Well said, Steve. Excellent article. This woman is literally willing to cross the aisle and people want to heckle her right back to where she came from. Seems self-destructive. It also reminds me of the mentality of catholic Tradlandia--this fortress approach where we wall ourselves in to preserve the pure keeping out a world full of real people struggling with real problems who come for help. Obviously this is an upside down Gospel.
Do your research. I think you'll really like Vance. Came from nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing. Abject poverty. Became a marine. Successful business man. Highly educated in history and psychology from Yale and Cambridge before Yale law. He admitted he bought into the media circus in 2016 that Trump was the end of everything good. But he says after seeing what he was capable of doing, fixing the country, world peace, energy independence, etc. etc. that he admitted he was wrong and Trumps just what we need. Nothing wrong with this guy.
I agree with your basic point that it is not a time for purity, if you are interested in winning elections, and the leverage that winning elections gives you to prevent certain things from happening, promote other things, and so on, regardless of the fact that politics are indeed downstream from culture.
I think that a great deal of the angst coming from more baseline conservatives (ie people who were conservative or Republican pre-Trump) about Rose (and about Vance for that matter) has to do with the fact that while they may be willing to put up with and/or vote for Trump for reasons of temporary expedience, most of them are hopeful that after Trump himself ages out or is ineligible due to being termed out, or what have you, the control over the party reverts to more conventional Republicans, and things can "return to normal" in the party, from their perspective.
Vance upsets that narrative, because he is, in effect, a MAGA successor to Trump. Neither Rubio nor Burgum would have been that (the two other short listers for VP), but Vance is. And that creates a lot of angst that the party is going to continue to remain under the control of the populists for quite some time if Trump wins in November, because that win would position Vance pretty well for 28. And Vance is anything but a conventional conservative, at least in his current iteration (I agree he is a chameleon, and so it's unclear what Vance would actually be pushing in 28 and beyond once Trump is out of the picture). There's a fear stoked by Vance that the movement conservatives will continue to be marginalized in the party for an extended period, well beyond Trump himself, and that their ideas will, as a result, fade into ever greater irrelevance for the party and its new base of voters over that period as well.
It's the context of that angst that has created so much consternation about Trump's changes to the platform, about Amber Rose and the Teamsters and so on. It's this overarching sense that movement conservatives have that the party is slipping away from them, in substance, and the prospect of Vance extending this for another potentially 12 years is terrifying, maddening, infuriating for many of them. And so we're seeing the freakout in real time.
A guy on Twitter (@RobertMStirling) wrote this out, and it made a lot of sense. Seems to dovetail with what you're saying:
It’s amazing how many “legacy” conservatives—writers and old-school bloggers who came to prominence 20 years ago, during the Bush II era—simply don’t get it still. You could see it in their reactions to JD Vance getting selected as running mate, ranging from muted to disappointed to exasperated.
These are guys who support Trump and the New Right movement only incidentally and reluctantly, as the least bad option currently available to them. They’re not enthusiastic about having to do so, and they’re still hoping—yearning, even—for a return to the Republican Party of old, governed by Reagan’s tripartite coalition of Chamber of Commerce business conservatives, national security hawks, and Falwell-era Christian conservatives.
These people still—after nearly a decade!—view Trump and his associated movement as a fad. An unruly teenage period that will one day pass, after which the adults in the party can lead the GOP back to its respectable roots, and modern-day conservatives will learn proper reverence for the ideology of Ronald Reagan (born 1911) and William F. Buckley (born 1925).
Here’s what they either don’t get or refuse to come to terms with: That conservative movement is dead. It died because it simply didn’t work, and it’s a death well-deserved.
It died when George W. Bush, the spiritual—and biological—heir of the movement launched an unnecessary war that left thousands of Americans, most of them from working-class backgrounds, dead or maimed on the streets of Iraq.
It died when conservatives offered no solutions for the economic malaise affecting middle-class families aside from the standard tactic of cutting taxes, largely for those in the top 0.1% of households.
