You could maybe split it up that way. Tea Party masses, the largest base of the party. Old GOP elites and intellectuals, somewhat discredited and disconnected in the eyes of these masses. Then you have the rising intellectuals, who are not yet discredited but are almost as disconnected from the actual voters as the people they want to replace.
I recommend the entire post (the quote is from his response to a comment). Pointer from Tyler Cowen. The question in his blog post might be:
Can Trump-adjacent intellectuals connect with Trump supporters?
Greer argues in the negative, and so would I. The Trump-adjacent intellectuals are attached to elitist projects to make society in a conservative image, and that cannot be reconciled with populism in this country. Trump supporters are the descendants of what David Hackett Fischer called the Scots-Irish borderers, who are independent-minded and thus resistant to elite projects. Conservatives like Patrick Deneen or the Claremont crowd remind Greer of the Puritan strain, which the borderers detest.
In that sense, libertarian intellectuals are a better match for Trump supporters. The biggest disconnect between libertarian intellectuals and populists is on the issue of immigration. But there are other key differences. Libertarian intellectuals are, well, intellectual, and populists are not. Libertarian intellectuals disdain political heroes. Meanwhile, populists are fond of their Andrew Jacksons, Patrick Buchanans, and Donald Trumps. Libertarians are pacifist by philosophy, and populists are fighters by nature. Libertarians are globalist “anywheres” (they want to send vaccines to India) and populists are localist “somewheres.” (The anywhere/somewhere meme comes from David Goodhart.)
So I am skeptical of the ability of any intellectuals on the right to connect with the populists.
Intellectuals on the left, although they are an elite, are good at connecting to marginalized elements in society. They held on to the borderers for a long time by claiming to be their champions against Wall Street and by winking at Southern segregation, while in the North they claimed to be the champions of marginalized urban ethnics.
The borderers are now up for grabs, as Donald Trump was able to show. But today, elite intellectuals on the left are supplemented by an expanded class of the credentialed-but-not-educated (to borrow Glenn Reynolds’ term), who have college degrees yet work in professions that actually require little advanced knowledge of science or the humanities. These lumpenintellectuals, in coalition with blacks and others who identify as marginalized ethnics, make up a formidable Democratic voting block.
There was an old cartoon, popular among information technology professionals, in which someone says, “I don’t have a solution. But I admire your problem.” That is what I would say to conservative intellectuals these days.
The major advantage the left has had connecting with its base is that it just buys them. They identify their base, then directly give them things. Maybe this is because they actually like their base? Because the rough outline of their ideology allows or even demands it?
Meanwhile, the Republican elites never do much for their base, therefore they saw a revolt. It’s not surprising that someone who promised not to take away their Medicare was more appealing. The whole row over the $2000 checks back in Fall between McConnell and Trump is a microcosm.
The simplest way to connect with ones base is to do things for them.
The Left uses the “Curley Effect” to trap their constituencies. They enact policies to drive out those who might not vote left, but never give enough for their voters to escape their locale or voting habits. See the 2002 paper by Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer.
An airtight analysis. But history is full of surprises.
I don’t believe anything is true in the Greer essay or in the response too it. Just a lot of projection and name calling.
Using transactional analysis, lets look at the these group labels in terms of parent (P), child (C), and adult (A) roles.
Yuval Levin style conservatism is purely P – C. The elite are the parents of society responsible for leading and molding lesser beings whose role it is to submit and follow.
Iglesias style progressivism is also purely P – C with the elites having the role of scolding lesser beings for wrong think and having bad attitudes that are the cause of all problems. This parent as never-satisfied critic relationship is also identical to the role of economists in society. Economists are all about backseat driving, second guessing, hindsight expertise, and pointing out how everything and anything could be better if the lesser beings only followed their directions correctly.
