Perry Bacon, writing in the Washington Post, has produced the latest version of that hoary, perennial column: “here is why conservatives should want to become Democrats, but they are too dumb to know it.” This ancient species of concern trolling is wearyingly familiar by now; I half expected it to conclude with “Max Boot is on vacation.” It is written for the consumption of people who loathe conservatives and conservatism but understand neither. It invariably involves logical fallacies, changes to the settled meaning of words, and straw-man versions of what conservatives actually believe.
Bacon ticks all those boxes. His column, entitled “The misguided identity politics of the anti-Trump Republicans,” commits three fundamental category errors. One, he either completely misunderstands or willfully mischaracterizes what “identity politics” is. Two, his vision of politics is nihilistic: It assumes that nobody (or at least no Republican) actually believes in the principles or causes to which they have devoted their adult lives, or believes that politics exists for any purpose but its own perpetuation. And three, he totally ignores the powerful reasons why conservatives and Republicans very reasonably fear that giving power to Democrats not only results in bad policy, but is also a dire threat to the survival of the American system of democratic, republican, liberal, constitutional government.
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