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Are “Conservative Values” Trump Defectors Idealize Really Distinct from Trumpism?
While Americans have by and large done a horrible and irresponsible job of practicing social distancing during this pandemic, a group of anti-Trump Republicans have been strategically and deceptively practicing a political distancing from Trump and the Republican Party.
Let’s be clear, though, that this political distancing is just that — a matter of political strategy, not one of ideological difference.
These anti-Trumpers, re-constituting themselves as members of the Lincoln Project, are simply trying to save conservative ideology from Trump’s sinking ship. While Trump has, for all intents and purposes, pulled back the curtain on traditional Republican “ideals,” revealing the small-man retrograde politics of racism, mass redistribution of wealth to wealthiest, sexism, anti-unionism, resistance to LGBTQ civil rights, and more, these defectors from Trump and the GOP are trying to create a life raft for conservatism by speciously peddling the story that the values of traditional conservatism and Trump’s Republican Party are somehow distinct.
Just last Thursday, Jennifer Horn, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, announced her departure from the Republican Party in the pages of USA Today, waxing nobly about conservative principles and…