Libertarians too are in a parent role. They are the “don’t do that” parents obsessed with not allowing the lesser beings to have any autonomy. “No, you can’t zone your neighborhood.”. ” No, you can’t enforce immigration laws.”. “No, you can’t arrest criminals.”. ” No, you can’t fight back against China, the Chinese can run the global economy and you will sit still in the back seat and keep your mouth shut. ”
Populists are the advocates of Adult to Adult relationships. Intellectuals don’t understand this, because let’s face it they are mostly ideologues who can’t handle ambiguity and differing values. President Clinton, A populist if there ever was one, put it plainly:
“”The problem with any ideology is it gives the answer before you look at the the evidence. So you have to mold the evidence to get the answer you’ve already decided you’ve got to have.”
Because populists are not slaves to ideology and willing to take an open minded approach to considering all aspects of an issue they can be said to be the scientist tribe opposed to the other three tribes of ideology. Thus populism is the path to progress and a better world.
You are making generalizations about libertarians and populists that seem to describe just one faction of those groups. Different libertarians and populists often have wildly different mindsets and issues.
For example, when you say libertarians are in a parent role, I see some that are, and many that aren’t. Many libertarians support immigration restriction, like Larry Kudlow or Hans Herman Hoppe or David Rubin. Many libertarians support legal systems, and police.
I like labels and categories when they help clarify reality. The labels “libertarian”. “conservative” and “progressive” seem to confuse reality more than clarify.
Lev Strain has a pretty good grip on the lay of the land:
https://besacenter.org/china-is-winning/
(h/t Power line)
Can left-wing political pundits connect with Democrat voters?
This dynamic isn’t limited to one side. The public generally doesn’t like political pundits that Kling calls “intellectuals”. People of all persuasions widely despise hearing political voices that they don’t agree with.
I agree with Kling on “lumpenintellectuals”, but that is clearly a derogatory term. Kling’s characterization of Trump supporters as dumb and combative is also quite unflattering. It’s not entirely untrue. Realistically, only a tiny fraction of living humans live lives of advanced intellect, and we could say that most humans are dumb, which isn’t untrue.
“by winking at Southern segregation”
A nitpick here, but we have a West Virginia specifically because the Scotts Irish seceded from the Confederacy. Generally speaking Appalachian counties voted against secession and the Scots Irish had the highest desertion rate in the confederate army, which they were largely conscripted into by force.
Granted your average working class Scotts Irish that moved to the big city more easily verbalizes their dislike of school busing and such, but even Joe Biden made his peace with that back in Delaware.
Libertarians have nothing to offer. As you intimate, they won’t fight. They stand on their ideals as they are marched to the mass grave. They are of the same bent as the classical liberals in inter-war Germany staying the hand of opposition to the Third International until the militaristic right got frustrated and acted. Or of the Northern Conservatives describe by Robert Lewis Dabney in 1897:
“Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. ”
https://americandigest.org/mt-archives/american_studies/northern_conservatism_thi.php
Trump won and still has sway because he would fight. Mitt Romney is out because he wouldn’t fight and the contrast is high in comparison to Trump.
All in all, the “intellectuals” on the right seem to be of the same as those on the left, just that in college they had to pick a side and the right was less crowded. But when push comes to shove, they support their fellow alumni, not their principles.
If Big Tech isn’t demonetizing or strangling the circulation the right-wing pundit, they probably aren’t sincerely right wing. If Big Tech is promoting/amplifying a conservative intellectual, they are almost surely doing so to hurt, fracture, confuse, demotivate the political right.
National Review gets funding from Google. Google wouldn’t do that unless National Review were working to undermine the political right in some way.
If you read something like The Federalist or American Spectator, sure those are sincerely right-wing. And they are absolutely different than the left.
Mickey Kaus is a Trump connected intellectual. I’m not saying he can connect with the Trumpian masses (Mickey is an iconoclast and not everyone’s cup of tea), but he has the formula: hard line on immigration, defender of established transfer programs – which was Trump’s secret sauce.
Years before Trump burst on the scene, Mickey identified the model of the UK Independent Party as a workable new force in US politics and, by golly, he was right.
