There’s one sure sign that the Republican Establishment is the weakest it’s ever been. Reaganism, fusionism, neoconservatism, whatever you want to call it — the vast majority of American conservatives appear to have rejected the ideology that stands for unlimited commitments abroad and free market fundamentalism over all. Instead, the polling average among 2024 presidential candidates suggests that roughly 80% of Republican voters fall squarely into the National Conservative camp.
The Democrats and corporate media have tried their hardest to delegitimize both components of this burgeoning political moment. “Nationalism” is said to be a dirty word; once one embraces pride in his nation, it becomes a slippery slope to jingoism and fascism. “Conservatism” is said to be about a racially-charged return to some of the darker moments in America’s past. But their efforts have failed as more Americans than ever join the NatCon camp.
In reality, the NatCon movement is nothing more than a return to securing American interests first. Foreign intervention limited to the direct national interest; vastly curtailed immigration, legal and illegal; economic and trade policies that actually support American workers and their families — all undergird a true belief in the greatness of American principles and a desire for not just preservation, but renewal. (RELATED: Republicans Condemn New Charges In Trump Classified Docs Case)
While considered “radical” today, these were intuitive truths for most of American history — until the end of the Cold War left U.S. leaders confident in the unlimited potential to remake the world in their image. A return to common sense first articulated by Pat Buchanan, the movement is now carried on by America First presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
The latest RealClear Politics polling average shows that Trump holds a slight majority of support among Republican voters (52.4%). DeSantis is a trailing, but not insubstantial preference at just under 20%. Ramswamy surged recently after his performance at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit this month, now standing at over 5% Even former Vice President Mike Pence enjoys support over 5%, some of which is presumably a hangover from his performance in the Trump administration.
NEW: Vivek Ramaswamy breaks from other Republican candidates & defends Trump while saying that ‘pervasive censorship’ led to January 6th.
Notice the difference in energy with Vivek compared to the other candidates 🔥
“There’s such a temptation to say that there’s one man whose… pic.twitter.com/jjmumBJRqI
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 14, 2023
Together, that is roughly 75 to 80% support for an America First policy platform. The rest of the candidates who poll high enough to be included — Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson — all toe the establishment line on key issues that clash with the NatCon philosophy. That means the Republican establishment only receives support from, at most, a quarter their voters.
This is further proof of the Trump realignment after 2016; voters are tired of an ostensibly conservative Republican party selling out their interests in tandem with liberal ideologues. However, the roots of the discontent go back much further. Conservative disillusionment has been brewing for quite some time. (RELATED: Conservatives Celebrate Collapse Of ‘Sweetheart’ Plea Deal For Hunter Biden)
It likely began with Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative firebrand who ran for president in 1992, 1996, and 2000. While even in 1992, pundits mocked his break with the official Republican consensus, he did surprisingly well in the primary against George H. W. Bush — the progenitor of Republican globalism. He ultimately won between 10% to one third of the primary vote in many states. While not a NatCon politican, Independent Ross Perot also won nearly 20 million votes, pulling populist sympathizers from both parties. In hindsight, this too signaled the backlash brewing.
Pat Buchanan: “There is a real sense of incivility and hostility in our politics and it’s not going to work to the benefit of the anti-Trumpers.” pic.twitter.com/BsMKKwmI1G
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 7, 2018
Skip ahead to 2000, and Buchanan had become so detached from the Republican consensus that he ran as a member of the Reform Party. By then, even Republican voters were almost evenly split on whether he belonged in the Republican party, with a small plurality saying he should leave. The subsequent Bush years appeared to signal that neoconservatism had won the day, but as the disaster of the War on Terror became more apparent, its dominance proved short lived.
During the aughts, another iconoclast began making bids for the presidency. Libertarian Ron Paul expanded his Republican primary support from 6.5% in 2008 to 15% in 2012 — on the “radical” proposal that both parties were too liberal with the country’s checkbook.
After foreign entanglements and economic disaster became the norm, Barack Obama’s false promise of racial harmony proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. With the culture war in full swing, Trump expanded his plurality of Republican support in 2016 into the dominant grasp he holds over the party today.
While the line to National Conservatism is indirect, the signs have always been there for those who cared to look. Rather than correct course, leaders in both parties continued along their fundamentally liberal vision of America’s role in the world. The liberal alternative is a borderless world where differences are homogenized through social engineering and all cooperate peacefully together as interests align in perfect harmony.
The truth is that geopolitics will always be a zero-sum game, and National Conservatism is nothing more than the common sense recognition of this reality. It seems Republican voters have decided its high time to restore this recognition back in Washington.