Jonah Goldberg fantasizes about a third party.
The point is to cause the GOP some pain for its descent into asininity. Giving conservatives turned off by both the Democrats and the Trumpified GOP a way to vote their conscience in the general election would put political pressure on Republican candidates to curtail their Trump sycophancy. It would also serve to remind the GOP that if you abandon conservative principles, conservatives might abandon you.
Thanks to a commenter for the pointer.
But as Stalin reputedly said of the Pope, how many divisions does he have?
I believe that there is a latent third party in the United States, one that is #neverWoke as well as #neverTrump. This latent third party is stifled within the primary system. If it could cross some viability threshold, the latent third party might represent a silent majority, or at least a plurality.
But libertarians and conservatives should not get our hopes up. Even within the latent third party, we are no more than roundoff error.
And contemplate this, from George Hawley:
conservative elitism has a problem: it assumes the existence of conservative elites. As the mainstream media, the bureaucracies, the universities, and even big business move leftward on a host of issues, this assumption is increasingly problematic. Conservative deference to contemporary elites can only lead to more conservative defeats. Conservative success often requires circumventing ordinary representative democracy, winning political victories via initiative and referendum processes at the state level.
[another ad hominem–ed.]
Replace “Trump-ification” with “Big-Donor-ification”, and see how it sounds.
The funny thing is that 5 years ago people used similar rhetoric to explain or justify the rise of Trump, saying that the typical GOP voter had been turned off by the Big-Donor-ification of sixteen out of sixteen Establishment GOP figures, and that having independently wealth and famous “outsiders” dare to challenge the unpopular party line was the only thing that could “put political pressure on Republican candidates to curtail their Big-Donor sycophancy.”
Every group in a big tent coalition is bitter about all the things they can’t get by virtue of it not being supported by the other groups in the coalition, and this creates a lot of internal tension and resentment. On the one hand are “victory through unity” types trying to keep the ranks in order, and on the other hand are all these perpetual calls to threaten to take one’s ball and go home, that’ll show ’em, that’ll make ’em listen!
Traditional social conservatives have sounded like that for years, and made the same noises about being taken for granted, of maybe creating their own party, etc. At the end of the day it mostly just turns into a vehicle for venting of steam, because holding ones nose and voting R is the least worst choice when the alternative is the progressives.
Agreed. The real action is in the primary elections. If you want to move a party in a certain direction, you need to organize to get your preferred candidates selected in the primaries. Third parties almost never win, and without winning, they don’t seem to last very long. What kind of an impact did Ross Perot have on Republicans or Democrats? Alternately, think about what kind of impact Bernie Sanders has had on the Democratic Party even though he never won the presidential primary.
I agree with your overall point, but I want to point out that the characterization of the dichotomy between “victory through unity” and “take one’s ball and go home” uses language that trivializes the problem faced. The coalitional problem faced when your best coalition option is only slightly better than the one you hope to avoid is a real issue, one of negotiation and when to opt out and stop supporting the least worst. It seems to only get resolved when a large portion of the coalition realizes they should opt out all at once, and the coalition leadership stops doing what it wants and what it’s coalition does.
At some point it really is time to “take your ball and go home”, and I think that referring to it as such is a way for the leadership to make those complaining that they are not being represented look stupid and feel bad for asking for representation. “Who else are you going to vote for?” or “Vote for a third party? Go ahead, throw your vote away!” are really just ways to bully your constituents into submission. One does that because you either can’t figure out how to represent the interests of all your constituent groups, or you don’t care to. Take your pick on which of those two best represents the current leadership of our two dominant parties.
“Liberty, often crushed, rises again and again from her native earth with redoubled energy,” wrote J.L. Motley in his classic Rise of the Dutch Republic. The Critchley book on populism would appear to affirm this notion of liberty as perpetually resurrecting and thus offers us a bit of hope for this benighted age. And if conservatism cannot be reconciled with populism because it holds that it is the elites who are pure and the masses corrupt, perhaps the problem is with conservatism. Radicalism offers a superior alternative: the USA has been in need of a modern, effective constitution for over a century and perhaps liberty for the masses might rise again. Anyway, Crutch let sounds worth reading.
“Politics is downstream of culture.”
I’d be obliged if anyone can identify a primary source (Breitbart’s own writing/speaking).
I’m so sick of “attributed.”
Goldberg is working to steer more elections and power to the Democrats, knowing that they will be fiscally reckless and cause fiscal disaster, and then planning on blaming Trump supporters for the consequences of his own strategy!! In other words, he is working to create a fiscal disaster, that he knows is bad, just to punish Trump supporters. Of course, a fiscal disaster would inflict misery on the public, but I guess that’s collateral damage that he won’t be blamed for? This is pure evil.
