Will western-style democratic liberalism survive Trump?
On Labor Day 2016, as that year’s presidential election began its stretch run, the Claremont Review of Books website published the pseudonymous essay “The Flight 93 Election.” It was soon deemed an intellectual justification for Republicans and conservatives to put aside their reservations and zealously support Donald Trump for president. This was no mean feat given Trump’s loutish behavior, ignorance of American government and political philosophy, support for left-wing causes, and poor and unethical business history.
“The Flight 93 Election” argued that conservatives faced a dilemma similar to the passengers on the hijacked September 11, 2001 jetliner: Either accept a disastrous status quo—a Democrat-controlled White House—or fight back in the hope of avoiding that fate. The essay, whose author was revealed to be a Republican speechwriter named Michael Anton, conceded that Trump might wind up being a bad president, but Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton was a threat to the nation’s very existence, and so it would be better to risk putting him in the Oval Office. Anton added that anyone who thought otherwise was either corrupted by “pecuniary interests” or else, deep-down, believed that conservatism is “wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong on its policy prescriptions.”
Clinton as president was certainly undesirable, given both her own ethics problems and her intention to continue Barack Obama’s flawed agenda. Her presidency (like Obama’s) would have generated plenty of bad policy ideas, executive and federal power grabs, and political appointments that congressional Republicans would have had to weaken and block while she was in office and reverse once she left.
However, with Trump in the Oval Office, congressional Republicans have meekly and sycophantically approved his bad policy ideas, executive and federal power grabs, and political appointments, even though they were well-positioned to guide his presidency and check his behavior. Now, an American electorate exhausted by his erratic leadership (to put it charitably) is giving the president terrible disapproval ratings and ugly early polling numbers. Those portend that the Democratic Party—which has become far more radical than it was under Hillary Clinton—will capture the White House and Congress in 2020 and be positioned to appoint three Supreme Court justices who will shape the court for a generation. Meanwhile, the Trump-stained Republican Party is at risk of becoming enduringly irrelevant on the national level.
The rest of the story is here:
https://thebulwark.com/departing-the-shining-city/
“So what do we have to lose by fighting back?” Anton asked in “The Flight 93 Election.” In the essay, he wrote of the long-term harm from a Hillary Clinton presidency:
Have you thought about the longer term? The possibilities would seem to be: Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see … which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three.
Is this different from what Trump has delivered? Under him, the presidency has grown even more imperial and constitutional checks on the office have further eroded. The nation has grown more fractured by race, class, geography, and religion. Foreign rivals now freely meddle in American politics, with Trump’s jovial acceptance. He spends his weekends at exclusive golf clubs and his weekdays consulting with billionaires—when he and his family aren’t jetting off to enclaves with other global leaders. There is no wall along the Mexican border (a good thing because it’s a foolish idea) nor Mexican money to pay for it, no significant trade breakthroughs, and no repeal of Obamacare and replacement with a new health care system. There are, however, reinvigorated North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, diminished U.S. stature among both allies and opponents, and a soaring national debt that, along with the entitlement crisis that Trump ignores, poses a serious long-term threat to the U.S. economy. Oh, and there’s the increasingly likely Democratic landslide in 2020 and the radicalization of the American political left.
But there’s an even greater loss to this “fighting back”: the loss of the Republican Party’s credibility, its Goldwater–Reagan conservative principles, its very soul. And in return for this flight from the Shining City on the Hill, the GOP didn’t even gain the whole world, but just Donald Trump.
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