Whither Thou Goest, Conservatives
“We dreamers have our ways, of facing rainy days.
And somehow we survive.
We keep the feelings warm,
Protect them from the storm,
Until our time arrives.
Then one day the sun appears,
And we come shining through those lonely years.
I made it through the rain,
I kept my world protected.
I made it through the rain,
I kept my point of view.
I made it through the rain,
And found myself respected,
By the others who,
Got rained on too,
And made it through.”
Conservatives are rejoicing over the incoming new Republican triumvirate in Washington. Include the Supreme Court, and all three branches of government are in Republican hands for only the third time in my lifetime. Whoopie!
But wait. Donald Trump is a center-right populist. He is not a conservative in a traditional sense. Is this a problem? Should conservatives put the cork back in the half-drunk bottle of champagne? Let’s take a look.
Issues change over time. Political parties change over time. The continuum of left, right and center move as the world around us moves and some problems get solved and new ones appear.
Conservatism, as everyone alive today knows it, was arguably started with Senator Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and William F Buckley, Jr. around 1964. But it was not always thus. Go back another 60 years, and what Republicans stood for was different.
Teddy Roosevelt was the “trust buster,” creating the anti-trust laws that were seen by some as anti-business at the time. Under Herbert Hoover, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were enacted to try and deal with the beginnings of the depression. Republicans were largely “isolationist” then and opposed to president Wilson’s involvement in the first World War. Senator Robert Taft (R-OH, son of president Taft, and two-time presidential candidate) continued the view that the U.S. was too involved in foreign wars.
Let’s see…Republicans advocating tariffs and less involvement in foreign conflicts. Sound familiar?
What we now know as the “traditional” conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan was driven by the spread of communism and the nuclear threat of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Tariffs went out the window in favor of “free trade” and the economic theories to support that.
Trump’s support of tariffs and an anti-war foreign policy is not new. It is actually returning to the Republican Party of 100 years ago. I admit to being a Goldwater/Reagan conservative. That is how I grew up. We have been on the side of right, if not always the winning side, for 60 years.
But times and threats change. I may be conservative but I am a practical one. Trade cannot be free if it is not fair. Communist China does not play fair. We have tried to turn every country on earth into a Jeffersonian democracy and have failed. We want to keep ourselves safe and have allies that aid in that effort. But perhaps the way we have gone about it needs some change. Banning TV ads for prescription drugs sounds like the Democrats banning TV ads for cigarettes in the 70s. But who signed that cigarette advertising ban? Richard Nixon.There is a difference between a Teamsters’ Union that represents blue collar people who often work with their hands and government employee unions who contribute campaign cash to the people who make their salary decisions.
Mr. Trump has managed to break the Democrats hold on voters according to race and instead earned the support of people of all races and both genders that vote on class, rejecting the dictates of the “elites” who look down on them. If Trump is to be successful, those everyday working people who supported him need to feel better about their lot in life two years from now than they do today. If they do not, he will lose the House and Senate as he did in 2018 and his last two years will be ineffective.
To make those voters happy, it is important not to be wedded to the economic or foreign policy principles of think tanks on the right. The administration should always be thinking of how this affects the “little guy and gal.” Let’s look at an example of one of the ways the left lost these people by being to rigidly devoted to their elitist thinking.
Let’s say you truly believe that man-made climate change is the greatest threat to life on earth. (By the way, I do not believe that and the “science” is far from settled on the point in spite of what the NY Times and Bloomberg may say.) The devotion to extreme solutions on this issue cost the average working person a fortune in lost jobs, higher energy costs, energy-driven inflation and movement restrictions. In spite of all the doomsaying by the media, John and Jane from Tulsa couldn’t see why their sacrifice was necessary or what good it did. They also saw that only they were giving up anything and the elites were benefitting from these policies. Hence, they voted for people that would no longer impose this unnecessary burden on them.
The new Republican majorities should learn from this. Don’t follow policy paper dictates if they do not make the average person’s lot better in such a way that they notice it. The big area of challenge here is in the economic sphere. Deficits are too large. We may have a problem selling our debt. Tariffs could re-ignite inflation. Low interest rates could also trigger inflation as they did before, but high ones can cause recession and/or bankrupt the government. A weak dollar helps our trade imbalance. But a strong dollar helps business investment and the sale of dollar denominated debt. The Trump solution here is growth, growth, growth. If policies drive and permit growth, it can overcome a lot of these other economic problems or at least enable them to be managed over time. I hope it works. More importantly, I hope John and Jane from Peoria feel that it works.
If Trump does restore their faith in the “American Dream” and they feel he is “Making America Great Again,” then he has the chance to be a transformative president in the manner of Reagan or FDR.
Therefore, this conservative is open to policies that Barry Goldwater would not have supported. As I write that, I realize that none of us knows what Goldwater would support if he were alive today and was looking at the international, cultural and economic challenges that we face today. Maybe tariffs on China would be OK with him. I’m sure he would not support men in women’s sports.
For that reason, I am open to almost all of President-elect Trump’s nominations for government positions. The one exception is Matt Gaetz. He is not qualified in experience, character or demeanor to hold that vital position. Weaponizing the DoJ for the right is no better than the weaponization we have seen on the left. I hope it becomes clear that he will not be confirmed and Mr. Trump withdraws the nomination in favor of someone else.
That said, I expect it is going to be an active and interesting six months in all the fields that the federal government touches, which unfortunately is almost everything these days.
On one of our first dates, I took the Captivating Mrs. Campbell to a Barry Manilow concert at the Music Center in Los Angeles. We have always liked his music. In Barry’s words, “we made it through the rain” of Biden/Harris. Now, I pray that the sun will shine. In 2016, Hillary Clinton, to her credit, wished Trump a successful presidency. I believe that without the virus manufactured and sent to us by the government of Communist China, he would have been seen as successful and would have been re-elected. Kamala Harris, displaying her lack of character, had no such wish for our 47th president. Regular readers of this blog know that Mr. Trump was not my first or second choice for president this cycle. But he will be president in a couple of months and he has a historic opportunity. Left, right or center, we should all hope and pray that he succeeds.
There will not be a blog next week. Happy Thanksgiving to all! May you spend at least a few minutes on your knees thanking the good Lord for the undeserved bounty He has allowed us to receive.
Then gorge yourselves.
I will be back to you in December. Until then,
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free