Former Vice President Mike Pence recently wrote a crucial op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “A Republican Time for Choosing.” He points out that the Republican Party is engaged in an internal clash: the conservatism of President Ronald Reagan versus the populism of President Donald Trump. Conservatism is represented by the principles in Reagan’s three-legged stool: Christian values, free markets, and an internationally engaged foreign policy. Pence defines populism as “progressivism in disguise.”
The conflict between these ideologies within the GOP needs broader attention, and we can hope that Pence’s addressing it facilitates that. However, there is more to be said about populism beyond his discussion. Populism and progressivism are linked, but it is more than progressivism. Populism is understood as an ideology that divides society into two opposing factions: the common people and the elite. The people are the heroes, and the elites are the villains. It reminds one of the Marxist idea of class conflict.
Historically, conservatives haven’t gotten on well with populists because they see the hierarchies that they sow discord in as natural, desirable, and meant to cooperate. Until very recently, the two were avowed enemies. The populist Jacobins waged war against the French elite while conservative Edmund Burke urged restraint. The populist Andrew Jackson overthrew conservative John Quincy Adams and much of the political theory of the Founding Fathers with him. Today, the populist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pits Americans against “the 1%.”
Even as conservatism and populism now try to get along, they remain irreconcilable. Under populism, Republicans have increasingly apostatized from their old principles. The party of traditional values has since invited a pornography model to its convention. The same party of free markets brought a union boss to the same event. The same party that long championed strong foreign policy may now recoil from leading the free world. What of the remaining conservatives, such as Pence? Populism says hang them.
Just as the House and Senate were meant to cooperate while checking each other, conservatives believe that classes are supposed to do the same. Common people and elites, like the plebeians and patricians of Rome, are two groups whose interests need balancing for a functional society. Instead of quasi-Marxist battling, they are supposed to come to an understanding. Under populism, popular appetites are unbound and in control. The upper class is vilified, and principles are trampled to pave the way for satisfying those appetites.
John Adams wrote that “the multitude, as well as the nobles, must have a check.” If they did not, he warned, “they ever attack those who have property, till the injured men of property lose all patience, and recur to finesse, trick, and stratagem, because [the masses] have too many hands to be resisted any other way.”
Burke noted that “there must be a control upon will and appetite, and the less of it there is within, the more of it there must be without.”
Russell Kirk lamented that, without principles, the masses “can do no more than cheer the demagogue, enrich the charlatan, and submit to the despot.”
Our present situation attests to our failure to heed these warnings.
RESTORING AMERICA: WHERE DID THE ANTISEMITIC SURGE ON THE RIGHT COME FROM?
Pence’s fear of populism is well-founded and rooted in his conservatism. The extraordinary attempt at an alliance between conservatism and populism has resulted in the diminution of America’s conservative movement. Principles matter, and without them, our appetitive element runs free.
The Republican Party can be a mirror of the Democrats, or it can be the bastion of conservatism. The choice is ours.