Conservatives who thrived during the Bush II era, now struggling to come to terms with a changing political landscape, are still lamenting the rise of Donald Trump’s presidency. Their reluctance to fully support the new administration stems from a desire to reclaim the Republican Party’s former status as a bastion of traditional conservatism.
These “legacy” conservatives, writers, and bloggers, are often seen as lukewarm supporters of Trump and the New Right movement. They view Trump’s presidency as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the party’s true values. They long for the days when the GOP was guided by the tripartite coalition of Reagan-era business conservatives, national security hawks, and Christian conservatives.
However, these holdouts fail to recognize that the conservative movement has been dead for years, brought down by its own failures. It died when George W. Bush launched an unnecessary war in Iraq, leaving thousands of Americans dead or injured. It died when conservatives offered only tax cuts as a solution to economic woes, largely benefiting the top 0.1 percent of households.
It died when the GOP failed to address the crises at the southern border and from the opioid epidemic. It died when the party supported offshoring and deindustrialization, prioritizing profits over people. The death of the conservative movement is a reality, and it will never be revived.
Yet, despite this reality, some within the movement still cling to the notion that the future lies with establishment figures like Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz. These intellectual descendants of the Bush clan and stale ideas from National Review are now relics of a bygone era, content to return to a platform of foreign entanglement and domestic stagnation.
The ascendancy of J.D. Vance, a working-class Iraq veteran and intellectual heir to the New Right, heralds the final demise of the legacy Reaganite movement. With Vance as vice president, a conservative agenda focused on strengthening working-class families and middle-class communities would become entrenched. The establishment may view Vance as an even greater threat than Trump, and Trump himself may not mind their disdain.
