The central problem for the Right in the coming decades is holding onto at least a section of the elite. So I think a winning coalition must include social conservatives and cultural conservatives. Cultural conservatism is the vote-getter, the majoritarian core. Social conservatism allows conservatives to gain a certain number of college-educated people. I myself am a conservative Christian professor. An alliance between the Bourgeois values and cultural conservatism is unthinkable. I am strongly socially conservative, but I do think that social conservatives need to tap the breaks a little. We should endorse leaving abortion and SSM to the states (which I believe to be consistent with America's original federal design), and we should only pursue abortion restrictions in states with widespread support. These concessions hurt, but they are necessary. One potential problem for my proposed alliance is that many Christian conservatives are turned off by cultural conservatives, especially Trump himself. They have more in common, at least in terms of behavior, with Bourgeois values people.
It's hard to conceive of the think tankers or other elite-adjacent groups as on the same team as your typical MAGA supporter. It seems like a force-fitted artifact of our winner-take-all elections resulting in a two-party system.
Agreed. That alliance is a no-go. I think an alliance of social and cultural conservatives (with cultural and economic nationalism emphasized) can achieve electoral victory. Many in these two groups find the other group distasteful, but we need to work together.
Good succinct analysis, Aaron! Could easily have been entitled: “The Three Worlds of American Conservatism”. Hmm… I think I may have heard that “Three Worlds” part somewhere before. 😊
Relatedly, James Patterson's critique of the famous Voter Study Group "empty quadrant" argues against the popular idea that "socially conservative, fiscally liberal" populism provides a simple path to the majority: https://lawliberty.org/the-realignment-that-wasnt/
There's some truth to this, yet Social Security is popular.
I think the large majority of people are "fiscally liberal" if it translates to "spending more money on programs that primarily benefit worthy and hardworking people like me." They dislike it if it translates to "spending more money on programs that primarily benefit those unworthy and undeserving moochers, scammers, and sundry n'er-do-wells over there." It's only a subset of conservative/libertarian elites that have a principled objection to fiscal liberalism under all circumstances.
The reason fiscal liberalism loses as an idea among non-elite conservatives is that they're mostly thinking about the "welfare queens" and not Social Security and Medicare, or about, say, the idea of more subsidies for middle-class children.
Decent analysis, but I would argue that the entire problem is that "conservatism" is itself unfit for the moment and that its era has passed. I have sort of identified with all three of those in the past or subscribed to the 3 legged stool theory. But the social conservatism can't be conserved anymore, the current elites need to be completely deposed for the 2nd version of "conservatism" to happen which is sort of an oxymoron, and 3rd is tied to the 2nd in that popular support isn't there for the elites' project.
Conservatism made sense when the left was about redistribution and such, arguing about the boundaries of government in society with a focus on economics. But the working class that used to dominate the left has been overrun by the academic left, and the academic left has brought their ideology of deconstruction into politics. Thus the entry of all the ridiculous theories; defund the police, destroy statues, redefine sex as gender, remake the military based on inclusion, and use the power of corrupt institutions (like tech) to aid this. Against the ideology of deconstruction, conservatism is literally impotent; you cannot conserve what the other side has destroyed or committed to destroying.
The only way to counter this version of the left is to return the right to an ideology of reconstruction. That's a loaded term in the South, I realize, so maybe "rebuilding" is the better term, but it is the only thing that can possibly succeed. The right needs Lincoln/Grant/McKinley/Roosevelt/Ike right now, not Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan/Bush. I think Trump inherently gets that, but is not capable of articulating it or finding people around him who do. I'm not sure anyone else out there does; maybe JD Vance.
On the other hand, an analysis of the political left would show internal divisions, incoherence, and lots of positions that lack widespread popular support.
In our two-party system, despite infighting on the left and on the right, some blend of ideas from the left will win, or some blend of ideas from the right will win, at any given moment.
I like this framework. Though somewhere it needs to be observed that "cultural conservatism" is the most nebulous of the three, perhaps for the very reason that it lacks elite intellectual support to precisely articulate its vision. And Trump himself is only prepared to articulate his vision in the form of sound bites and catchphrases.
Also, law and order is an important topic missing here. I'm not sure if you assign it to the cultural conservatives or really to all three on the left panel. A basic distaste for crime and criminality -- and the intellectual or "bleeding heart" tendency to excuse it -- is something very fundamental to the conservative mentality.
When ordinary people think about what they want to conserve, I'd say it's concrete things: the "niceness" of "nice places", their neighborhoods and towns. And the main thing they want to conserve them from is crime and chaos.
Related to law and order, concerns about immigration could probably be broken into three categories themselves: criminal, economic, and cultural. Some people worry about all three, while others are focused on only one or two. There's also the matter of racism; I would argue racist opposition is probably a subcategory of "cultural" (i.e., there are both racist and non-racist ways of framing cultural concerns about mass immigration), but the left is going to label all cultural concerns as automatically racist in any event, and probably most criminal and economic concerns as well.
Neocons are solid on free speech in my view, though obviously they have cancelled people on the paleocon right in the past. But nobody is a free speech absolutist.
