Opinion If we learned one thing from the RNC, it's that the GOP is no longer conservative - America now lacks a truly conservative political party. Voters like me have nowhere to go unless we follow suit, sacrificing our principles as the GOP has.

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If we learned one thing from the RNC, it's that the GOP is no longer conservative​

America now lacks a truly conservative political party. Voters like me have nowhere to go unless we follow suit, sacrificing our principles as the GOP has.​

Political party conventions are truly the best forecast for a party's direction, or at least its vision, at that moment. The speakers chosen, the content they cover and the nominees elevated in each convention paint the clearest picture of that direction.

This is especially true for the 2024 Republican National Convention, as we watched the party fully embrace former President Donald Trump’s vision. But what I watched unfold over that week wasn’t conservative. It was the embrace of populism in the interest of winning elections, even at the cost of our principles. It was sad to see.

I watched conservatives sacrifice meaningful stances, such as being anti-abortion, opposing sexual promiscuity and opposing union strangleholds on our economy in the name of winning the election.

The GOP is willing to abandon stances that matter if it means votes

The Republican Party has been toying with abandoning Reagan conservatism for some time now. The embrace of Trump in the 2016 presidential election was the beginning, but the party at the time struck a balance, highlighting Trump as a vessel through which conservative ideas could resonate with Americans whom he appeals to.

From President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s until 2016, the GOP was the party of limited government, free markets and hawkish foreign policy. Now, that's all in the past. The latest platform abandons all of that in exchange for an outlook where breaches of conservative principles are justified if they favor the "common good" of winning control.

The party is building an entirely new coalition behind Trump. This coalition doesn’t care if you're a conservative. All they care about is what will get you to vote for Trump.

Trump's RNC acceptance speech:Trump's triumphant night comes amid calls for Biden to get the boot

In his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech Wednesday, JD Vance said, "We have a big tent in this party on everything from national security to economic policy."

While that may have been true in the 2010s, the Republican Party has made it clear that it wishes to move away from that era and into a new one shaped by a populist vision.

Just look at who Republicans invited to speak at the RNC

The GOP’s new strategy, trading firm stances on abortion and other issues for votes, can be seen through the people they chose to speak at their convention.

First up, and most egregiously, we have Amber Rose, an OnlyFans model and pro-abortion activist. Rose presented herself as a misguided woman who was led by the media to believe lies about Trump. Regardless, she lives a life that is antithetical to that of conservative values. She hasn't exactly hidden it.

"I’m not a Satanist. … Satanists are just atheists as well, but they're just more political,” Rose said in an interview this year in which she defends Satanists. “They help a lot of people, a lot of women, to get abortions in Southern states that, you know, where they're illegal."

Call me closed-minded, but I have no interest in rebranding America’s supposedly conservative party to include people like this. There is no form of conservative ideals compatible with someone who defends Satanists for helping women get abortions. Full stop.

Next up, we have Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. Having a union boss speak at the RNC is a complete reversal for the GOP that, as recently as 2021, introduced the National Right To Work Act into Congress. This act would outlaw forcing workers to join unions and pay dues against their will.

Embracing such an anti-worker and historically corrupt organization as the Teamsters, a group that has actively fought against right-to-work laws, is a complete reversal from the GOP. Allowing unions to keep a stranglehold on the economy and extort workers goes against principles the Republican Party has held for decades.

This particular change is an outright embrace of populism, looking to appeal to the one-fifth of voters nationwide who belong to union households. Joe Biden won this demographic nationally in 2020 and by slightly more in Midwest swing states.

JD Vance was a bad pick:Trump's VP pick makes it clear unity isn't the goal of the Republican Party

Trump's own speech shows GOP's changing message includes making him God's chosen leader

Trump's speech Thursday night at the RNC was shockingly free of divisiveness (relative to his status quo). However, he did take the time to highlight his position as the Republican Party's figurehead.

"I'm not supposed to be here tonight," Trump said, reflecting on the assassination attempt. "I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God."

A common theme throughout the convention was speakers suggesting that divine intervention was responsible for Trump surviving the attempt on his life.