Intellectuals of all stripes despise the proletariat. The game both play is to get away with faking respect. Because the Left dominates media, they have successfully attacked the GOP for it’s fakery. These attacks have been especially sharp at getting GOP intellectuals to disown social conservatism.
Conservative media, first with Rush and now with Tucker have been very effective at revealing the dishonesty of the Left, such as showing that globalism and climate policy hurt the poor. The challenge of Conservative media is they are excluded from the “mainstream” publishers. No more so than the “pop culture” that regurgitates liberal dogma and positions conservatism as “outside the mainstream”.
Neither Trump or the President Bush’s were principled Conservatives. And all three betrayed “Conservatism” in stunning ways. So why the GOP elite hate for Trump and the love for the Bush’s?
There is just one logical answer: Trump was an outsider. The Bush’s are insiders. High school cliques explain everything you need to know about the games DC politicos play.
Arnold, as all too usual, fails to define Trump-supporters or populists in enough detail to actually discuss specifics, except a mention on immigration. Trump is now doing semi-tweet blog posts “from the desk of DJT” which is far more clear: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk/desk-xkpygaxcpz/
In supporting a Republican, Trump enunciates his populism:
” Life, Liberty, the Second Amendment, Border Security, our Military and our Vets, and our God-given Freedoms. … conservative principles of LOW TAXES and careful spending,”
Missing is Trump’s populist idea to “win wars, but not start any new ones”, which is a superset of support for our Military. Another is “rule of law – same punishments for same crimes”.
All a conservative intellectual has to do is:
be pro-life / anti- abortion (less strongly anti-euthanasia);
favor Free Speech, Free Religion, and peaceful protests (like most of what happened Jan 6 – Trump opposed the violence part; unlike many BLM riots);
support law-abiding citizens in owning guns;
enforce laws against illegal aliens entering the US (most Libbers against such laws);
support US Military in winning wars, and support those actively serving plus Veterans, including far better VA hospitals and care;
build up the military so as to win a war, if necessary, but not start new wars, and to withdraw from current foreign killing areas (Pat Buchanan like, also Ron Paul);
cut taxes – grow the economy thru private, peaceful means;
spend wisely – against govt choosing winning industries and companies (like Solyndra);
oppose CRT, and intolerant Political Correctness – the counter racist idea that equity demands reverse discrimination since white people are the problem.
In my FI team, Rod Dreher most strongly supports the above ideas, and supported Trump for Free Religion / pro-life reasons, but really dislikes Trump and Trump’s style, and even thinks Trump is bad for conservatives. So he, too, wants conservatives to move away from Trump. And away from Trump’s idea that the election was stolen – which Trump again claims and notes.
Glenn Loury was less strong against Trump before the election, but strongly condemned the Jan 6 protest and then claimed he “was wrong about Trump”.
Is “populism” merely Trump’s belief that the election was stolen?
I believe the election was stolen – and have seen 0 zero intellectuals do any steelman / research about the irregularities noted in the 40+ page Peter Navarro report. But I’m living, in Slovakia (I’m an “anywhere” kind of guy), with Biden as my US President. Full audits that document the numbers of all matched and unmatched signatures on mail ballots from the 6 “fraud” states, with the audits showing fewer unmatched signatures than the Trump-Biden difference, would change my mind. (Not recounts of the ballots; once the ballot gets in the counting process, there’s no way of separating legal and illegal ballots). I’m slightly watching the AZ Maricopa controversy, but saw one report where signature matching was not going to be required in the audit – if not it’s unlikely to change my mind. 🙁
I think there CAN be intellectuals who support popular conservative views while claiming the goal should be free and fair elections of ONLY valid votes by legal voters, thus elide the issue of the 2020 “special COVID” election. Note that most EU countries severely restrict mail-in votes because of fraud concerns.
Maybe there can be such an intellectual – but I don’t know who it is. There should be some. Maybe Steve Sailer, not on my May FI team, might evolve into that role?