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.

 

[The Hardest R]

Anyone who advocates for muh principles is stupid and/or malicious and should be treated as such.

 

[AnotherPleb]

Why not insist on the return of the monarchy, while we're at it?

You'd have a ruler with skin in the game at least.

 

[LurkTrawl]

It's not a strawman when that minority was explicitly who I was addressing, but whatever.

My bad. I just want it to be clear that we're not in a discussion involving people who want to return to the 50's, nor a framework supposing that. Mainly because I'm in opposition to this view and it's difficult to take umbrage with it without the conversation being dragged back to that desiccated, pulverized horse.

Stagnation and social development are both explained by recognizing that society is going to develop different patterns and stressors as the world changes around it. We learn new things, develop new things, society organically develops in certain ways.

...

Stagnation is trying to clamp down on these things, putting our fingers in our ears and humming loudly and insisting that exactly the way things were is how they will always work, while social development looks at the way the world and society have changed and seeks to, essentially, install overpressure valves.

...

Allow society to change enough to let off the pressure, to keep it from fracturing under the stress of artificial constraint.

Okay so that sounds nice. Reads cogently too, even.

But the problem here is that it doesn't really make any sense. What would you use as an example of an "overpressure valve", or an "artificial constraint"? What in your definition could you outline as an example of something that was thought to always work, that didn't?

I can think of some examples myself, but that's shit in the 50's-70's. I'm talking recent examples, post-90's.

 

[The Ugly One]

Nobody cared about abortion before the dumb evangelical influx

Abortion was an extremely contentious issue from the moment the left decided it was a human right in the 1960s.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

Okay so that sounds nice. Reads cogently too, even.

But the problem here is that it doesn't really make any sense. What would you use as an example of an "overpressure valve", or an "artificial constraint"? What in your definition could you outline as an example of something that was thought to always work, that didn't?

I can think of some examples myself, but that's shit in the 50's-70's. I'm talking recent examples, post-90's.

I can, but any are going to be subject to disagreement - it's a lot of of subjectivity. Mostly, it's subjective whether what happened was a case of successful pressure relief, or an overpressure event.

I'll give you two examples that have happened in fairly recent memory.

The shift in how we talk about the 2nd Amendment, for one. For decades, the "conservative" position was basically being in lockstep with the NRA. And under that banner, we allowed ourselves to surrender more and more fundamental freedom in the name of trying to appear reasonable. It was a position that was only tenable while we were all able to pretend we had faith in the federal government and the Washington machine. To trot out a King of the Hill joke... "Dale, the NRA is a Washington DC-based organization. Are you telling me you support Washington DC?"

And so, over the last couple of decades, the 2A crowd has gotten far less tolerant of the restrictions we used to accept with a shrug and the meek understanding that "that's just how it had to be". Now the NRA is defunct, or the next best thing to it, and gun control laws are toppling all over the country, despite the left's best attempts to push back against it - save only, of course, for the deep-blue bastions like Chicago, New York, and California.

I would say this is an example of successful pressure relief.

On sort of the "other side" of the equation, there's the gay question, and it's personified best in the form of gay marriage. And it's a good example of "this is dangerous stuff we're playing with", because we're absolutely seeing that a crack can be dangerous. The "slippery slope" wasn't entirely a boogeyman, and now we're dealing with gender hooey and pedofreaks and gods knows what else. Not going to deny, lots of problems.

But on the other hand, the pressures were building - it was getting harder and harder to support sodomy laws, for example, because more and more society was saying 'what people do in their bedrooms is nobody's business'. Society's position was shifting on that - even people who didn't support gay marriage, were starting to stress the system by pushing back against the status quo. We should have adopted a more measured, incremental approach, making smaller adjustments. Seeing how we couple relieve some of the stress on the system, without just throwing open the floodgates, which is closer to what happened.

And I say this as someone who actually is, conceptually, in favor of gay marriage - I'm gay, I'd like to be able to get married one day. But we didn't deal with the situation intelligently from the start.

 

[LurkTrawl]

The shift in how we talk about the 2nd Amendment, for one. For decades, the "conservative" position was basically being in lockstep with the NRA. And under that banner, we allowed ourselves to surrender more and more fundamental freedom in the name of trying to appear reasonable. It was a position that was only tenable while we were all able to pretend we had faith in the federal government and the Washington machine. To trot out a King of the Hill joke... "Dale, the NRA is a Washington DC-based organization. Are you telling me you support Washington DC?"