It died when the GOP didn’t do anything meaningful to address the crisis at the southern border or the crisis from the opioid epidemic.
It died when the GOP happily supported an agenda of offshoring and deindustrialization, to free up capital to return to the likes of Charles Koch, Mitt Romney, and private equity investors.
It died for countless reasons like these, and it is never coming back. Ever.
Despite this reality, evident to all but the most oblivious DC think-tank staffers, there remains a faction of the conservative movement that still blithely believes the future lies with the likes of Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz. Intellectual descendants of the Bush clan, who still get their stale ideas from the yellowed pages of old print copies of the National Review. Establishment figures more than happy to return to a platform of foreign entanglement and domestic stagnation.
JD Vance, a working-class 39-year-old Iraq veteran, represents the long-term entrenchment of the New Right within the Republican Party, and he heralds the final demise of the legacy Reaganite movement.
With JD as Vice President and heir to the GOP throne, a conservative agenda authentically focused on strengthening working-class families, middle-class communities, and an American economy that works for all stakeholders, not just we capital providers, becomes permanently enshrined. What the establishment hopes is a passing fad becomes a decades-long agenda.
Because of JD’s youth, his eloquence, and his disregard for their failed ideology, this establishment may view him as an ever larger threat than they view Trump. I don’t think he minds their disdain.
I welcome JD Vance’s ascendance. And hopefully the rest of the movement soon does as well.
Politics IS downstream from culture. The left, from the work of Antonio Gramsci, understood that a successful political movement must be integrated with its cultural analog. The left successfully captured all of the cultural institutions decades ago. Now, any right winger who attempts to participate in western cultural institutions (art, music, literature, games, religion, journalism, academia) gets systematically marginalized or outright silenced. The leftward cultural and demographic shift is due precisely to their successful cultural-political strategy.
The libertarian party has been trying since its inception to create a political movement completely separate from any cultural viewpoint. As a result, they've been losing the entire time. A political movement which allows itself to be led by leftist morality and culture is doomed to fail.
Lucky for us, the left is losing its hold on the culture because an evil culture naturally burns itself out. Nobody wants to see children mutilated with gender surgery or groomed by an alphabet person. People are tired of looking at disgusting, ugly "art" peppered with occult symbols. People are tired of the obligatory token diversity characters being awkwardly shoehorned into every plot line. Consider the massive success of Arkhaven Comics, despite the censorship. Right wing culture is out there, but you never see it because it's censored. Further, nobody promotes it because everyone's afraid of being called names by some screeching leftist.
Now is the time to unapologetically be who we are. (This is different from being exclusionary). As the Church found out, if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. There's much more to say here, but my comment is getting long...
Excellent article, Steve. It's my understanding that the GOP platform is pretty much a Reagan replay. It pushes for sanity, like regulated borders. It was kept simple and short. That's fine with me. I liked Reagan and I like Trump/Vance. People ought to be able to change their minds and "mature." Trump clearly has been changing, given what he's had to endure in the last 3 or 4 years.
If we have a free and fair election, Trump will win. I don't see the Deep State tolerating a Trump return. That's why I think there will be more unhappy "events." Second, if one looks at Marian apparitions (I'm thinking the majors like La Salette, Fatima (I don't think we got the full 3rd secret) and Akita, there are predictions of a huge crisis in the church. Akita apparition points to "fire in the sky" and a Chastisement that rivals the Flood. So, how does one sleep at night? Exhaustion (especially in the heat, even though I'm in the mountains of NE PA) and (wait for it): prayer. What is the worst that will happen? Death. Well, absent the body, present with the Lord (not that one wishes to die).
There are no atheists in foxholes. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Or, as a famous Roman general Vegetius said "If you want peace, prepare for war." (Ah, I think that's in the GOP 2025 platform somewhere--effectively, "Peace through Strength," which is Reaganesque.)
You're absolutely right. You will never expand your allies or circle of friends if their immediate purification or perfect allegiance is required.