“God spared President Trump from that assassin,” said Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her Tuesday speech, “because God is not finished with him yet.”

Portraying Trump as God's chosen leader for the future of the party and the country is a dangerous line to walk, and deifying politicians is a dangerous game.

Trump loyalists would rather embrace nonconservatives than work with Reagan Republicans

Trump also took time during his speech to speak directly to Vance, his pick for vice presidential nominee.

"You're going to be doing this a long time. Enjoy the ride," Trump said.


Trump's words to Vance highlight exactly his vision in selecting him: a successor who will take over the future of the MAGA movement.

After the events at the RNC, it is clear that the GOP is actively pursuing a new coalition without real conservatives in it. This shift is particularly disheartening to me, a Gen Z voter. I missed out on candidates like Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush and instead got Trump again.

I had hoped this phase for the GOP would work itself out, and we might return to some semblance of conservative candidates in the future. But it is now clear to me that this will not happen anytime soon.

America now lacks a truly conservative political party. Voters like me have nowhere to go unless we follow suit, sacrificing our principles as the GOP has.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

I can sympathize with the position, but more I am frustrated at how these people never learn in that in the current state of things no one really has your best interest at heart besides yourself and maybe your family. The ways to stop corporations from behaving the way that they have traditionally has been demonstrated to not be organized labor but by some other social glue that simply stops people from acting bad e.g., a homogenous population or Christianity.

I hate to tell you this, but it's been demonstrated time and time again that a homogenous, Christian-majority population is not even remotely immune to "acting bad", as you so quaintly put it. Dicken's England was both homogenous and Christian.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

Whenever Holden Bloodfeast lionizes Reagan it illustrates that he doesn't really interact with the party base, nor does he engage with any non-boomers. Reagan's values, especially when it comes to illegal immigration, setting money on fire and empowering the alphabet agencies to step on people, have been found lacking.

He's right about Amber Rose, though.

 

[los pepes]

I think the nuance that people miss is that it is one thing to lie about your positions with a wink and a nod to the base like democrats have done for decades and another to actually have our politicians surrender these principles and govern accordingly. No one really believed Obama opposed homosexual "marriage" in 2008. It was clear he was just saying what he thought he needed to in order to get elected and would govern/appoint judges in accordance with his hidden real beliefs the second he gets in office.

The GOP on the other hand have a knack for not only surrendering on politically inexpedient issues but then internalizing them and actually fighting for and governing to continue and enforce those surrendered positions. It's how you get "conservative" SCOTUS justices making silly findings that a law passed in the 60s banning "sex discrimination" means trannies now have free run over the country. So I can see why this person is frustrated. If the GOP was essentially telling us that they can't talk about say abortion but we all know what they really think and how they will govern once they get in power that would be one thing. Again thats what the democrats have done for a century. But with the GOP you'll have the odd situation of over the coming few political cycles of having to deal with with these weaklings on our own side actually moralizing and fighting us to preserve the ground the democrats have won on these positions, rather than being insurgents who claim one thing to blend in enough to get power while also signalling what they really think to the base, and once they do gain that power using it to implement their true hidden beliefs that align with our own.

 

[The Ugly One]

Project 2025 is a great example of conservatism trying to remain relevant with no real solution other than censorship.

Project 2025 is mainly about reforming the government by purging all the libs and teaching conservatives to actually run things, as in actually work in the positions where things are done, instead of sitting on the sidelines and going, "HURRR WAIT UNTIL DOZE KIDZ GROW UP AND PAY TAXEZ DURRRR."

That's why the left is shitting their pants about it. As long as conservative think-tanks wrote 500-page briefs on why abortion is bad, they were happy. First time a think tank lays out a plan to actually run the government? The y freak out.

 

[The Last Stand]

Project 2025 is mainly about reforming the government by purging all the libs and teaching conservatives to actually run things, as in actually work in the positions where things are done, instead of sitting on the sidelines and going, "HURRR WAIT UNTIL DOZE KIDZ GROW UP AND PAY TAXEZ DURRRR."

That's why the left is shitting their pants about it. As long as conservative think-tanks wrote 500-page briefs on why abortion is bad, they were happy. First time a think tank lays out a plan to actually run the government? The y freak out.