The central problem for the Right in the coming decades is holding onto at least a section of the elite. So I think a winning coalition must include social conservatives and cultural conservatives. Cultural conservatism is the vote-getter, the majoritarian core. Social conservatism allows conservatives to gain a certain number of college-educated people. I myself am a conservative Christian professor. An alliance between the Bourgeois values and cultural conservatism is unthinkable. I am strongly socially conservative, but I do think that social conservatives need to tap the breaks a little. We should endorse leaving abortion and SSM to the states (which I believe to be consistent with America's original federal design), and we should only pursue abortion restrictions in states with widespread support. These concessions hurt, but they are necessary. One potential problem for my proposed alliance is that many Christian conservatives are turned off by cultural conservatives, especially Trump himself. They have more in common, at least in terms of behavior, with Bourgeois values people.
It's hard to conceive of the think tankers or other elite-adjacent groups as on the same team as your typical MAGA supporter. It seems like a force-fitted artifact of our winner-take-all elections resulting in a two-party system.
Agreed. That alliance is a no-go. I think an alliance of social and cultural conservatives (with cultural and economic nationalism emphasized) can achieve electoral victory. Many in these two groups find the other group distasteful, but we need to work together.
Good succinct analysis, Aaron! Could easily have been entitled: “The Three Worlds of American Conservatism”. Hmm… I think I may have heard that “Three Worlds” part somewhere before. 😊
Relatedly, James Patterson's critique of the famous Voter Study Group "empty quadrant" argues against the popular idea that "socially conservative, fiscally liberal" populism provides a simple path to the majority: https://lawliberty.org/the-realignment-that-wasnt/
There's some truth to this, yet Social Security is popular.
I think the large majority of people are "fiscally liberal" if it translates to "spending more money on programs that primarily benefit worthy and hardworking people like me." They dislike it if it translates to "spending more money on programs that primarily benefit those unworthy and undeserving moochers, scammers, and sundry n'er-do-wells over there." It's only a subset of conservative/libertarian elites that have a principled objection to fiscal liberalism under all circumstances.
The reason fiscal liberalism loses as an idea among non-elite conservatives is that they're mostly thinking about the "welfare queens" and not Social Security and Medicare, or about, say, the idea of more subsidies for middle-class children.
Decent analysis, but I would argue that the entire problem is that "conservatism" is itself unfit for the moment and that its era has passed. I have sort of identified with all three of those in the past or subscribed to the 3 legged stool theory. But the social conservatism can't be conserved anymore, the current elites need to be completely deposed for the 2nd version of "conservatism" to happen which is sort of an oxymoron, and 3rd is tied to the 2nd in that popular support isn't there for the elites' project.
Conservatism made sense when the left was about redistribution and such, arguing about the boundaries of government in society with a focus on economics. But the working class that used to dominate the left has been overrun by the academic left, and the academic left has brought their ideology of deconstruction into politics. Thus the entry of all the ridiculous theories; defund the police, destroy statues, redefine sex as gender, remake the military based on inclusion, and use the power of corrupt institutions (like tech) to aid this. Against the ideology of deconstruction, conservatism is literally impotent; you cannot conserve what the other side has destroyed or committed to destroying.
The only way to counter this version of the left is to return the right to an ideology of reconstruction. That's a loaded term in the South, I realize, so maybe "rebuilding" is the better term, but it is the only thing that can possibly succeed. The right needs Lincoln/Grant/McKinley/Roosevelt/Ike right now, not Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan/Bush. I think Trump inherently gets that, but is not capable of articulating it or finding people around him who do. I'm not sure anyone else out there does; maybe JD Vance.
In other words, we need a counterrevolution.
On the other hand, an analysis of the political left would show internal divisions, incoherence, and lots of positions that lack widespread popular support.
In our two-party system, despite infighting on the left and on the right, some blend of ideas from the left will win, or some blend of ideas from the right will win, at any given moment.
I like this framework. Though somewhere it needs to be observed that "cultural conservatism" is the most nebulous of the three, perhaps for the very reason that it lacks elite intellectual support to precisely articulate its vision. And Trump himself is only prepared to articulate his vision in the form of sound bites and catchphrases.
Also, law and order is an important topic missing here. I'm not sure if you assign it to the cultural conservatives or really to all three on the left panel. A basic distaste for crime and criminality -- and the intellectual or "bleeding heart" tendency to excuse it -- is something very fundamental to the conservative mentality.
When ordinary people think about what they want to conserve, I'd say it's concrete things: the "niceness" of "nice places", their neighborhoods and towns. And the main thing they want to conserve them from is crime and chaos.
Related to law and order, concerns about immigration could probably be broken into three categories themselves: criminal, economic, and cultural. Some people worry about all three, while others are focused on only one or two. There's also the matter of racism; I would argue racist opposition is probably a subcategory of "cultural" (i.e., there are both racist and non-racist ways of framing cultural concerns about mass immigration), but the left is going to label all cultural concerns as automatically racist in any event, and probably most criminal and economic concerns as well.
But do the Neo-cons really support free speech?
Good observation overall, though.
Neocons are solid on free speech in my view, though obviously they have cancelled people on the paleocon right in the past. But nobody is a free speech absolutist.
As well as individuals critical of Israel in the present.