And so, over the last couple of decades, the 2A crowd has gotten far less tolerant of the restrictions we used to accept with a shrug and the meek understanding that "that's just how it had to be". Now the NRA is defunct, or the next best thing to it, and gun control laws are toppling all over the country, despite the left's best attempts to push back against it - save only, of course, for the deep-blue bastions like Chicago, New York, and California.

I would say this is an example of successful pressure relief.

That entire attitude, the one that necessitated the existence of the NRA in the first place, came out of "social development" to begin with, though.

On sort of the "other side" of the equation, there's the gay question, and it's personified best in the form of gay marriage. And it's a good example of "this is dangerous stuff we're playing with", because we're absolutely seeing that a crack can be dangerous. The "slippery slope" wasn't entirely a boogeyman, and now we're dealing with gender hooey and pedofreaks and gods knows what else. Not going to deny, lots of problems.

But on the other hand, the pressures were building - it was getting harder and harder to support sodomy laws, for example, because more and more society was saying 'what people do in their bedrooms is nobody's business'. Society's position was shifting on that - even people who didn't support gay marriage, were starting to stress the system by pushing back against the status quote. We should have adopted a more measured, incremental approach, making smaller adjustments. Seeing how we couple relieve some of the stress on the system, without just throwing open the floodgates, which is closer to what happened.

Was it? I'll remind you that the vote to pass gay marriage failed in California the first go-round. It was from the ground-up enabled by the judiciary, not legislation - I.E. it wasn't fucking popular to begin with, which it would logically follow that if it wasn't popular then pressures weren't building. If anything I'd chalk that up to an "artificial constraint" - but one aimed at the populace's distaste for gay marriage as a concept. It only gained widespread acceptance after the USSC decision that made it legal.

My take on this is small government letting localities have wildly different laws for all kinds of shit that don't violate rights explicitly enumerated in the federal constitution, down to individual counties. But if I'm going to engage with this idea on an america-wide basis I just have to flatly disagree. We clearly were culturally at a point prior to ~2012 that was vastly fucking superior to where we're at today and this notion of "social progress" is largely the justification that lead us to this, by comparison, fucking cesspit.

 

[The Hardest R]

And so, over the last couple of decades, the 2A crowd has gotten far less tolerant of the restrictions we used to accept with a shrug and the meek understanding that "that's just how it had to be".

It’s funny but the whole conservative “the best thing we can do is nothing” is refuted here. Gun advocates had to actually push back against “common sense gun control” to where even the ninth circuit pushes shoots down gun control attempts. All this proves is that we need to hold conservative leaders and organizations accountable. Yet when that happens outside gun control, retards come out of the woodwork to say how impossible that is and how we should rely on triple bankshots and multidimensional chessmastering rather than tell your local congresscuck that if you don’t vote the way we want, your ass is gone next election. Seems to work for gun owners but anything else everyone seems totally mystified on how we can hold leaders accountable.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

That entire attitude, the one that necessitated the existence of the NRA in the first place, came out of "social development" to begin with, though.

Sure. Not disagreeing with that. But that's kind what I mean by conservatism can't just be "we arbitrarily pick some point in history". But it also can't just be "Lets go allllll the way back", because that's bad, too.

Was it? I'll remind you that the vote to pass gay marriage failed in California the first go-round. It was from the ground-up enabled by the judiciary, not legislation - I.E. it wasn't fucking popular to begin with, which it would logically follow that if it wasn't popular then pressures weren't building. If anything I'd chalk that up to an "artificial constraint" - but one aimed at the populace's distaste for gay marriage as a concept. It only gained widespread acceptance after the USSC decision that made it legal.

Not pressures for any one specific thing, but rather against the status quo. You misunderstand my point, I think. I'm not arguing that society follows some, like... plan, or direction. Just that it changes, and refusing to look at how it's changing and make adjustments doesn't work.

And gay marriage getting rammed through the courts is example of the sort of overpressure event I'm talking about. It's not always - not even usually - going to be some grand cultural revolution. It's going to be things like that - getting enough support that something like that happens, is unchecked, and allowed to stand.

