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Opinion: Conservatives’ goal should shift after Trump

With the closing of “The Weekly Standard,” an influential publication that many considered a respectable, center-right, alternative to more pro-Trump outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News, and the continued ostracization of “Never-Trump conservatives” from the Republican Party, many wonder who, if anyone, will carry the torch of prudential conservatism while President Donald Trump occupies the White House.
Just last week, a group of prominent intellectuals and political figures including Maryland Gov. Karry Hogan, Bill Kristol and David Frum, gathered for a conference at Washington’s Niskanen Center titled “Starting Over: The Center Right-After Trump.” The underlying assumption of the conference: It’s time for moderate conservatives to regroup and reconsider their relationship to a Republican Party that has been overrun by populists, nationalists and demagogues.
As someone who runs an organization founded at the time of the Iraq War with the aim of changing the direction of American conservatism, I can sympathize with their efforts, but I fundamentally disagree on their diagnosis of the problem. In the long run, both the conservative movement and Republican Party will be better off for having Donald Trump shatter the combination of neoconservatism and Reaganism that held the political right captive and blinded since the end of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan was the statesman that America needed for his time, but the clock had run out on his many policy prescriptions and it took a “hurricane”, as the Niskanen Center conference described it, like Trump to wake up conservatism — and America.
Regardless of what happens over the next two years, the question of what conservatism will become after Trump will remain a valid one. And on this point, I am far more optimistic about the energy and dynamism on the intellectual right over the past two years than many others.
While the country is consumed with stories of palace intrigue and the president’s latest tweet, there has been a revival on the right of thinkers and publications engaging with urgent problems facing middle- and working-class Americans. I need not provide an exhaustive list, as “Time” magazine’s October cover story by Sam Tanenhaus, “How Trumpism Will Outlast Trump,” did a good job surveying the landscape that includes thinkers such as Julius Krein at American Affairs, Daniel McCarthy at Modern Age, Yuval Levin at National Affairs, Michael Anton at Hillsdale College and David Azerrad at the Heritage Foundation.
What does this new program for the right entail if not a return to the neoconservatism of the George W. Bush years? It’s time for Republicans to embrace a “Main Street” conservatism that prizes solidarity over individualism and culture over efficiency. America needs a foreign policy that serves our vital national interests by securing the safety and happiness of the American people. This means putting to end to the regime-change and nation-building experiments that have devastated Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya; ending U.S. Support for the Saudis’ involvement in the Yemeni civil war; reclaiming our national sovereignty; and prioritizing diplomacy over intervention.
On domestic issues, especially when our country is bitterly divided along partisan lines, we must decentralize both political and economic power to bring it closer to the people. This would allow local and state governments greater flexibility to address their unique problems, letting California be California and Texas be Texas.
Regarding the problem of economic concentration, conservatives should stand up to the crony capitalism that has protected big banks and defense contractors, and revisit antitrust enforcement to prevent corporate monopolies from stamping out competition and entrepreneurship.
And finally, conservatives should adopt a cultural platform with a renewed focus on civic education; implementing economic and social policies that strengthen families, such as paid family leave and an increase in the child tax credit; promoting vocational training as a dignified alternative to traditional universities; and working toward an immigration policy that better balances economic and cultural concerns.
When searching for a prudential conservatism today, it’s best to ignore the advice of those who brought us the Iraq War, the hollowing out of our industrial base and our broken immigration system. The future belongs to conservatives who take Middle America seriously and actually care about the systemic problems that drove the Rust Belt into the arms of then-candidate Trump.
John Burka is the executive director of “The American Conservative” Magazine.

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