The conservative (as well as some of the leftist) intelligentsia has always been wary of populism. This is understandable. It's known to be perilous to put one's faith in a knowing and faithful rabble: peeps convinced of every variety of secular nonsense, from Horatio Alger fabulism to the singular splendor of American exceptionalism. Such ignorant verities are self-regarded as wholesome, but disillusionment can turn ugly. The rabble can turn ugly. It's pleasant to have them on one's side until it isn't.
And that's where modern conservatism's intelligentsia finds itself: in a very unpleasant predicament. Co-opting the rabble was a rather distasteful task for yesteryear's conservatism, since it knew of the perils. Yet, when silently pondered, the danger of reverse co-optation was always prospective, never imminent. The rabble would buy whatever the conservative elite was selling, because that's what the rabble does — it follows. If disillusionment comes, it'll come tomorrow. Today, all is well.
Oops.
Hence the conservative intelligentsia's metamorphosis from an instinctive anti-populism to a manifested anti-popularity. It positively despises its party's Trumps and Carsons, tribunes of rabblocratic ignorance. Their days may be numbered, but today they own the party; they and their herd have busted the fence and they're grazing on aristocratic land. For the conservative intelligentsia, this circumstance has been most unpleasant; and by now, it's downright intolerable.
So it is that we read David Brooks this morning, railing against the uncouth, unschooled, unwashed interlopers by name. Trumpism and Carsonism (ethnic and religious bigotry, respectively) are "ruinous to the long-term political prospects" of the GOP and "bad for the spirit of conservatism," rages Brooks; they are "a sour, overgeneralized and intellectually sloppy sense of alienation."
Though we lay down the Times and pick up the Post, we find Charles Krauthammer on the same page. The Republican Party, he writes with one hand while pointing the other's finger directly at Trump and Carson, "is flamboyantly shooting at itself and gratuitously alienating one significant electoral constituency after another."
Isn't that lovely? I am tempted, because of a recent visitor to our disheveled shores, to say divine. Brooks and Krauthammer's eyes have seen the ignominy of the coming of the Reckoning, in which Trump and Carson are liberating the vintage where the rabble's grapes of wrath are stored. Our conservative thinkers once fondled the asp and held it to their bosom, and now they're shocked by the lethal result. Or so they say, or so they pretend, or so they belatedly protest.
What must be most disconcerting to them is that the rabble is out of the tube and there is no way to get it back in. The Republican Party is now a party of two distinct, irreconcilable camps. It takes a load of herculean creativity to imagine Trumpeteers marching enthusiastically to the polls to vote for a Jeb Bush — or even dragging their sorry asses to the polls at all.
Unless, of course — what's this we can imagine? — a formal schism erupts from which an inglorious third party emerges. Such as been my faith for years, and because I'm one of the simple peeps of wholesome verities, I'm keeping that faith.
I'm wondering how much the writings of Brooks and Krauthammer have contributed to this reckoning over the years.
Posted by: Anne J | September 25, 2015 at 09:00 AM
Brooks is the better whiner of the two to the point he might be genuinely out of control. His shot at Ann Coulter, who a more emotionally composed Brooks would find beneath contempt, adds real authenticity. He then moves on to the most compressed, delusional, steaming yammering I've seen in a mainstream columnist's work in years: "American free market and religious conservatives have traditionally embraced a style of nationalism that is hopeful and future minded. From Lincoln to Reagan to Bush, the market has been embraced for being dynamic and progressive."
Where to begin? Between Lincoln, Reagan and Bush which is not like the others? How is undoing the legislative lessons learned in the Great Depression progressive? When was the relationship between the economic elite and American religious conservatives anything other than a cynical ploy? When has conservative nationalism ever been anything other than exclusive, exploitative or jingoistic? Someone please stick a spoon in Davey's mouth before he bites his tongue off. Krauthammer has at least retained enough dignity to issue his standard Fox News-intellectual-grade pile of muted screeching.
Posted by: Bob | September 25, 2015 at 09:51 AM
I bow to your superior local knowledge on the condition of the GOP and the possibility of schism. However, for what it's worth (not much , I agree), from way 'over here' I detect similar signs in the Dems. They strike me as not unlike our own Labour party who have suddenly discovered, and no-one was more surprised than them, that what they took as a fringe of extreme Left-wing activists is actually a majority. Perhaps, just perhaps, Bernie Sanders will be your Jeremy Corbyn.
Posted by: David & Son of Duff | September 25, 2015 at 10:53 AM
Allowing for the two systems, Sanders is not an old style leftist like Corbyn. He has called himself a socialist but now makes clear he means democratic socialist, which makes him roughly centrist in your part of the world, like it or not. Despite all the Sturm und Drang about Clinton in our media she's really not all that controversial to most Democratic voters. We also have no functional equivalent of Cameron who let up on austerity just enough to pass for center-right. In short the American left is nowhere near as unhappy as the UK's. Nearly all the drama is on the right.
Posted by: Bob | September 25, 2015 at 12:17 PM
Exactly right. Most Sanders supporters like Clinton. Most Clinton supporters like Sanders.
But I think the Republican schism is overblown. I'm all for the political faith that PMC mentioned. I think it is really important. I just don't have the talent for it.
Posted by: Frank Moraes | September 25, 2015 at 12:56 PM
So far as "faith" means belief without evidence I have to admit to having none myself. The literary Mr. C might well be writing for style.
Posted by: Bob | September 25, 2015 at 01:28 PM