After rapidly rising in influence, this faction of conservatism is suddenly beset with troubles on all sides. My new Bloomberg Opinion column.
It’s been a rough few months for national populists.
They’re the faction of the American right that is challenging the tenets of the conservatism we have known since the 1950s. That conservative consensus included a strong preference for free markets, support for an assertive foreign policy willing to use military force abroad based on an expansive conception of U.S. interests, and moral traditionalism. The populists instead favor a much more restrained foreign policy and government activism to protect working-class families. It wants to retain the social conservatism, which it believes will be better served by a politics that is less attuned to corporate sensibilities than conservatives have historically been . . .