The Rise of the Anti-Ideological Right—1
What really separates Trump (and his supporters) from DeSantis (and his supporters)
Sometimes a tweet floats by in my timeline on Twitter that so perfectly captures the sensibility of a faction in our public life that I have to pause to contemplate it.
That’s what happened with a tweet from conservative radio host and blogger Erick Erickson last Thursday.
This tweet is important because it expresses in very few words the understandable exasperation of a certain kind of conservative-movement writer or intellectual who has struggled over the last eight years to respond in ideological terms to the challenge of Donald Trump. The problem, and the reason for the struggle, is that Trump is not and never has been an ideological figure. On the contrary, the challenge he poses is rooted in a rejection of ideological politics altogether.
To see this clearly, it will be useful to remind ourselves of how Erickson’s views (like those of many others on the ideological right) have evolved over the past decade.
Misjudging the Voters (Twice)
Erickson came up through the world of conservative-movement media in the early 2010s, during the heyday of the Tea Party. Like many on the right in those days, he basically championed a Reaganite synthesis of economic libertarianism, hawkish foreign policy, and social conservatism, though with more of a scowl than a smile. When Donald Trump began to surge into the lead during the 2016 primaries, Erickson joined many other right-leaning intellectuals in opposing him for, among other things, his deviations from the longstanding ideological commitments of the conservative movement. This led many at the time to accuse Trump of being a closest liberal who had no business at the head of the GOP. (This provoked Trump to declare, shortly after he clinched the nomination, “This is called the Republican Party, it’s not called the Conservative Party.”)
Erickson (like, once again, many others on the right) ended up endorsing Trump’s bid for reelection in 2020. But he still wasn’t happy about it. That was especially true after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden and incitement of insurrectionary violence on January 6, 2021. Much better than Trump, going forward, would be someone who embraced and worked to implement a conservative-movement ideology that had been updated in light of Trump’s appeal to Republican voters, but without all of Trump’s personal liabilities. That’s how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has ended up the Great Right Hope for so many conservative pundits, including Erickson.
Which brings us back to Erickson’s tweet. DeSantis has gone to war with Disney in order to prove his toughness and willingness to use government power to take on “woke capitalism.” He’s also endorsed the grassroots boycott of Anheuser-Busch for running a targeted Bud Light ad campaign that used transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. And he’s signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida. Meanwhile, Trump, who leads DeSantis for the Republican nomination by roughly 37 points, has defended Disney and Anheuser-Busch, and spoken out against draconian bans on abortion. That is what prompted Erickson to tweet in exasperation, “Just amazing.”
I understand his frustration. Trump broke from Erickson’s preferred ideology in 2016 and won the GOP nomination and the presidency. So Erickson and his allies in the conservative commentariat helped to devise a new post-Trump ideology, which DeSantis has followed more competently and consistently than anyone else in the party. Yet the voters still appear to prefer Trump, who refuses to affirm even the updated, explicitly Trumpist ideology in full.
Some pundits have concluded this means the Republican electorate is more ideologically moderate than conservative-movement intellectuals like to assume. But that isn’t quite right. It’s more accurate to say that a large segment of the Republican electorate doesn’t think or vote in terms of ideology at all.
DeSantis says: Look at all these great policies I’ve enacted!
Trump says: I’ll kick the shit out of your enemies!
And Republican voters may just prefer the latter.
What Is Ideology?
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