My take on this is small government letting localities have wildly different laws for all kinds of shit that don't violate rights explicitly enumerated in the federal constitution, down to individual counties. But if I'm going to engage with this idea on an america-wide basis I just have to flatly disagree. We clearly were culturally at a point prior to ~2012 that was vastly fucking superior to where we're at today and this notion of "social progress" is largely the justification that lead us to this, by comparison, fucking cesspit.

I don't disagree. But I don't think we've had a functioning "conservative" party in a very long time, either.

 

[AnotherPleb]

I don't disagree. But I don't think we've had a functioning "conservative" party in a very long time, either.

You can thank Rockefeller in the 60s iirc.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

It’s funny but the whole conservative “the best thing we can do is nothing” is refuted here. Gun advocates had to actually push back against “common sense gun control” to where even the ninth circuit pushes shoots down gun control attempts. All this proves is that we need to hold conservative leaders and organizations accountable. Yet when that happens outside gun control, retards come out of the woodwork to say how impossible that is and how we should rely on triple bankshots and multidimensional chessmastering rather than tell your local congresscuck that if you don’t vote the way we want, your ass is gone next election. Seems to work for gun owners but anything else everyone seems totally mystified on how we can hold leaders accountable.

Two reasons I can think of, off the top of my head.

For one, the gun community is much more unified than most interest groups.

The second point is related to the first, but slightly more involved: despite the common perception that gun rights are exclusively a Republican issue, there are in fact a lot of Democrats that do care about gun rights. I shoot with these guys at the range, I talk to them. Most of them are "blue collar" democrats, work union jobs, daddy was a Democrat and so was his Daddy, things like that - but while they support gun right, at the end of the day, they still vote blue. The end result is that, sometimes, even blue states and blue politicians have to yield, at least some.

 

[Str8Bustah]

Socially, conservative doesn't mean "we've decided 1950 was perfect and we should only ever emulate that, except also we want a Muslim theocracy but without the pesky sandniggers browning up the place". You want that, go be Amish.

That's a hard truth that a lot of "conservatives" are going to have to learn or accept. Conservatism is moderate and studied social development, with an eye on keeping a society from too much harm, not complete stagnation. A society that stagnates, dies. It dies slower, maybe, but it still dies.

Characterizing an attempt at maintaining stability as stagnation is the kind of rhetoric that would have made the Bolsheviks blush. Just remember that the first people up against the wall when it takes power are /always/ the most ardent supporters of the regime.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

I think you can really summarize conservatism's failure by a refusal to acknowledge the value of culture. They were only focused on conserving stock prices while libs worked to change the culture and now the new culture is warping politics to better suit it.

The 2A discussion earlier is a perfect example conservatives never changed their views on guns but gun culture changed and conservatives were forced to change to fit the culture. Ultimately CoD and YouTube have done more for gun rights than the NRA or the GOP.

 

[The Hardest R]

Conflating appreciating the culture and accomplishments of the past with stagnation is shit you only found with Khmer Rouge’s year zero. The fact that globohomo has fully embraced it under the guise of various -isms and -phobias should be chilling to anyone paying attention. But because various Karens and Shoshanas are advocating for it, Republicans remain silent or complicit instead.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

Characterizing an attempt at maintaining stability as stagnation is the kind of rhetoric that would have made the Bolsheviks blush.

Which isn't my argument at all. Actually the opposite.

Just remember that the first people up against the wall when it takes power are /always/ the most ardent supporters of the regime.

Well I pretty much hate all regimes, so I should be immortal.

Conflating appreciating the culture and accomplishments of the past with stagnation is shit you only found with Khmer Rouge’s year zero. The fact that globohomo has fully embraced it under the guise of various -isms and -phobias should be chilling to anyone paying attention. But because various Karens and Shoshanas are advocating for it, Republicans remain silent or complicit instead.

There is a difference between appreciating the culture and accomplishments of the past, and thinking the past can be eternal. At least without giving up more than most are willing to give up, myself included.

 

[TexasRanger]

soooo, we will actually stand for something (families,strong social bonds,jobs for Americans and America for Americans) instead of just being a "limited" (at least, for Americans) industrial location? Good.