Well said, Steve. Excellent article. This woman is literally willing to cross the aisle and people want to heckle her right back to where she came from. Seems self-destructive. It also reminds me of the mentality of catholic Tradlandia--this fortress approach where we wall ourselves in to preserve the pure keeping out a world full of real people struggling with real problems who come for help. Obviously this is an upside down Gospel.
Do your research. I think you'll really like Vance. Came from nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing. Abject poverty. Became a marine. Successful business man. Highly educated in history and psychology from Yale and Cambridge before Yale law. He admitted he bought into the media circus in 2016 that Trump was the end of everything good. But he says after seeing what he was capable of doing, fixing the country, world peace, energy independence, etc. etc. that he admitted he was wrong and Trumps just what we need. Nothing wrong with this guy.
I agree with your basic point that it is not a time for purity, if you are interested in winning elections, and the leverage that winning elections gives you to prevent certain things from happening, promote other things, and so on, regardless of the fact that politics are indeed downstream from culture.
I think that a great deal of the angst coming from more baseline conservatives (ie people who were conservative or Republican pre-Trump) about Rose (and about Vance for that matter) has to do with the fact that while they may be willing to put up with and/or vote for Trump for reasons of temporary expedience, most of them are hopeful that after Trump himself ages out or is ineligible due to being termed out, or what have you, the control over the party reverts to more conventional Republicans, and things can "return to normal" in the party, from their perspective.
Vance upsets that narrative, because he is, in effect, a MAGA successor to Trump. Neither Rubio nor Burgum would have been that (the two other short listers for VP), but Vance is. And that creates a lot of angst that the party is going to continue to remain under the control of the populists for quite some time if Trump wins in November, because that win would position Vance pretty well for 28. And Vance is anything but a conventional conservative, at least in his current iteration (I agree he is a chameleon, and so it's unclear what Vance would actually be pushing in 28 and beyond once Trump is out of the picture). There's a fear stoked by Vance that the movement conservatives will continue to be marginalized in the party for an extended period, well beyond Trump himself, and that their ideas will, as a result, fade into ever greater irrelevance for the party and its new base of voters over that period as well.
It's the context of that angst that has created so much consternation about Trump's changes to the platform, about Amber Rose and the Teamsters and so on. It's this overarching sense that movement conservatives have that the party is slipping away from them, in substance, and the prospect of Vance extending this for another potentially 12 years is terrifying, maddening, infuriating for many of them. And so we're seeing the freakout in real time.
A guy on Twitter (@RobertMStirling) wrote this out, and it made a lot of sense. Seems to dovetail with what you're saying:
It’s amazing how many “legacy” conservatives—writers and old-school bloggers who came to prominence 20 years ago, during the Bush II era—simply don’t get it still. You could see it in their reactions to JD Vance getting selected as running mate, ranging from muted to disappointed to exasperated.
These are guys who support Trump and the New Right movement only incidentally and reluctantly, as the least bad option currently available to them. They’re not enthusiastic about having to do so, and they’re still hoping—yearning, even—for a return to the Republican Party of old, governed by Reagan’s tripartite coalition of Chamber of Commerce business conservatives, national security hawks, and Falwell-era Christian conservatives.
These people still—after nearly a decade!—view Trump and his associated movement as a fad. An unruly teenage period that will one day pass, after which the adults in the party can lead the GOP back to its respectable roots, and modern-day conservatives will learn proper reverence for the ideology of Ronald Reagan (born 1911) and William F. Buckley (born 1925).
Here’s what they either don’t get or refuse to come to terms with: That conservative movement is dead. It died because it simply didn’t work, and it’s a death well-deserved.
It died when George W. Bush, the spiritual—and biological—heir of the movement launched an unnecessary war that left thousands of Americans, most of them from working-class backgrounds, dead or maimed on the streets of Iraq.
It died when conservatives offered no solutions for the economic malaise affecting middle-class families aside from the standard tactic of cutting taxes, largely for those in the top 0.1% of households.
