The end of conservativism

I do not really stand on political labels much. Liberal, libertarian, progressive, leftist, conservative - they're all brands with definitions that change with the political winds.

But Freepers love political labels. They sound so much better than "good" and "evil," which is what they really mean. So now you get to call the politician you hate a Democrat-Marxist, or a crypto-Muslim Internationalist, when you really just mean bad guy. And the politicians you like? Constitutional, conservative, Reaganish...

Until now. Trump's substanceless campaign has leapfrogged the fools and trolls who thought themselves the intellectual leaders of the conservative movement. Everyone from The National Review to the Liberal Fascism guy to Mark freakin' Levin are trying to appeal to their own conservative authority to convince people Trump doesn't check the right boxes.

But Freepers have long moved beyond substance to pure resentment, and Trump makes them feel like they could win again, and stick it to all the unworthies. And isn't that (and closing the border) more important than some Constitution or principle? At first they just called everyone secret liberals and RINOS. Bush, Romney, McCain.

But last year cracks began to appear in the conservative brand. The conservative false consciousness term cuckservative got picked up by white supremacists, and Free Republic was not far behind. Rush became a secret 'globalist,' and the National Review and American Thinker became 'elitist.'

Recently, a long time Freeper has declared himself no longer conservative, but a "Christian Nationalist."

And then yesterday Rubio said Trump was hurting 'modern conservativism,' and it was like floodgates. What Freepers used to say about the GOPe, and then the GOP, they now say about conservativism.

Eddie01 tries to make with the old-style definitional chicanery:

modern conservative movement IS Trump

Viennacon tries to argue that the problem is the 'modern' bit.

Im SICK of the ‘modern’ conservative movement.

mrsmith explains that winning is more important than purity:

The great ones of the modern conservative movement, like Rush, Levin and Sowell are actually educators.

As the saying goes: “Those who can do, and those who can’t teach.”

It’s long past time for someone who can ‘do’ to rise up for conservatives. Even such a middling conservative as Trump.

DesertRhino, though, gets right down to it.

Conservative as a term has been ruined. Now it means constant neocon war, open borders, unlimited immigration, homosexuality, rabid domestic spying and and insane fiscal policy.

Conservativism is no longer all good things. Instead, it is all bad things!

Vince Ferrer argues that there is no movement because Freepers haven't gotten angry enough with conservatives:

There is no current conservative “movement”, because the leadership doesn’t want to go anywhere. In sports, when the teams lose constantly, the coaches get fired. The players want to win, but the coaches are satisfied being coaches and having big salaries. Time for the players to fire the coaches so they can start winning.

semaj's post is from another thread on the issue, but his destructive fervor is too on point not to include:

It no longer matters if Mr. Trump issue a conservative. Our so -called leaders have given us no other choice. Damn the torpedoes! The explosion is going to be spectacular.

Gaffer thinks the problem is that conservatives work within the GOP:

The American Conservatism that is willing to ally itself with the GOP establishment to defeat Trump at any cost to integrity, values or acceptance of the status quo we’ve been given by RINO leadership isn’t something I want to be associated with at any level.

Repealthe17thAmendment thinks the problem was everything after Reagan:

The modern conservative movement ended when George H. W. Bush broke his "No New Taxes" pledge and raised them in 1990. It has been a steady slide since then.

It's amazing that the GOP has been able to limp along for so long without a clue to this.

mulligan goes back further, to argue that it's been RINOS since the movement really began:

Rubio, it ended a long time ago. Go back a few years to the Goldwater/ Johnson campaign. After that the GOP and many conservatives just quit and most became RINO’s.

alloysteel weakly tries for the conservativism can only be failed tautology:

Maybe there never WAS a “conservative movement”.

Conservative government was found to be too difficult to put into practice, and left untried.

The best than can be hoped for is for “our” SOB to defeat “their” SOB (or B, if it should come to that).

manc joins the crowd relabeling conservative as everything Freepers hate:

I’d say there no conservative movement in the modern times.

It’s all about open borders, homosexuality , cross dressing, unfair trade, and spend more to agree with the left.

cymbeline has this cryptic comment:

That conservative movement was moving us in the wrong direction.

We need a Third Way!

uncitizen follows the pre-World War 2 old ways of nationalism:

This race isn’t about conservatism as much as it’s about saving our country from being entirely stolen by the globalists,

yadent goes with 'sovereign nationalist.'

I think most folks are missing the bigger picture. It isn’t that Trump is a ‘true conservative’ or frankly very conservative at all. It’s that Trump is a sovereign nationalist. Without a sovereign country ‘conservatism’ and it’s varying definitions won’t mean much no matter how it’s identified. Up to this point, no other candidate has tapped into this as much as Trump has.......