In order to allow families to stay together and thrive we need some sensible social policies (Bismarck did that in Germany to keep out the social democrats). Our "conservatives" gave us private prisons, including mass incarceration, astronomical recidivism rates and the most ineffective healthcare system any first world country has. And of course useless wars like the one in Iraq and Afghanistan.F...them. Vance is right, we are a nation , not just some random place. If the GOP is able to become a social conservative party, it will benefit us all.

 

[Vernon Dozier]

This guy is a complete dunce Trump gave conservatives the court and gave abortion back to the states how can he not vote for Trump if he’s socially conservative? Or is social conservativism just losing gracefully and being invited to liberals parties?

 

[LurkTrawl]

Sure. Not disagreeing with that. But that's kind what I mean by conservatism can't just be "we arbitrarily pick some point in history". But it also can't just be "Lets go allllll the way back", because that's bad, too.

What I want to say is that I agree with that whole-heartedly. But I don't, and not just for the reason that I think having an overarching societal super-structure that enforces a mono-culture to lend itself more credibility makes this entire discussion invalid, but that I think on a fundamental level the notion is flawed.

Not pressures for any one specific thing, but rather against the status quo. You misunderstand my point, I think. I'm not arguing that society follows some, like... plan, or direction. Just that it changes, and refusing to look at how it's changing and make adjustments doesn't work.

I think you're misunderstanding my point in turn as well. To be blunt, any and all examples one could make even for the past century have been either enforced against the majority of the public's will, or an example of successful social engineering rendering both the "pressure" and the "overpressure valve" completely artificial.

The majority of women didn't give a shit about not having a vote, until the "feminist movement". The majority of people didn't give a fuck about the fact that races were segregated so much as they got different quality treatment, until the "civil rights movement". The majority of people in a culture do not give a shit about a culture that works, and continues to work, until an outside force acts upon them.

Look at fucking Afghanistan of all places, and how it immediately regressed to the mean. You want to know what that is? That's what the U.S. would - and I believe will - itself go through if and when the current "neoliberal world order" or whatever the fuck the old niggers in charge call themselves, die off and their entire wicked machine falls in on itself due to their progeny's incompetence.

Because it takes a massive fuckload of effort to make the massive societal shifts - all completely artificial - that America has gone through in the past century, and keep the collective change stable. Look at every other empire that has ever existed. Look at what happens when they fall. The monoculture is the first pile of rubble to be swept out with the garbage.

And gay marriage getting rammed through the courts is example of the sort of overpressure event I'm talking about. It's not always - not even usually - going to be some grand cultural revolution. It's going to be things like that - getting enough support that something like that happens, is unchecked, and allowed to stand.

It didn't get enough "support". Not from the populace, certainly. Do you not see the inherent contradiction in what you're implying here? If it was enough pressure, enough support, to be organic they wouldn't have needed nine shitty lawyers in black dresses to impress it upon the rest of the populace.

I genuinely think that barring extremely rare circumstances that no, a society often is "stagnant" and is perfectly fine, until it actually requires some change which happens organically, not as some improvement or what not but as a temporary answer to problem or perhaps an adjustment to new technology. To say "stagnation is death" seems farcical given what's known of the past two millenia of history, and the past century of America's in specific.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Because it takes a massive fuckload of effort to make the massive societal shifts - all completely artificial - that America has gone through in the past century, and keep the collective change stable. Look at every other empire that has ever existed. Look at what happens when they fall. The monoculture is the first pile of rubble to be swept out with the garbage.

I don’t see hard segregation coming back because it’s a lot of effort. I could see soft segregation and arguably that’s already happened in a lot of liberal held areas.

 

[LurkTrawl]

I don’t see hard segregation coming back because it’s a lot of effort. I could see soft segregation and arguably that’s already happened in a lot of liberal held areas.

Maybe it will in some places, maybe it won't.

The point is exactly that, and why I'm an advocate of small government with strong representation, because in my opinion it's the only logical way for a large geographical landmass to have any semblance of a unified government. Through cooperation, and mutual respect of local cultural values aka leaving your neighbors the fuck alone.

The county over allows segregation but your county hates it? Make it illegal for businesses in your county. That kinda shit.

 

[rotten apple]

The center took over the republican party. We are now a center-left country. Look upon Europe and face your balding future.