They could start by being a lot more serious than Donald Trump was in his calamitous interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier on Monday, in which the former president revealed that the classified documents that led to his indictment might have been mixed up “with all sorts of things — golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things.”
“Iran war plans?” Baier cheerfully inquired.
Trump has been let off the hook by his own side so often that it was striking that prominent conservative commentators used the Baier encounter to pose fundamental questions about his presidential candidacy.
Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, noted in Politico that while Trump’s legal troubles over the documents might only make Republicans rally to him more fervently, the response of the swing voters he’ll need in a general election is likely to be ruinous. Lowry’s pithy summary: “What might really kill Trump in a general makes him stronger with Republican primary voters.”
Karl Rove, architect of George W. Bush’s electoral victories, observed in the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s performance on Fox News “ranged from unpersuasive to incoherent.” Rove pointed to a much-cited CNN poll showing Trump losing support even among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents but still remaining well ahead of the GOP pack. Like Lowry, Rove was far more worried about independents, who supported Trump’s indictment by 2 to 1.
Granted, neither Lowry nor Rove has been a Trump fan. But the issue they raised about the conservative movement is fundamental: If GOP rank-and-filers are so far out of line with middle-of-the road opinion, the party’s future is grim.
This same problem accounted for the miserable time House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had in trying to lead what my inimitable Post colleague Dana Milbank called the “House of Recriminations.” McCarthy wanted to protect the 18 House Republicans who represent districts Joe Biden carried in 2020 from having to vote on impeaching him for, well, nothing really.
But Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) was determined to get a leg up on her ultra-right rival, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who had prepared her own articles of impeachment. The country got a glimpse of the radical right in disarray as Greene called Boebert a “little b—-” for her alleged act of plagiarism — and for striking first. (And we’re supposed to think this is about principle?)
Eventually, McCarthy convinced Republicans to refer the impeachment articles to two House committees rather than acting on them directly, but this still forced vulnerable Republicans to cast a vote that started the impeachment process. This is unlikely to go down well with moderate voters who recoil from Boebert-Greene Republicanism.
Given how mesmerized the party’s primary voters are with Trump, Republican politicians are caught in a vicious cycle of their own making. Fearing reprisal from a man who revels in vendettas, the party’s leaders stay largely silent even when they know better. But their reticence makes the party’s core constituency ever more radical by driving moderate Republicans to flee to independent status — or even to the Democrats.
This makes compromise of the sort McCarthy reached with Biden on the debt ceiling toxic within the party. An Economist/YouGov Poll released this month showed why.
The survey found that by a healthy 59 percent to 41 percent margin, Americans preferred a member of Congress who “compromises to get things done” rather than one who “sticks to their principles, no matter what.” But whereas 81 percent of Democrats said they preferred compromisers, 58 percent of Republicans were in the “no matter what” crowd. If you are looking for the core driver of gridlock, this is it.
Conservatives don’t take kindly to progressives telling them what conservatism should be. It’s an old habit: When Joe McCarthy was riding high, moderate and liberal social scientists began distinguishing between “conservatism” and “the radical right.” I get the conservative impatience with liberal advice. But honestly, it’s really not a big ask to urge conservatives to be conservative rather than radical.
In a recent essay on the thinking of the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), political scientist Jeffery Tyler Syck recalled the lovely distinction Moynihan made between liberals as “people who would like to see things improved” and conservatives as “people who would like to see things not worsened.”
A conservatism dedicated primarily to avoiding making things worse would be a big improvement over Trump-Boebert-Greene poison. If conservatives who followed the Moynihan formula, they could govern and compromise. Their critiques of progressives and liberals would be sharper. And they most certainly would not have to rummage around among golf shirts, shoes and pants to find secret documents.
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