So now what?

If one has rejected the binary-choice framing, what does one do?

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I’m starting to consider that, while my take on proper political behavior for 2024 - that one should stay home for one’s state’s primary and also the first Tuesday in November - may have moral weight behind it, it’s inadequate to a vision of one’s identity as a citizen of the United States of America if one refuses to accept despair as inevitable.

I do indeed see noble efforts to fortify the term “conservatism” against its usurpation by the yay-hoos who are now in complete control of the Republican Party.

Some are more effective than others. I’ve written before about how Heath Mayo, founder of Principles First, badly dented his movement’s raison d’être by chiding Republicans for not signing on to legislation codifying same-sex marriage, calling such legislation a “no-brainer” that would strengthen the family unit. Such a position is a de facto resignation to secularization. Acknowledgement of a transcendent order becomes a quaint notion our society has outgrown if we listen to such an argument.

Most self-identified conservatives can’t accept that.

Among publications that have sought to clearly repudiate the MAGA impulse, some have admirably continued to hew to a recognizable conservative vision (think The Dispatch) and some have bought into the binary-choice framing, which has made them Democrats for all intents and purposes (think The Bulwark; I was particularly dismayed to learn that Mona Charen had deemed the stay-home and consideration of a third party options as “the coward’s way out”).

The publication that has conferred Senior Freelance Contributor status on me, The Freemen Newsletter, has spawned an interesting undertaking. I’m not exactly clear on whether it’s going to be called the Reagan Caucus or the New Reagan Caucus, but a number of younger folks who appear on the masthead are having lively discussions on Twitter (X, if you must) and Slack regarding mission, tactics and standards for alliances.

The Freemen founding editor, Justin Stapley, laid out his druthers about the enterprise in a recent piece entitled “DeTrumpification of the GOP.” He sets the table by resolutely proclaiming what I assert above - namely, that despair is not an option, that our conservatism obliges us to see this as a universe of possibility. (He does so by taking issue with a 2021 Dispatch piece by Jonah Goldberg, someone high in Justin’s pantheon of good guys - and mine) in which Goldberg looks seriously at the third party option.)

Justin sees a Reagan Caucus thusly:

Taking Reagan as a symbol of an old-school approach to Republican politics and a commitment to conservative principles unstained by the reactionary nature of Trump’s brand of nationalist populism, this Reagan Caucus is declaring an intention to engage in the GOP's primaries and processes to push back against MAGA’s control of the party, and pledges to withhold their support of Republican candidates who embody or acquiesce to the toxic nature of the MAGA movement.   

If non-Trump conservatives take this path, it can solve several of the problems with the third-party route:   

• We could still participate in the Republican Party and wouldn't further abandon the party to the very forces we wish to curtail.  

• We would be encouraging more participation in the party processes instead of further enabling control of the processes by those we oppose. 

• We wouldn't be seen as a rival or spoiler political party.  

• We wouldn't be operating from the get-go as a spoiler effort.  

• We would have clear organizing principles and, especially, could demonstrate a contrast to the party's current direction given that the actual “agenda” of Trump and MAGA changes at his whim (TikTok).

• We could both endorse acceptable Republican primary candidates and actively work to get them through the process.   

• There would be nothing keeping us from endorsing acceptable Republican candidates who lost in the primaries as independent candidates should the eventual nominee prove to be wholly unacceptable, or throwing our support behind other independents or even third-party candidates.  

• The caucus's declared values would hopefully keep members from being less inclined to support Democrats unless the Democratic candidate moved to accommodate us as a more moderate alternative in the mold of Manchin or Sinema.  

I think this approach has a good shot at accomplishing what Jonah proposed in 2021 while answering the concerns many had with his proposal, including myself. There have long been various caucuses within both political parties and many other organizations and lobbying entities that support or withhold their support of party nominees based on declared principles.

So, the Reagan Caucus is not going to be doing anything new or threatening, and it could engage in ways that would still accomplish the goals that Jonah put forward, arguably in more effective ways given that we'd still be engaging in the GOP itself without other Republicans easily dismissing us as a rival or spoiler party. We could force a genuine debate on principles and vision that could transcend Trump and Trumpism instead of becoming a reflexive opposition that loses its intellectual grounding in the struggle of the general election. 

And besides, even most Trump voters still love Reagan, and this effort could be an effective way to provide a better contrast between an actual conservative vision and the angry, unprincipled direction that Trump has taken the party.

His optimism is enviable. Maybe he has an ear closer to the ground than I do, although I know a lot of local Republicans. Maybe that ground is more arable in Utah, where he lives, than it is here in Indiana.I think of my state’s gubernatorial race. There are four Republican candidates. The television ads of three of them try to outdo each other in boasting of the Trump connection. The fourth candidate has chosen a noteworthy departure, framing himself as being in the lineage of Reagan and Mitch Daniels, a universally admired Indiana native who served as everything from governor to president of Purdue University to president of the Hudson Institute to head of Eli Lily’s North America operations to Reagan’s OMB director. I don’t know much more about that candidate, but I’d still want an answer to the question of who he intends to vote for for president come November.

As I say, the folks who are fired up about this project are, from this Boomer’s perspective, young pups, and they are already setting about taking concrete actions - becoming Precinct Committeemen, running for office, deciding how to structure the project organizationally.

In their back-and-forths, they demonstrate a grounding in that which they ought to be grounded in. They know who Russell Kirk, Fredrich Hayek and Frank S. Meyer are.

Two things: I hope they understand the ferocity with which the Trumpists will attempt to stomp them into the dust, and the challenge they’ll face maintaining their standards for forming alliances. I’m already seeing arguments along the-tent-must-be-big-enough-to-bring-in the-less-ate-up-Trumpists lines. That could muddy the mission from the get-go.

I want to feel a genuine optimism, to see genuine possibility. It’s just that in a 2024 America as badly fragmented as ours, the law of the jungle seems to be prevailing.

I want to argue for a transcendent order, for a societal conversation about what makes a human life worth living, a reverence for virtue, but strategies for convincing the unconvinced are hard to come by.

I don’t want to be cynical or above the fray, but my question is an honest one: How does actual conservatism gain a true foothold on a landscape in which transgender activists and climate alarmists, on the one hand, and drool-besotted followers of a presidential candidate who hawks pieces of his suit, calendars depicting himself in various macho fantasy settings, golden athletic shoes and sixty-dollar Bibles on the other have the loudest voices and are motivated by a killer instinct?