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Columnist, author maps out new strategy for conservatives in UM lecture – Daily Montanan

['Darrell Ehrlick', 'More From Author', '- March']

Date: 2022-03-02 00:00:00

There is only one problem with the modern conservative movement, according to conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat: It’s not sure what it’s conserving.

Douthat was at the University of Montana, speaking as part of the President’s Lecture on Wednesday night. His lecture, “How Reaganism Became Trumpism,” was a survey of how the modern Republican Party and conservatives transformed from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.

The difference, Douthat told audience members in the first President’s Lecture the university hosted in person since COVID closed many public events, could also be described like this: Where Reagan famously saw a new dawn in politics, Trump saw only darkness.

However, Douthat has also been part of a movement inside conservative circles which seeks to rebrand and refashion the party, drawing upon the characteristics of American culture which conservatives believe have made the country unique or exceptional.

Douthat, the author of more than a half-dozen books, dished out criticism of both parties, saying that the radicalization of the conservative movement was driven in part by the hard turn of Democrats to the left.

“Liberals convinced themselves that the normal rules of politics and media could be suspended in order to deal with Donald Trump,” Douthat said. “But the effect it’s had is that the Republican Party is in pretty good shape because a lot of Americans are put off by the radicalization of liberals and elite liberals.”

That has caused and equal and opposite reaction on the right, he said.

“Right now, the only vision of conservatism is that we can’t let the liberals be in charge,” Douthat said.

He said the party will continue to atrophy as a movement with a unifying goal until it can formulate a vision that is something more than a reaction to liberalism or a yen for authoritarianism.

“The fundamental problem is conservatives and Republicans don’t have a clear theory of how you rebuild those exceptional American characteristics,” Douthat said. “What Trump offered was the politics of grievance – we know we lost something and we don’t know how to get it back, but we know who is to blame.

“Donald Trump is offering what Ronald Reagan offered at a more pessimistic moment. The things that Reagan offered many people believe aren’t even there anymore.”

Douthat also offered hope to conservatives looking to distance themselves from Trumpism and reinvigorate the Republican Party.

“I think there’s still enough of what conservatives love for them move away from the somewhat despairing, somewhat pugilistic politics,” Douthat said, terming the current situation “the particular strangeness of the Donald Trump years.”

He said that the country’s leaders and conservatives must re-engineer a return to the “distinctives” – those attributes which make America unique, including the country’s entrepreneurial spirit, its focus on religion and spirituality and its “communitarian” nature.

“There is a danger in conservative pessimism to extrapolate it and say that American exceptionalism is dead and there’s nothing for conservatives to do except to hope for an authoritarian strongman to make everything right,” Douthat said.

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