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December 19, 2024 - 6:00pm
One of the founding “Never Trumpers”, Bret Stephens, has used his latest column in the New York Times to distance himself from that effort. He wrote this week that it’s “time to drop the heavy moralising and incessant doomsaying that typified so much of the Never Trump movement”. Stephens’s column has already ignited a fierce debate online, and it raises a charged question: can some Never Trumpers make peace with populism, if not Donald Trump himself?
For years, the question of whether Trump should be the Republican nominee for president consumed the Right — but that topic has now been superseded. After Trump’s hostile takeover of the GOP in 2016, a MAGA establishment has solidified. In the 2024 Republican primary, he garnered the vast majority of Congressional endorsements and won the primaries in a romp. His decisive victory in last month’s election was a major political vindication, but it also changed the terms of the debate going forward. Squabbles over whether pundits should back Trump or not seem increasingly retrospective. Instead, what matters is the direction of policy during his second administration, and what comes afterwards.
That could provide an opportunity for some of Trump’s old critics on the Right, if they show some flexibility. Despite its succinctness in branding, “Never Trump” is not a unified movement, and Never Trumpers have different paths ahead. Some might go the way of the Lincoln Project and essentially become an adjunct of the Democratic Party. Stephens’s column indicates another path: re-engaging with populism in order to diagnose the issues that have given it such resilience and addressing those challenges.
On the level of raw politics, Trump’s conservative critics have strategic incentives to make some populist rapprochement. Turning support for the President-elect or populism into an absolute litmus test — either oppose Trump in all things, or be cast out into the darkness — is no glue for a centre-right political coalition. As it stands, almost every elected Republican has either supported Trump or at least expressed a willingness to help him govern. Insisting that the only decent Republican is one who has joined the “resistance” might win invitations to the MSNBC green room but will have little pull with GOP voters.
As Stephens notes, Never Trump and Trump’s opponents more broadly have hurt themselves by being too closely identified with the technocratic establishment. Combined with the cascade of “expert” failures, the elite-led culture war has alienated much of the American public. Foes of populism invoke the importance of “democratic guardrails”, but Joe Biden’s presidency has been a Gotterdammerung of the norms — from his calls to eliminate the filibuster, to the novel prosecutions of his political opponents, to the recent Hunter Biden pardon.
Foreign policy might also give some Never Trumpers a reason to distance themselves from the Democratic Party. While many of those within the movement emphasise foreign policy as a reason for their opposition to Trump, the security situation under Biden has significantly deteriorated. Instead of seeing him as a chaos agent, much of the American public views the President-elect as representative of stability abroad. New polling from the Manhattan Institute has found that voters gave Trump a 9-point edge over Kamala Harris on foreign policy; after immigration, foreign affairs was judged to be his strongest issue. This is not because the US public has turned isolationist. In the same poll, a plurality of Americans — and a supermajority of Republicans — supported a “peace through strength” foreign policy. But it does indicate that voters have soured on the Biden administration’s combination of sclerosis and NGO-washed “idealism”.
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SubscribeAll I know is that the flood of articles coming out now, and the acknowledgment from the left about how we imbeciles on the right were right all along is having a profound impact on my mental health. After 8 years of being told to ignore what was very plain to see with my own two eyes, the vindication is rewarding. I’m so glad that I didn’t cave in to the insanity and agree that up was down and black was white.
The sheer number of fabrications and outright lies that were being reported as truths was stunning. I have saved a compendium of these lies for my grandchildren to read someday. Perhaps they will acquire critical thinking skills vs. the current generation of lemmings.
Trump’s legacy will be an “Eat the rich except me” mindset among voters. Bret Stephens and his liberal cohort are now at the top of the menu for the middle class, workers and disadvantaged. The Democrats who rule the party have for too long succeeded in fooling Americans that they have their interests at heart. His desperate attempt to change the conversation will only strengthen Trump. The next four years will be popcorn time for the uncommitted.
I disagree. At least half of Trump’s base are Bible believing Christians (not simply Cultural Christians). The “Eat the Rich” class warfare mentality doesn’t fly with people committed to being fair to others. There are also alot of pragmatic liberals that are now on the Trump Train. There are alot of very welcoming Trump voters that aren’t going to automatically judge you by your household income or even past positions.
If Brett Stephens wants to moderate his position he’ll be welcomed into the fold. Maybe not by all but at least half. We do not purge people into the permanent wilderness.
I see the censorious thugs at Unherd are hard at work again. 20 comments, yet only three are visible.
No idea. I strive to always be civil, probably to a fault. I think the big problem is that if one post in a single comment chain gets reported the whole thing gets taken down until it’s investigated and sometimes one chain os most of the comments. The technical limitations of the website design may be a factor here, and we know how petty people can be, so I try to give Unherd the benefit of the doubt.
I appreciate this author’s analysis, surprisingly gentle and with good facility in language.