Have you read that 900 page document?

 

[Otterly]

Unions are an impassable start up cost for new companies. They have wrecked the western economy by destroying innovation and local production. They are founded by communist subversive elements for this very purpose and are used gladly by the same corporations that they claim to fight. The alternative is greed I guess, but I think this is solved by a homogenous population that stands up for its fellow man.

Worse than greed, rapacious pilfering. I do understand the issues with the unions, our own can be a pita sometimes, but, just to play devils advocate on this one, it’s only just over a hundred years ago that you’d starve to death in England if you lost your job in a bad winter and less than a hundred years since the abolition of workhouses. Personally I think unions are needed, they’re a check to the power of corporations. Also ‘homogenous population’ well that would be lovely, but again, we don’t have that, and when we did have that, we still had children starving to death, a huge proportion of children malnourished to the point of physical defect, and poverty that people today can’t understand.
There needs to be some kind of balance, between workers rights and safety, and the corporate side.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

yummy tears of libs are good
the tears of these dipshits are sooooo much more delicious

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

America now lacks a truly conservative party

Wait... now they're mad? This is what they wanted!

 

[Paper Machete]

Unions need their own reforms, otherwise they're good for a lot of industries IMO. There should be checks on what they can protect workers for: like teachers and sex pest allegations. They shouldn't be able to help protect and move someone to another district as we've seen time and again. Further, I think stuff like making it necessary for all union leaders and management to have worked in the industry in positions they're representing workers for, for X number of years would be good. The problem with current unions is that they're not so much a workers rights orgs so much as they're more of the same bureaucratic bloat and politics games as everywhere else. Everything is indeed lame and gay in current year.

(Also, one thing to note about industrial revolution times is that laws and policies and social structure hadn't been changed to fit around the industrial boom and rapid change with technology. And it took a while for things to begin to balance out, as they always do.)

It makes perfect sense for conservatives going forward to want to very obviously signal to actual workers. Since traditionally it's actually a lot of working class that supported their supposed ideals. At least, those outside highly populated cities. It's important to pander to them because the democrats, despite trying to hold on to the "we were for workers rights in duh union uprising times", have routinely been fucking over everyone who isn't paying them under the table.

 

[Dialtone]

it's not conservative anymore because there's nothing left to conserve.

 

[LurkTrawl]

If conservatives actually gave a single solitary fuck about conserving anything they'd be anti-federal government, which they very much aren't.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Project 2025 is a great example of conservatism trying to remain relevant with no real solution other than censorship.

So, like how liberals did it. Control the institutions and impose censorship. It's okay and original and cool and "staying relevant " when they do it.

 

[The Last Stand]

So, like how liberals did it. Control the institutions and impose censorship. It's okay and original and cool and "staying relevant " when they do it.

Read the bitch, then come back to me.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Read the bitch, then come back to me.

Can you try not to be retarded and actually respond to what people say directly?

 

[The Last Stand]

Can you try not to be retarded and actually respond to what people say directly?

Again, have you even read the document? I recall you saying it sounded fake. You're making an assumption about a policy that isn't even enacted.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Again, have you even read the document? I recall you saying it sounded fake. You're making an assumption about a policy that isn't even enacted.

I clarified and said fake as in it's a psyop so you libtards can have a convenient boogeyman to cite, even though literally nothing in it is problematic. Feel free to quote exactly what you oppose and why.

 

[Boss Hawg]

I missed out on candidates like Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush

This retard wasn't missing much lol. rip bozo, neocons are dead in the water, fuck off.

 

[Ancient Pioneer]

ideally concurrently with leftist domination of the media they consume.

The media thing is occurring naturally on its own because its become so unpalatable to everyone. Zoomers are more likely to consume online media than mass produced slop out of Hollywood.

 

[The Last Stand]

I clarified and said fake as in it's a psyop so you libtards can have a convenient boogeyman to cite, even though literally nothing in it is problematic. Feel free to quote exactly what you oppose and why.

>psypo
>written by several Trump officials

Okay.

I can't be scared of something I haven't even read.

 

[Brahma]

Conserve what? The past is gone