Goldberg is a troll. It’s how he makes a living and no one sentient need pay him heed. That our gracious proprietor would link to him is perhaps a sad commentary on the whole FITS enterprise.
Goldberg likely believes that in the long run Republicans winning with candidates like Trump and Marjorie Greene is worse than losing, and it’s position that you can’t dismiss out of hand. I’d bet Trump winning the presidency in 2024 increases the likelihood of president Ocascio-Cortez in 2028. Trump has made American culture far less hospitable for conservatives, and politically gained them nothing that any other conservative wouldn’t have also gotten for them. If I were a socialist or otherwise radical leftist, I’d want Trump to win; then I’d want Greene to win after that. These people are great fuel for their movements.
Elite Republicans respond to the political success of the “uncultured” in their party by denouncing the party and supporting the political opposition
Elite Democrats respond to the political success of the “uncultured” in their party by uniting behind them and even adopting their radical positions
Is it any wonder that when the Democrats gain majority power in DC they pass massive, fundamentally transformative legislation that further cements Socialism?
And when Republicans gain majority power they pass a tax cut or two but realize no substantive halt to the Progressive trajectory.
Thomas Paine observed 245 years ago:
“All we want to know in America is simply this, who is for independence, and who is not? Those who are for it, will support it, and the remainder will undoubtedly see the reasonableness of paying the charges; while those who oppose or seek to betray it, must expect the more rigid fate of the jail and the gibbet. There is a bast*rd kind of generosity, which being extended to all men, is as fatal to society, on one hand, as the want of true generosity is on the other. A lax manner of administering justice, falsely termed moderation, has a tendency both to dispirit public virtue, and promote the growth of public evils.”
Moderate Republicans are the worst sort. They love their enemies more than they love their party. They pride themselves on their moral superiority all while they betray their constituents. Simply ask, what has Goldberg done for the cause of Conservatism? He has become more narrow in his appeal and utterly failed to connect with people outside his “class” of upper income, highly educated chamber of commerce constituents .
But what Goldberg has done is justify moderate Republicans to loathe fellow Republicans and give support to so called “moderate” Democrats. And such Democrats, once in power, do not hesitate to support the most Socialist of agendas!
This comment sounds like a jedi mind trick.
> If I were a socialist or otherwise radical leftist, I’d want Trump to win;
No, you wouldn’t. I know socialists and radical leftists, and they did not in fact want Trump to win as you claim. You know who wanted Trump to win? Trump fans. This logic is purely ridiculousness. The only way to win is to lose? No, you win by winning. Scorecard candidates, support accordingly to viability and ideology.
There is no doubt that Goldberg believes that a Trump win is worse than losing. He all but admits that a “Reaganite” third-party candidate would act merely as a spoiler. As a practical political matter, what is he trying to accomplish? What is his goal? Two things, I think: Expel Trump, Trumpism and Trumpist candidates from the GOP presumably to allow a restoration of…?….Reaganism? Reaganism hasn’t won since…Reagan. The Bushes have not been Reaganites. Who knows what McCain was. And Mitt lost. The problem with Goldberg, and others like him, is that he is full of philosophy but has no political program and betrays no sense of practical politics. He can describe the left, but has no political answer for it. That is the reason Trump was able to execute a hostile takeover of the GOP. The GOP has no answer for the left. Remove Trump, remove Trump voters and politicians and the GOP will still have no answer for the left.
The answer to “?” is neoconservativism, or whatever the neocons call themselves and their ideology now. They had power during the 2000-2008 administration, and they want it back. They need to control a party. The Democrats have moved too far left, so it’s necessary to take back the Republican party from the proles who ejected them.
The legacy of the neocons was failure. Maybe they should just stop existing.
A “false flag” in this context would be a Democrat flying a Republican Flag, presenting a false political affiliation to deceive people.
The Lincoln Project claims to be Republican… but they really aren’t, that is a “false-flag” type trick. And it was too obvious to be effective.
Jonah Goldberg’s brand is a right-wing pundit, but he’s trying to elect Democrats, which should be a warning sign. He’s a paid career pundit who says what the people paying his salary want him to say, which is another warning sign.
Also, he doesn’t have to have issues that rise above party affiliation. Kling suggested Goldberg cares about fiscal responsibility, but that isn’t believable.
On Hawley’s point: I think he’s ignoring the other side of this equation – why conservatives should, at least, try to appeal to elites (I’m not sure what ‘deference’ means here) – which is that movements need elites, or at least benefit from having elites. Let’s start from the unavoidable but controversial fact: ‘elites’ are generally smarter than non-elites. There may be plenty of chaff in academia and other elite institutions, but intelligent people capable of crafting analyses and arguments in public policy are concentrated in academia, think tanks, etc. And ‘anti-elite’ conservatism often seems tailored to almost purposefully alienate smart people today, especially by nominating someone with the mental aptitude of a toddler for president. One could argue that intellectuals should be above such emotional motivations, and they should vote for utility-maximizing candidate, even if he’s a thoroughgoing moron, but they’re not; they’re as affected by mood affiliation as imbeciles are. All the more reason why conservatives shouldn’t go out of their way to alienate them.
