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Former President Donald Trump speaks outside a polling station in Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 8.
Photo:
RICARDO ARDUENGO/REUTERS
Donald Trump
can’t win another presidential election. But neither can the Republican Party, unless it brings his voters into the fold. What’s needed is Trumpism without Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s voters aren’t dolts who merely ask to be tossed some red meat—they focus on policies that affect their everyday lives.
In 2016, my wife and I crafted speeches for the only successful Republican presidential candidate since 2004. I later wrote in these pages that most middle-class voters had felt left behind in the lead-up to the election. They told pollsters they no longer believed their kids would be as well off as they had been. The American dream was fading out of reach. That should have signaled the need for radical change, but only one candidate spoke to the issue.
This was the first plank of Trumpism. If we’re immobile, Mr. Trump said, it’s because of Democratic policies on education, immigration and regulation. The voters listened and elected him in a historic upset. Their central concern remains: A November Fox News survey revealed that 59% of Americans think life will be worse for the next generation.
Mr. Trump recognized that making America mobile again would require an activist federal government. He was to the left of the libertarian wing of the GOP. So are most Americans. Nearly two-thirds of respondents told Fox’s pollsters that Washington should ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage. Mr. Trump agreed. In 2016 he said he didn’t want to repeal ObamaCare so much as replace it with something better, but what a right-wing Congress offered him was very different from what he had wanted.
Mr. Trump’s second-biggest issue was political corruption. He promised to drain the swamp and end interest-group bargains. That should have been a Republican issue, but the GOP foolishly gave it away to a Democratic Party whose alliance with interest groups contributed to the problem in the first place.
Finally, Mr. Trump capitalized on nationalism. As the left paraded its contempt for America, he championed unapologetic pride in our country. Unlike the rest of the GOP, Mr. Trump implicitly recognized the gravitational force that draws the nationalist to the left, through the fraternity he will feel to countrymen in need and the recognition that they require a safety net.
These policies constitute Trumpism, and a GOP that adopts them can retain the loyalty of Trump voters. These voters realize when they’re being played. They don’t want a snapback to the way conservatism was defined for the previous 50 years. The
Barry Goldwater
movement—economic liberty, accompanied by opposition to civil-rights reforms and national welfare policies—has run its course.
Mr. Trump has added a new meaning to conservatism: a governing philosophy that returns to an earlier Republicanism, which called itself progressive and sought the common good for all Americans. To break Mr. Trump’s hold on the GOP, Republicans need to show voters they share their concerns. He gave them the playbook to do so.
Mr. Buckley is a professor at Scalia Law School and the author of “Progressive Conservatism.”
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the November 15, 2022, print edition as ‘To Beat Trump, Embrace Trumpism.’
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