Why the Right Should be Boring Again

From the 1920s to 2016, one of the strongest factions of the right has always been the boring “small government conservative.” With notable exceptions, like an idealistic vision for world peace backed by US military supremacy, the party primarily stayed constant in their role as the adults in the room to push back against unrealistic Democratic social goals. Trump changed all this with a few subtle shifts in perspective that led to massive changes. His goals were in direct disagreement with liberal social and economic policies, yet he and his followers approached the world from a different direction than the Democrats yet with shockingly similar perspectives. The desire to limit the government was all but forgotten whenever a more present desire could be fulfilled by federal action. Years of low tax evangelism were replaced with support of tariffs. The Maga mind demands instant repair for failing industries and cities rather than time and slow institutional change. Voters saw that the boring Republicans of the past were opportunists, and decided to vote in extremely active opportunists which accelerated rather than reversed the course of national decline.  While the boring right of the past was deeply flawed, their understanding of the federal government as a constrained protector of rights is far better than the current popular vision of it as a force to right all wrongs in the world.

The Trumpian mindset and the modern Democratic mindset are both derived primarily from emotion. They both grow positive emotions into their most egregious form. The Trump voter expands the desire for self preservation to be the center of their political philosophy, while the liberal uses a misguided sense of responsibility to fix the whole world’s issues all at once. Both desires in moderation are objectively good, but the possession of one and idolization of the other leads to things as destructive as dissolving police forces and destroying national trade through tariffs. The people let their emotion lead in a fundamentally new way in 2016, and no election will ever be the same. The conservative of the past did not die, but they were forced to rebrand for a world that prized emotion above all else. Even those who were strong and principled people in the past have become little more than anti-woke propagandists. Rand Paul, and a few others have held to the same principles they espoused before the Trump era, but most have sensed the shifting desires of the American people and done whatever they need to stay in office.

The power of the people and their desires has never been felt as strongly as in the era of Trumpian populists against Democratic populists. While the Republicans of the past sought to understand the founding documents and express them in a way that was appealing to the people, the current regime has slid to copying liberal techniques and simply co-opting what they already believe to be popular. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to fulfill the wishes of the people, but transparent submission to an already immoral and indulgent people is never a good sign. Politicians have no obligation to be virtuous influencers of the public imagination for good, but in the past conservatives at least aimed for the appearance of policy arising from deep conviction and personal consideration of the founding documents. Like much of modern society, the right seems obsessed with shock value and clicks over substance. The only thing worse than changing beliefs based on popularity is the instinct politicians of both sides have to push their beliefs to the radical edge for attention. The national discourse must be reframed to a slightly more boring discussion of the importance of limited and stable institutions rather than voting to receive different forms of government benefits.

The Trump Republican is also similar to the left in his weaponization of an active federal government and executive branch. Trump seems to be uncomfortable letting individual states make their decisions on immigration or letting state school boards have a say in their own educational programming. The freedom for conservative states to be conservative and liberal states to be liberal is incomprehensible to the modern liberal or Trumpian mentality. The federal ability to remake the nation based upon their own ideas is central to these new systems. The conservative pragmatic call for small government and national ethics must come back to fight the populist sliding of both of these movements. The boring conservative must somehow arise from the shadows if the right ever wants to build anything other than a warped mirror to extremist leftist views.