American Conservatives have defined themselves against a straw figure of “the crazy leftist” for decades. Here’s why that habit of mind might end up spelling their downfall.
If the GOP was a party comprised of thoughtful, evidenced-based politicos who thought they needed to craft good arguments to win elections, then they would all be reading this article and arguing about it. The author, Ben Judah, argues that the old Republican mantra from the 80’s (“WE are the party of ideas, the Democrats are the party of old, stale dogmas”) has persisted into the present, only it’s now largely inaccurate and prevents conservatives from seeing what’s happening around them.
Judah’s article points out that Progressives have built a strong bench of local candidates who have fired up voters around a range of sophisticated and appealing policy ideas. Meanwhile, the “best and the brightest” of the conservative “braintrust” have little to offer beyond name calling (libtard!) or hysterical yelps of “but that’s SOCIALISM!?!?” When Ben Shapiro is your movement’s intellectual heavyweight rather than its glib eye candy, you’re in trouble.
I came to political consciousness in the 1980s. In that era, Democrats generally looked upon the Reagan revolution as some wheezing dinosaur that limped into power thanks to the hypnotic allure of Reagan’s soothing smile and glossy hair gel. Many rank and file progressives blithely assumed that the Reaganite fever would pass, and conservatism would soon return to the dustbin of history where it belonged.
We now know that progressives grievously underestimated the power and sharp-knived ambition of that Reaganite, conservative persuasion. Their sharp-eyed savvy (and studious institution building) is why we now face decades of a judiciary stacked with former Reagan youth who were groomed by The Federalist Society, founded not coincidentally in 1982.
I think it’s possible that today’s ascendant and cocky GOP might be shocked to encounter an electorate ready to entertain some new, heretical ideas coming out of an invigorated progressive movement. And like the Democrats of the 80s, they’ll be caught on their heels.
Having said this, the 2010s are not the 1970s. The mediascape of the 1970s, pre-cable news and pre-social media, was far less fragmented and tribal. Big money played a much less central role in shaping the sorts of candidates who got elected and the sorts of policies that got proposed and passed.
Given the intensely tribal nature of our current politics, Progressives could articulate all sorts of interesting and compelling ideas, but the people most likely to be persuaded by them may be so insulated and inoculated by the right-wing/bothsiderist media juggernaut that they’ll never seriously encounter or consider them.
But history is unpredictable, as any historian will tell you. I hope you’ll indulge me as I illustrate that point with a story about historiography. I promise it’s short, interesting, and relevant.
In 1994 (14 years after Reagan won the 1980 election) historian Alan Brinkley wrote an article saying “hey, historians, American conservatism might be a real thing, and might be something we should write some books about.” That’s right, it took until the mid-1990s (with a few exceptions) for the people who studied American history for a living to realize that the conservative ascendancy of the post-WWII era wasn’t some flash in the pan, but was a serious phenomenon with deep historical roots.
Similarly, I think there are a bunch of conservatives out there today who don’t recognize the depth, vibrancy, and creativity of the American liberal tradition. They regard liberalism in the 2010s the way liberals regarded conservatism in the 1980s, as an irrelevant dinosaur. Wanting something to be true, however, is not the same thing as it actually being true. The self-satisfied nature of the conservative media-sphere & intelligentsia (such as it is) and their abandonment of facts and evidence may come back to bite them.
Lest I come across as someone who thinks historians in the 80s and 90s were stupid (or biased) for failing to note the importance of conservatism’s history, let me clearly state that this is NOT what I’m saying. No one understands the history they’re living thru until decades later, not even historians.
In twenty years, the article by Ben Judah may end up looking quite prescient, as a warning to conservatives about the rising tide of progressivism that they failed to perceive and which overwhelmed them. In twenty years, the article by Ben Judah may be entirely forgotten because none of those progressive ideas ever found expression through electoral politics, and because Trumpism is the nation’s reigning ideology under President Ivanka.
That’s the point. We don’t know what history awaits us, hence we don’t know what aspects of our present will come to seem most salient. But what I do know, as a historian, is that history is made by people, not given to them. History is created by people acting in the present moments they inhabit.
The future is not something to be awaited, it is something to be created. The conservative movement of the post WWII era was powerfully aware of that, and to a great extent they succeeded in building the future they wanted. The jury is still out on what the next chapter of American politics will look like.