Wonks and activists of the conservative-libertarian fusionist flavor are cautiously optimistic that their politics will come back in style in a post-Trump political landscape — and that they can beat back the big-government “conservatives” that have risen in the Trump era.
“Ideas and political philosophies are actually a lot more like fashion than we might want to acknowledge,” Paul Mueller, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, said on a panel at last week’s “Freedom Conservatism” conference.
“We're coming a little bit out of a period where fusionism, the sort of freedom conservative, has been kind of out of fashion. I think it's going to come back into fashion,” Mueller said. “I am optimistic on the whole. I think there is going to be a lot of disruption.”
Some of those more traditional fusionists have made inroads and alliances to push issues like tax cuts and deregulation in President Trump’s Republican party. But they’ve been largely sidelined while economic populism and enthusiasm for wielding government power have surged as Trump dominated the political scene — characteristics that have defined the “national conservatives,” or NatCons for short.
Speakers and attendees at the second year of the Freedom Conservatism conference, though, are trying to get organized to reestablish small-government conservatism that places a focus on personal and economic liberties as the dominant political force.
Akash Chougule, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity and an organizer of the conference, noted that Trump has seen a significant drop in approval ratings among non-college educated white voters, a critical part of his base.
That is “almost entirely due to national conservative-driven self-inflicted errors like the tariffs,” Chougule said. “And so, for that reason we see a lot of momentum for our movement to reclaim the mantle of conservatism.”
Notable speakers included Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), radio host Erick Erickson, radio host Guy Benson and National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru. Panelists from organizations such as Advancing American Freedom, American Enterprise Institute, Reason Magazine, Stand Together, LIBRE Initiative, Americans for Prosperity, Competitive Enterprise Institute, State Policy Network, Independent Women and the Mercatus Center filled out the conference’s programming. Many of those organizations have ties to the network built by Charles Koch and his late brother David Koch.
Their flavor of conservatism had a moment before Trump shook up the political scene — back when Turning Point USA was known for peppering college campuses with merchandise that said “Big Government Sucks,” or “Socialism Sucks.”
Contempt for the NatCons — and dismay at how they have successfully recruited and placed young staffers in critical Trump administration positions — was omnipresent at the conference. One panel focused on “Strengthening FreeCon Infrastructure and Building the Next Generation of Leaders.”
One panelist name-checked Oren Cass, the head of the more populist American Compass, as someone who “could not competently explain what comparative advantage means.”
Erickson dinged those on the New Right who ask, “Don’t you know what time it is?”
“It is time, they say, for a new system. A new movement. A new strongman. A new revolution from our side of the aisle,” Erickson said, before warning: “They mean to use our movement as a costume while they smuggle in the very ideas — the central planners, the tariffs, the strongmen, the grand designers — that conservatism exists to resist.”
Ponnuru argued that FreeCons should seek to find common ground with the NatCons.
“If they say they want a trade policy that helps American workers, we should hear them out — but also insist that American workers include the ones who work in export industries, or who work in fields that use imported supplies,” Ponnuru said.
And he warned about FreeCons falling into the “caricature” of conservatives who are “dogmatically fixated on free markets, and only on that — to the exclusion of political realism or any concern for the cultural preconditions for a free society.”
Chougule said he hoped the conference emphasized how important it is to show that “social conservatives have a welcome home in the Freedom Conservative movement,” noting the discussion at the conference of what “a new fusionism looks like, and to put it succinctly, it is government’s job to protect our liberty.”
The answer to that question was debated on a panel about “a new fusionism for the 21st century.” To some, “new fusionism” sounded a lot like regular old fusionism — with arguments emphasizing that the government should not be making decisions about what “virtue” looks like, leaving that to non-government institutions for fear that the left would abuse that power.
“I think a big part of the divide is national versus local,” Mueller said on the panel. “How are we going to run the parade? Who's going to run the library? What books are going to be in the library? How does the library govern? How is this, and again, in a more libertarian world, we could just like privatize everything ... [but] we're probably not going to move that way.”
Further reading: Freedom Conservatives plot a post-Trump Republican Party, by Rob Crilly in the Washington Examiner.
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