The GOP as the "fight club" party

Conservative NY Times opinion columnist David French uses the occasion of Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign launch to explain why the Republican Party isn't a conservative political party anymore; it has become something else.

 French sees DeSantis's campaign as important in two ways: DeSantis perhaps is the candidate most likely to stop Donald Trump from securing the GOP 2024 presidential nomination; and DeSantis's candidacy illustrates how un-conservative the Republican Party has become.  Much of French's column dwells on the latter point.  

He begins by defining what conservatism is, or used to be, and how Trump doesn't fit that mold:

Since the second half of the 20th century, conservatism as an ideology has been largely synonymous with something called “fusionism,” an alliance between social conservatives and economic libertarians. In the Cold War era, the additional commitment to a strong national defense resulted in what was often called the “three-legged stool” of the Republican Party.

Under this formulation, the G.O.P. perceived itself as a party united more by ideology than by identity. That’s certainly how I perceived it before Trump, and it’s why I mistakenly believed it would reject him as a standard-bearer. Though he pledged to be socially conservative as president, he was a thrice-married libertine who kept a framed photo of himself on the cover of Playboy in his office. His economic program was more populist than libertarian, and his foreign policy was far more isolationist than those of previous G.O.P. presidents and presidential nominees.

French reluctantly gives Trump credit for sussing out how the voters who would become his base had evolved away from Fusionism by 2016:

Fusionists such as me read the Declaration of Independence and reaffirm that governments are instituted for the purpose of securing our “unalienable rights.” Thus, the protection of liberty is an indispensable aspect of American government.

By contrast, the nationalist conservative movement that Trump has helped bring center stage has different priorities. In its view, the right should — to cite the words of David Azerrad, a professor at Hillsdale College — use the power of government to “reward friends and punish enemies (within the confines of the rule of law).” In an excellent 2022 piece, Philip Klein, the editor of National Review Online, called this “fight club” conservatism...

French then turns to the question of where DeSantis is positioned: is he more of a traditional Fusionist conservative, or is he a "fight club" conservative?  His disquieting answer is that DeSantis is, if anything, even more of a fight club conservative than Trump.  

Or at least, a different brand of fight club conservative.  French correctly notes that, with Trump, it's all about himself: he will fight anyone and everyone, either Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, who opposes him personally, or anyone with whom a fight is likely to benefit Trump personally or politically.  

DeSantis is not one to shy away from a political scrap.  But with DeSantis, it's all about the culture wars and fighting those he perceives to be progressive or "woke" - and he'll happily jettison conservative principles to "own the libs":

DeSantis, hoping to fight the left and not Trump, largely ignores his competitor and instead doubles down on attacking his progressive enemies, including “woke” universities and “woke” companies such as Disney.

But whom DeSantis attacks is ultimately less important than how he does it. Republicans, after all, have long fought the left, but DeSantis does it differently, in part by abandoning fusionist commitments to free speech and limited government.

Thus, DeSantis punishes Disney for merely speaking in opposition to a Florida law that restricted instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida public school classrooms. DeSantis likewise attempts to regulate social media moderation, intruding on private corporations’ decisions about who to platform and what kinds of speech to moderate. He attempts to restrict speech about race and racial equality in public universities and private corporations. He’s banned even private employers from imposing a Covid vaccine mandate.

When you view DeSantis as more anti-left than conservative in the classic sense, then other aspects of his rhetoric begin to make sense. Once a Covid vaccine advocate, he has since asked the Florida Supreme Court to convene a grand jury “to investigate crimes and wrongs in Florida related to the Covid-19 vaccines.” A strong supporter of lethal aid to Ukraine during the Obama administration, he recently and notoriously referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” Why the flip-flops? Because support for vaccines and for Ukraine are now seen in populist right circles as “coding left” or — equally unacceptable — as positions of the “regime” or the “uniparty” or the “establishment.”

French then concludes that, if given the choice between Trump and DeSantis, he will choose none of the above.  He closes by criticizing conservative Evangelicals for having allowed themselves to be corrupted (as he sees it) by Trump and his movement.

I would add that there is at least one traditional conservative in the Republican race already, Tim Scott, and at least one other likely to enter the race soon, Mike Pence.  To be sure, the latter is tainted with having served in the Trump administration for four years; and few analysts think either of these candidates has a chance to win the nomination.  Both currently are polling in the single digits.  They may embody traditional Republican principles to varying extents, but there is little or no evidence that traditional Republican principles have any purchase with GOP voters anymore.