
On the one hand, Trump truly is a distortion field severely affecting the efficacy of the conservative movement in America. I can understand the motivation to defeat him and, hopefully, open up a broader possibility to reassert conservative values in the future, even if the immediate reality of a Harris presidency doesn't bode well at all for conservative governance.
But on the other hand, for someone who rejects the more histrionic concerns over Donald Trump, for someone who doesn't buy the idea that democracy is on the ballot, for someone who sees Jan. 6 as just a protest that got out of hand rather than a coup, and for someone who sees Trump as an imperfect vessel but nevertheless someone whose hubris can be manipulated toward granting conservative victories, I can understand viewing a vote for Trump as, yes, a principled vote.
When you confess that the argument over Trump is, for a lot of Republicans, more a question of what to believe about Trump, the question of what constitutes a principled conservative gets a little bit more complicated in this troubling and difficult political moment.
We probably can all do better, myself included, at summoning a bit more humility when considering that principles are very personal things and that a disagreement over which political premises and narratives we give credence to does not necessarily suggest that some have abandoned their principles while others have earned the sole moniker of being principled.
Justin Stapley is a graduate student at Utah Valley University, studying constitutional governance, civics, and law. He is the founding and executive director of the Freemen Foundation, editor-in-chief of the Freemen News-Letter, and the state director for the Utah Reagan Caucus. @JustinWStapley
I have a slightly different take. I do know principled conservatives who believe in the case George Will made in 2020, that the best thing for conservatism is for the Republicans to lose and Trumpism to be exiled from the party. I don’t think Will is making that case anymore, but others still see it that way. There is precedent for that - the Republicans lost in 1992 in order to win the House two years later and Clinton lost in 1994 in order to win in 1996. In both cases, I believe Clinton and Newt understood themselves to be playing that game at the time and it worked for them.
I’ve been following the debate between David French and Dan McLaughlin, Charlie Cooke, and Jonah Goldberg, particularly Jonah and David’s conversation about it. I actually think David makes a pretty good case, even if I’m slightly closer to Dan’s position than to his. (As usual, my real position is Jonah’s - I won’t be voting for either candidate.) David makes the best case on Reaganite grounds that can be made. I think he’s right that there is no pro-life candidate in the race.