To MAGA-era conservatives, there is no crime more unforgivable than for a traditional, Reagan-era Republican to endorse voting for Vice President Kamala Harris. You won’t find any such endorsement here: I care less about whom you’re voting for than you should care about for whom I’m casting my ballot.
Of course Harris can’t keep the price of food and clothing down by setting up a ridiculous “price gouging” law (and if she could, why hasn’t the Biden/Harris administration done so yet?). Obviously giving $25,000 to first-time homebuyers would increase demand and drive up housing prices. And taxing unrealized gains would be economically catastrophic, bureaucratically unworkable and almost certainly unconstitutional.
But it’s not like Republicans have spent the past nine years defending the bedrock principles of free-market conservatism. Slowly but surely, most of them have contorted themselves into endorsing whatever former President Donald Trump thinks “economic populism” is.
That’s why, with less than two months until the election, there should be an honest discussion of whether a Trump loss would be best in the long term for “conservatism” as traditionally understood. In a sense, a Harris presidency could serve as a type of political chemotherapy: a poisonous injection meant to eradicate a tumor in order to keep a major political party alive.
What happens to traditional free-market, low-tax conservatism if Trump were to win in November? One could argue the classical liberalism horse has already jumped the fence, never to return. But if America gives up and returns Trump to the presidency, “conservatism” as many of us understood it for the past half-century would simply become a museum piece, gathering dust on library shelves.
A second Trump term would mean that for the next four years, conservatism would continue its descent into whatever Trump decides it is based on the last person to whom he spoke. He would continue to insist tariffs are paid by other countries, when in fact economists are nearly unanimous in their belief those costs are borne by American consumers. Trump would continue to fumble the abortion issue, dragging Republicans into becoming the maybe-pro-life-sometimes-when-it’s-politically-convenient party. And he would destroy faith in American elections, but conveniently only in states in which he loses.
Further, if Trump were to win, the right would have permanently ceded any moral ground to the left.
Over the past four decades, the GOP’s defense of morality, family values and patriotism was the sinew that held the party together. These were fundamental ties that held together religious conservatives, libertarian-leaning Americans worried about taxes and the economy and national defense hawks.
But Trump believes in none of these things. On the personal side, his amoral predilections are well-known and have been for 40 years (and have cost him dearly in courts around America).
Publicly, his idea of strength is to demean the presidency by cozying up with dictators and strongmen around the world. He mocks great American cities for their crime problems while he himself is carrying dozens of felonies on his ledger. Exactly what limited government principle was Trump “conserving” when he called for the “termination” of certain parts of the Constitution in order to return himself to the presidency?
Granted, it is rarely beneficial for a political party to occupy the minority in American politics, but the GOP’s best chance at regaining its conservative heritage may be to mold itself in opposition to Harris’ positions. This would allow those truly interested in liberty to oppose taxes, regulations, court-packing and “green” mandates instead of obsessing over whether Harris is Black or Indian, whether photos of her crowds have been doctored with artificial intelligence or whether America is overrun by single women who enjoy the companionship of felines.
America has had good presidents and bad presidents. It has survived Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives. Each time it has come out on the other side, electing a new administration that corrects the course of the previous one.
But Donald Trump isn’t a true member of a party, nor does he clutter his mind with any ideological knowledge or allegiances. He is simply a political movement unto himself who responds with ridicule and scorn to any attempts to undergird his mercurial instincts with a cogent philosophy. He doesn’t recognize the rules that have kept America a functioning republic for nearly 250 years, which has left the nation in the inconceivable position of either electing a man to the presidency or potentially sending him to prison for most of the remainder of his life.
Conversely, Kamala Harris is a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat with bad ideas. Her administration would prompt groans and eye-rolls among conscious conservatives while sending the deranged fringes of the Republican Party into full conspiracy mode.
A Harris administration would be a painful four years for Republicans in the way America muddled through terms by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But pain is also the way the body teaches you a lesson. And the lesson in this case is that the sooner Republicans cut out the Trump tumor, the quicker they can once again become a healthy political party.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
