That proclamation, made by Donald Trump during a recent ABC interview, raised plenty of eyebrows. It came on the heels of Trump’s chilly reception by many Republicans upon becoming the party’s presumptive presidential nominee — the knock against him being that he’s not a real conservative.
Trump’s response was emblematic of his “So what? We’re going to win,” mindset. After all, his line of reasoning goes, what good is ideological purism if it doesn’t win elections? The billionaire businessman couldn’t care less about the conservatism of Edmund Burke or Adam Smith…or Paul Ryan, for that matter.
Beating Hillary Clinton on Election Day is the objective, and achieving that end justifies the means of abandoning the core tenets upon which the modern Republican Party was built.
Forget free trade, small government, fiscal restraint, and just about any other idea conservatives have held dearly for centuries. Ensuring someone with an “R” next to his name occupies the White House in January is all that matters.
But back to that “it’s not called the Conservative Party” line. If any other Republican candidate for office — whatever the level — uttered that, it would have raised serious questions about whether he should be running with the GOP’s blessing. How, then, can a man who represents the face of the party get away with it?
Part of the answer might lie in a 2006 book called “Why People Obey the Law” by Tom R. Tyler, a New York University professor.
Sure, likening the laws that govern society to the rules guiding a political party isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, but there are some striking similarities. The crux of Tyler’s argument is that people choose to obey laws, not because they are scared of what might happen should they break them, but rather because they view those laws as legitimate. If they see the good in laws (and their enforcers) — their wide-ranging benefit and their fairness — people are more likely to comply with them.
As Tyler writes, “they will voluntarily assume the obligation to follow legal rules. They will feel personally committed to obeying the law, irrespective of whether they risk punishment for breaking it.” That said, “changes in legitimacy will affect the degree to which people comply with the laws in their everyday lives.”
It’s a pretty straightforward concept: the instant a law’s credibility is reasonably questioned, its effectiveness is compromised.
Of course, the GOP doesn’t have laws per se (bylaws, certainly), but the vast majority of Republican lawmakers and voters — increasingly since the mid-20th century — have subscribed to a conservative doctrine. The problem for the conservative movement, however, is that the most visible Republican leaders are often conservatives in word, not deed, and the conservatism pursued by party elites hasn’t trickled down to benefit the masses in a wildly popular way.
Trump supporters are saying, “if this is conservatism, phooey on it,” and throwing off the philosophical guardrails of the GOP.
In his recent Harper’s Magazine essay “Red Light Therapy,” Adam Phillips writes that “everything forbidden can be redescribed as ultimately desirable. Everything sacred can be rendered secular.”
That’s what’s happening to the Republican Party today, evidenced by a presidential nominee who exudes authoritarianism, doesn’t worry about national debt (after all, we “print the money”), toys with the idea of increasing the minimum wage, and is warming to a whole host of Democrat-friendly policies.
Many factors have made this transition possible, but none more than the illegitimacy of the conservatism employed by the GOP poobahs. Post-Trump, the Republican Party would be wise to re-establish the legitimacy of conservatism, walking the walk and connecting it to the daily lives of voters.
About the Author