It died when the GOP didn’t do anything meaningful to address the crisis at the southern border or the crisis from the opioid epidemic.
It died when the GOP happily supported an agenda of offshoring and deindustrialization, to free up capital to return to the likes of Charles Koch, Mitt Romney, and private equity investors.
It died for countless reasons like these, and it is never coming back. Ever.
Despite this reality, evident to all but the most oblivious DC think-tank staffers, there remains a faction of the conservative movement that still blithely believes the future lies with the likes of Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz. Intellectual descendants of the Bush clan, who still get their stale ideas from the yellowed pages of old print copies of the National Review. Establishment figures more than happy to return to a platform of foreign entanglement and domestic stagnation.
JD Vance, a working-class 39-year-old Iraq veteran, represents the long-term entrenchment of the New Right within the Republican Party, and he heralds the final demise of the legacy Reaganite movement.
With JD as Vice President and heir to the GOP throne, a conservative agenda authentically focused on strengthening working-class families, middle-class communities, and an American economy that works for all stakeholders, not just we capital providers, becomes permanently enshrined. What the establishment hopes is a passing fad becomes a decades-long agenda.
Because of JD’s youth, his eloquence, and his disregard for their failed ideology, this establishment may view him as an ever larger threat than they view Trump. I don’t think he minds their disdain.
I welcome JD Vance’s ascendance. And hopefully the rest of the movement soon does as well.
Link to that post: https://x.com/RobertMSterling/status/1813233229043761545
Politics IS downstream from culture. The left, from the work of Antonio Gramsci, understood that a successful political movement must be integrated with its cultural analog. The left successfully captured all of the cultural institutions decades ago. Now, any right winger who attempts to participate in western cultural institutions (art, music, literature, games, religion, journalism, academia) gets systematically marginalized or outright silenced. The leftward cultural and demographic shift is due precisely to their successful cultural-political strategy.
The libertarian party has been trying since its inception to create a political movement completely separate from any cultural viewpoint. As a result, they've been losing the entire time. A political movement which allows itself to be led by leftist morality and culture is doomed to fail.
Lucky for us, the left is losing its hold on the culture because an evil culture naturally burns itself out. Nobody wants to see children mutilated with gender surgery or groomed by an alphabet person. People are tired of looking at disgusting, ugly "art" peppered with occult symbols. People are tired of the obligatory token diversity characters being awkwardly shoehorned into every plot line. Consider the massive success of Arkhaven Comics, despite the censorship. Right wing culture is out there, but you never see it because it's censored. Further, nobody promotes it because everyone's afraid of being called names by some screeching leftist.
Now is the time to unapologetically be who we are. (This is different from being exclusionary). As the Church found out, if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. There's much more to say here, but my comment is getting long...
Excellent article, Steve. It's my understanding that the GOP platform is pretty much a Reagan replay. It pushes for sanity, like regulated borders. It was kept simple and short. That's fine with me. I liked Reagan and I like Trump/Vance. People ought to be able to change their minds and "mature." Trump clearly has been changing, given what he's had to endure in the last 3 or 4 years.
If we have a free and fair election, Trump will win. I don't see the Deep State tolerating a Trump return. That's why I think there will be more unhappy "events." Second, if one looks at Marian apparitions (I'm thinking the majors like La Salette, Fatima (I don't think we got the full 3rd secret) and Akita, there are predictions of a huge crisis in the church. Akita apparition points to "fire in the sky" and a Chastisement that rivals the Flood. So, how does one sleep at night? Exhaustion (especially in the heat, even though I'm in the mountains of NE PA) and (wait for it): prayer. What is the worst that will happen? Death. Well, absent the body, present with the Lord (not that one wishes to die).
There are no atheists in foxholes. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Or, as a famous Roman general Vegetius said "If you want peace, prepare for war." (Ah, I think that's in the GOP 2025 platform somewhere--effectively, "Peace through Strength," which is Reaganesque.)