Vol. 69: The Conservative’s quandary

If not Biden or Trump, then who?

         In William Styron’s 1979 novel, Sophie’s Choice, a sadistic Nazi concentration camp commandant offers to spare one of the heroine’s two children from the ovens, forcing the mother (played by Meryl Streep in the movie) to consign one of her kids to death to save the other.

         But at least Sophie got one out of two. If you’re a politically conservative American weighing your options in this year’s presidential race, you may confront an even more terrifying choice.

         On the one hand is Joe Biden, an honest and experienced politician whose sunny confidence in government’s ability to solve problems flouts your basic core belief that government is the problem. This unabashed liberal pooh-poohs your deeply held trepidations about public bureaucracies and the unintended consequences of virtuous acts.

         On the other hand is Donald Trump, a con man, demagogue, and all-around loathsome human being who lacks any core belief system whatsoever. This snake-oil salesman claims to be a conservative, but he also claims to be a self-made billionaire, a successful business executive, and a best-selling author. Late at night, while true conservatives are dreaming about Ayn Rand’s philosophy of rational self-interest, Trump is dreaming about grabbing Ayn Rand by the crotch.

More frightening, Trump threatens to dismantle the fragile democratic institutions that genuine conservatives cherish as civilization’s most vital protection against mob rule and anarchy. When your fellow conservative, former Vice President Dick Cheney, declared, “There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” you nodded in vigorous agreement.

‘A wannabee dictator’

         And you’re hardly alone. Nearly one in five Republican primary voters across four contests on April 2 voted for an option other than Trump — even though he was the only Republican still campaigning at that point. Just last week, Nikki Haley drew more than 21% of the Republican vote in the Indiana presidential primary, even though she had withdrawn from the presidential race two months earlier. That suggests that plenty of presumably conservative Republicans still hunger for a conservative alternative to Trump. (Trump’s campaign claimed without evidence that Haley’s support last week came from Democrats.)

         The ranks of so-called “Never Trump” conservatives are both wide and intellectually deep. As early as 2017, Bill Kristol offered this advice to conservative readers of his Weekly Standard: “Work for good policies during Trump's presidency; never lose sight of his unfitness to be president.” (Kristol’s reward for this act of clear thinking was the subsequent demise of his magazine.) These ranks include many prominent Trump alumni, like former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley, who called Trump “a wannabee dictator”; former Defense Secretaries James Mattis (“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try”) and Mark Esper (“He’s a threat to democracy”); former White House chief of staff John Kelly (“A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law”); former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (“a fucking moron”); former Attorney General Bill Barr (“He is a consummate narcissist and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk…He will always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest… He’s like a nine-year-old, a defiant nine-year-old kid, who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table defying his parents to stop him from doing it.”); and former national security adviser John Bolton (“I think it is a danger for the United States if he gets a second term”).

         Clearly, to know Trump is to despise him. But in that case, what’s a principled conservative to do?

No choice but Biden?

         Most “Never Trump” conservatives seem to assume that they’re stuck with two options: (a) hold your nose and vote for Biden as the lesser of two evils, or (b) abstain from voting altogether. The first group includes the former Trump spokeswoman Sarah Matthews and the former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb. The latter group includes Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence; the former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney (“We have eight months to save our republic and ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere near the Oval Office again”); Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah; and former Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. Either option is likely to benefit Biden.

         (You could argue that there’s a third option: Vote for Trump, despite your misgivings, to preserve your influence in the Republican Party. Bill Barr and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, have chosen this path. But I’m limiting my discussion here to principled conservatives.)

         Last week, Geoff Duncan, a Republican who was lieutenant governor of Georgia when Trump tried to overturn that state’s 2020 election results, endorsed Biden, with this explanation: “I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”

         Duncan correctly perceives that character matters more than policy or experience when it comes to choosing political candidates, because character is the surest guide to how an officeholder will perform in the inevitably unpredictable future. But in his endorsement essay last week, Duncan insisted that “elections are a binary choice,” so consequently principled conservative Republicans like him are left “no choice but to pull the lever for Biden.”

         Really? Is there no other option for conservatives aside from Biden and abstention?

Bush to the rescue?

         I thought you’d never ask. Why don’t all these conservative Never-Trumpers— who grasp from firsthand experience the danger Trump poses to the world— form a third party, at least for this coming election?

         Something along these lines was proposed last month in a New York Times op-ed piece (April 8). Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution (a venerable social science think tank) and Peter Wehner of the Trinity Forum (which promotes enlightened Christian-oriented leadership) argued that since the Republican Party is thoroughly Trumpist and likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future, serious Republicans should create “a Republican Party in exile, a counter-establishment dedicated to recapturing the party from the outside.” Such a party, they suggested, should call itself “the Free Republican Party” to “keep the fires of conservatism burning.”

         I would go a step further. Why not call it the Conservative Party, to pre-empt Trump’s baseless claim that he’s a conservative? For your candidate, find some high-profile but slightly over-the-hill luminary who has little to lose by aligning with this Conservative Party— say, Chris Christie, or Liz Cheney, or Mitt Romney. Maybe even George W. Bush, who was widely considered the worst president in U.S. history when he left office in 2009 but who now looks like a statesman next to Trump. Such a party would have no hope of electoral victory, but it would at least establish an alternative for conservative voters this year. It would serve as a constant reminder that Trump is no conservative. It might well plant the seeds for a genuinely conservative Republican Party in the mold of Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, or Ronald Reagan.

Trump’s Philadelphia hero

         I’m astonished that such an idea hasn’t yet occurred to Never Trumpers. The Lincoln Project, a political action committee comprised of serious conservatives opposed to Trump, raised more than $80 million during the 2020 campaign for aggressive TV ads against Trump and his Congressional loyalists, but it endorsed Biden rather than promote an alternative. If the Lincoln Project could bring in $80 million in 2020, why couldn’t a Conservative Party amass a similar amount this year?

(The Lincoln Project still exists but has lost much of its zing, due to defections caused by accusations of internal sexual harassment. Hmm. Sexual harassment among serious conservatives. Who’da thunk it?)

         For all I know, some circles of Never Trumpers may be cooking up just such an alternative even as we speak. The bottom line: The Trumpist hold on the Republican Party isn’t set in stone. It will crumble well before Trump himself seeks to rewrite the U.S. Constitution to allow him to remain in the White House at least until he dies.

         This isn’t empty rhetoric. One of Trump’s heroes— no, not Hitler or Putin, but Philadelphia’s late mayor Frank Rizzo— sought to change the City Charter in 1978 to permit him to seek a third consecutive term. When that effort failed, Rizzo ran again, unsuccessfully, in three subsequent mayoral elections. He’d still be running today if he hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack during the 1991 campaign. One thing Rizzo hated more than losing was being ignored. Sound familiar?

My not-so-hidden agenda

A Conservative third party could help save both the Republican Party and the Republic itself while offering conservatives an alternative to two candidates they loathe. As Trump himself told Black audiences during the 2016 campaign, “What do you have to lose?”

         “But Dan,” you say, “you’re no conservative. Why do you feign concern for their predicament?” It’s true— as the title of this column indicates, I’m basically a contrarian. What irks me above all, I argued six months ago, is neither liberals nor conservatives but the ignorance of certainty: “Ultimately, a healthy society needs a healthy left and right, just as a healthy body needs a left and right leg to walk.”

         So, yes, a healthy society needs a healthy conservative movement. And few things in life are certain. But here are two things I know for certain about Trump: He’s neither healthy nor conservative.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com