A year into President Trump’s second term, what does conservatism stand for? I wrote about it in the Washington Post today.
Though the old conservatism is frequently declared dead, Trump’s administration has not embodied or implemented a coherent alternative, and few influential Republicans have even been calling for one. . . .
At the state level, meanwhile, Republican governors are presiding over what previous generations of Reaganites might have considered paradise, with taxes being flattened, educational choice expanded and union membership declining. Those states are also, to the extent that federal law allows, restricting abortion.
I go on to suggest that the most important changes we have seen over the last decade on the right, and in our politics generally, are not matters of ideology or philosophy.