The suggestion that Donald Trump perverted an initially healthy skepticism about American virtue misses the authoritarian impulses he represents. ed_kilgore writes
Love it or leave it! Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images One of the odder phenomena in the fraught recent history of American conservatism has been the strong overlap on the political right of the pre-2016 intellectual movement known as “reform conservatism” and the ranks of outspoken conservative critics of Donald J. Trump.
To their credit, most leading reformicons did not make their peace with Trump’s conquest of the GOP despite their common disdain for the old regime. But Douthat, at least, seems to worry retroactively about what went wrong, and how white-working class Republicanism became associated with Trump’s disreputable habits and prejudices.
In the end, Douthat thinks the reconsideration of American exceptionalism is worth its perversion by a president he calls “an exceptional disgrace.” But I’d offer a different interpretation of the actual tradition Trump represents.
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