I think an analogy would be, imagine people with IQs >100 were banned from arguing against creationism, and people IQs < 100 were banned from arguing for it. It's possible that the sheer wrongess of creationism will lead to its demise even when it's proponents are smarter than its opponents in public discourse, that truth matters more than intellect, but at the very least, it will take a lot longer for the truth to become consensus when its proponents are at an intellectual disadvantage. Even if one thinks conservatives are right about everything, encouraging the trend toward conservatism being increasingly inversely correlated with IQ still handicaps the ideology.
I think one fact of our society today is an incredible uniformity amongst societies elite. They either all believe the same thing, or they are at least all cowardly enough to go with the flow.
In such an environment, the reduction of elite power matters. Electing an elite matters little if they are easily captured or co-opted.
A simple example, why should the elite be able to muzzle school children against the will of their parents? Why should anyone have the power to do that?
I’m convinced after this election that whatever the merits of an intelligent elite being able to manage society might be, our actual elite having such power is more a threat then a boon in the current environment.
If you gave a damn about people, what would matter more to you. Trump’s tweets or face burkhas on kids? If this is even a close debate for you, I don’t know what to say.
I think Jonah wrote this about the same time that Biden supporters chased a senator into the ladies room and harangued her inside the bathroom stall.
And then a week later a mob of Biden supporters forced their way into the Interior Department.
Jonah’s plan to inflict pain on the GOP doesn’t reduce the overall level of asininity, does it? The bizarre conspiracy theories about Brett Kavanaugh got the Democrats burning up into such a fury that they were throwing vegetables at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s car on the way out of the parking lot. Rewarding that party and providing pleasure to that party, under Jonah’s plan, creates additional asininity.
+1
+ 1
A conservative party that conserves nothing is a joke. Goldberg is a joke as are most of the “elite” GOP pundit class. That was Trump’s true achievement- tearing that mask off, or better phrased, making them tear the masks off themselves. It took Trump for people to finally start seeing that Golberg, Kristol, Will, etal. weren’t conservatives at all- just grifters using conservative readers as marks. The marks wised up, and now these people are on the payroll of rich progressives who keep them as lap dogs.
Bill kristol endorsed mckauliff for governor. A man that thinks parents shouldn’t have a role in their kids education and calls them domestic terrorists.
Is trump on the ballot in Virginia? No, some soft spoken Nova hedge fund guy is. But that’s not enough for a grifter. It was never about trump.
How would you feel if suddenly one day you lost all status and were stuck in a less remunerative low status position?
My answer: Bitterness and and a feeling for revenge.
It seems to match up pretty well to what I’m seeing from the neo cons, Lincoln Project folks and the like.
Goldberg is not alone in desiring a different political psrty. Pew finds 85% of Americans believe that the US political system needs to be Completely reformed or undergo major changes. And 58% are not satisfied with how democracy is working. see: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/10/21/citizens-in-advanced-economies-want-significant-changes-to-their-political-systems/ Andrew Yang appears to be the only credible voice addressing this widespread discontent.
Yang’s main policy proposal is just to put everyone on welfare. We did the light version of that with the 2020 and 2021 stimulus and look how well that turned out.
Our civilization requires a foundation of stable families. Stable families require children born to married parents. Generally speaking, men require access to decent jobs in order to get women to consider them marriage material.
The liberal plan has been to elevate women over men, which harms marriage, and to paper over social failure with welfare cheques. When more social failure results, they double down on the spending. Now you have a large voter class dependent on the spending and it is almost impossible to take away.
I’m a lot closer to the view of former neverTrumper Ben Shapiro. It was understandable to initially not support the election of Trump because it risked creating headwinds against future wins by the GOP and a reduction in civility. But at this point, any such negatives are baked in, and it’s completely obvious that Trump’s lack of civility was but a mirror to progressives’. And in fact most of Trump’s policies were pretty easily supportable by most conservatives, even if his demeanor was not.
There was a comment above that Trump didn’t accomplish anything any other conservative would have. BS. No other viable conservative would have pulled out all the stops to build (some of) the wall. Or start zero wars. Just as a couple of examples among many.
The wall is an excellent example proving the “Never Trump” version of Shapiro had it right. If the 2016 election had been between two normal politicians, then the winner (whether R or D) would have built about as much wall as Obama did – which was A TON more than Trump built. Then the next President after that would have similarly done a normal amount of wall building, etc. etc. But instead, thanks to Trump burying the issue underneath a mountain of nonsense trolling, the idea of laying a single brick along the border can’t even be mentioned in polite society now