Conservatives Have Only One Choice in 2020.
Last edited Mon Aug 24, 2020, 06:11 PM - Edit history (1)
After what we have seen during Trump’s first term, any true conservative should be appalled by the prospect of a second.
By Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the previous three Republican administrations, is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”
'“You’re a traitor to the cause.”
In one form or another, that’s the charge most often made against so-called Never Trumpers, a group of which I consider myself an early and unofficial co-founder. The well-being of both the Republican Party and conservatism, according to this line of thinking, requires supporting Donald Trump. To be against him is to be an apostate.
Now it is certainly true that in the short run, and possibly in the long run, too, many of us no longer consider the Republican Party our political home. But for me, at least, a conservative approach to politics continues to lie at the core of my political being — and it is for that very reason that I believe even more strongly now, after what we have seen during Trump’s first term, that any true conservative should be appalled by the prospect of a second.
Put another way, to be anti-Trump is not to be anti-conservative; and to be pro-Trump is not to be pro-conservative.
That doesn’t mean that Mr. Trump doesn’t have any conservative policy successes he can claim. He does, though even here Mr. Trump’s record is not nearly as strong as his Republican defenders claim it is. From a conservative perspective, he’s gotten some things right and many things wrong.
The president is reshaping the judiciary in a conservative direction through his court appointments, but he has also given up on core conservative beliefs in limited government and responsible entitlement reform. He’s shredded federalism and embraced protectionism, both of which cut against conservative principles. It was also on Mr. Trump’s watch that, even before the pandemic hit, the United States set record annual deficits and exceeded $22 trillion in debt. (If Joe Biden becomes president, prepare for Republicans to rediscover a rhetorical commitment to fiscal discipline.)
The president’s conservative defenders point out that he has reduced unnecessary regulations on businesses, but they overlook the fact that he has proudly embraced crony capitalism and aggressively used the federal government to tilt the playing field and pick economic winners and losers. . .
When it comes to his policy agenda, Joe Biden is no conservative. I wish he were. But despite efforts by Trump supporters to pretend otherwise, Joe Biden is not Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Moreover, conservatism places a premium on prudence, human dignity, respect for the law and institutions, commitment to truth and reality, and a reasonable and reasoning governing temperament. In all of these respects, and others, Mr. Biden is more truly conservative than Mr. Trump.
That doesn’t mean that for conservatives there won’t be considerable costs to a Biden presidency; there will be. But it’s worth keeping in mind that sometimes the worst fears of what the other party will do never come to pass. For example, despite the fact that the Democratic Party supports a virtually unlimited right to abortion, the absolute number and the rate of abortions decreased steadily and significantly during the Obama-Biden administration. That is surely something to celebrate.
The 2020 matchup is hardly the one I’d prefer. No matter; it’s the one we have. Given that, there is one choice conservatives should make in the 2020 presidential race. And it’s not Donald J. Trump.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/opinion/trump-conservatives-republicans.html?
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