Many confuse conservatism for whatever transgressive rubbish the Republican Party currently represents. Actually, it is a persuasion spurned by both parties since 2016. The first man to win the Republican presidential nomination three consecutive times, Donald Trump, is hostile to this political philosophy which his party formerly embraced. Despite the popular misconception, Trump is not a conservative.
Conservatism in the United States seeks to conserve the American Founding, which held certain truths to be self-evident. First, that individuals share a fixed human nature that endows them with agency — we are determined in our self-determination. Second, that government exists to secure this individual sovereignty. Government must therefore be sturdy yet limited — strong enough to secure our natural rights, but not so powerful as to threaten them. Third, that the finest system ever devised to achieve this balance is the American constitutional order.
One might assume the Republican nominee for president must necessarily be conservative. Yet the original conservative movement, assembled in the mid-20th century, was not meant to be synonymous with the Republican Party. Rather, it saw the GOP as the most practical venue in which advocates could wield political influence. Early conservatives had to contend with the party’s liberal wing (it was real, believe it or not) and moderate establishment. The conservative movement’s flagship publication, National Review, was founded in part to criticize a middle-of-the-road Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, from the right.
Only when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 did conservatism become the dominant force in the Republican Party. It remained so for 36 years until Donald Trump displaced it with his grievance-fueled populism.
Trump is proud of the fact that he is unconstrained by principles. He has never referred to himself as a conservative — not while running in 2016, not during his presidency and definitely not now. In March, Trump said, “I’m not conservative. You know what I am? I’m a man of common sense.” Obviously.
For those who nonetheless insist that Trump is a conservative, a question: What is it that Donald Trump seeks to conserve? Which institution that preceded him does he revere? What idea does he value more than his immediate personal interest? At least Kamala Harris — who was incubated in Bay Area politics — is sincere in her progressivism. Trump can only feign interest in ideological pursuits.
More often, Trump reviles long-standing conservative positions. Where conservatives defend legal protections for unborn persons, Trump reprimands Florida for restricting abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Conservatives have long supported freedom of speech, yet Trump suggests that criticizing Supreme Court rulings should be an imprisonable offense. Conservative jurists uphold the Second Amendment, whereas Trump floated in 2018 that authorities should “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”
On economic matters, conservatives treasure free markets because they enable civil society — not centralized government — to allocate and consume scarce resources as individuals see fit. In contrast, Trump favors sweeping government intervention to counteract the spontaneous order of markets. He calls tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented” (yes, ever), and would use them to penalize Americans who purchase goods from abroad. Trump’s preferred tax code would be a giveaway machine, dispensing goodies to cherished constituencies like tipped workers in Nevada and automakers in Michigan. Given his refusal to curtail entitlement programs, such carve-outs would add trillions of dollars to the already-staggering national debt.
Simultaneously, Trump resents the post-WWII conservative consensus that global stability requires America to deter major aggression. His running mate, J.D. Vance, said he doesn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine” as it battles for existence. Should NATO allies fail to spend sufficiently on defense, Trump encourages Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to them. He reckons defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion may be a raw deal — after all, “Taiwan took our chip business from us.”
Most disqualifying of all, Trump is an enemy of the Constitution that conservatives are tasked with preserving. As president, he attempted a coup to overturn an election and retain power. False allegations of electoral fraud, he later said, allowed “for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Vance is no better; he once said he would advise Trump to ignore court decisions when they contradict his administration. Neither man should be let within ten miles of the U.S. capital with that sort of talk. Yet here we are.
To be clear, conservatives have no reason to be enthusiastic about a Kamala Harris presidency. If Donald Trump loses to the vice president, however, a brief moment of relief is justified. They can then hope that a disgraced Republican Party may crawl back to conservatism in 2028.