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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Republican Identity Crisis After Trump
The New YorkerThe Republican Party has long had a significant nativist, isolationist element. In the Partys collective memory, this faction was kept in check by fusionism, a grand entente between this element and the Partys business establishment. The best-known promoter of fusionism is the late William F. Buckley, Jr., the theatrically patrician founder of National Review and an all-around conservative celebrity. Buckley tried to keep anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists out of the conservative movement, but he was not a standard Chamber of Commerce Republican. His first book attacked liberal universities, his second defended Joseph McCarthy, and in 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower was sending federal troops to integrate Little Rock Central High School, he wrote an article titled why the south must prevail. Buckley helped define American conservatism as a movement that supported free-market economics and internationalism and welcomed serious intellectuals, including former Communists such as James Burnham, Frank Meyer, and Whittaker Chambers.
Fusionism brought these views together into what seemed for a long time, at least from the outside, to be a relatively workable political coalition. Philip Zelikow, a veteran Republican foreign-policy official and one of hundreds of prominent members of the Party who vigorously opposed Trump in 2016, said, World War II, followed by nearly World War III, brought the United States into an unprecedented world role. And a vocal minority didnt accept it. They dont like foreigners. They think theyre playing us for suckers. There were a lot of Pearl Harbor and Yalta conspiracy theories that weve forgotten about. This group concentrates overwhelmingly in the Republican Party. For a long time, it was kept in check. Now, in Zelikows view, it has grown in prominence and become less deferential to the business wing of the Republican establishment, and is close to being the most influential element in the Party.
The Cold War made fusionism possible. In the name of helping capitalism defeat Communism, the movement allied Republicans who adored McCarthy with those who despised him, on the basis of a shared commitment to an aggressive American military stance and a super-empowerment of private business. But the isolationist impulse has deep roots in American political culture. It was clearly present during the red scare after the First World War, the repudiation of Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, and the passage of the 1924 law that severely restricted immigration. As Zelikow put it, The isolationists believed the U.S. should be bristling with weapons. Foreigners are a viral pathology. The whole point is to keep foreigners away from us. These attitudes were consistent with a high-alarm version of internationalism that focussed on the Soviet threat. Buckley-style conservatism went from being regularly dismissed as irrelevant, a creed whose following didnt extend far beyond the small circulation of a political magazine, to being the core principle of Ronald Reagans Presidency.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,036 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,906 posts)Whatever names stay or change, it will always be liberals/conservatives.
TlalocW
(15,390 posts)Is that republicans tend to disappear after their time as president or after they lose. Reagan did so for medical reasons, but George HW and George W tried to stay out of the limelight. McCain and Romney were not big presences at the GOP Conventions after their losses. It's like there's almost an unspoken rule that they need to get out of the way so republicans can start pounding home the message that the new guy is the one chosen by God to become president. Democrats, on the other hand, tend to have lives after their time, especially when it comes to helping others - Carter being a prime example, but Clinton set up his foundation in Harlem pretty quickly after his presidency, and the Obamas have had a lot of projects in the last four years.
Trump is not going to go away quietly. Whether that means crashing the GOP Convention in 2024, I don't know. I wonder how long FOX will continue to let him have unlimited time to call in on their shows and how long surviving GOP lawmakers will tolerate his bugging them before they realize they need to move on. Of course, he'll be tweeting crap about Biden every day.
TlalocW