Donald Trump Is the Candidate Conservative Intellectuals Conditioned Their Base to Want

by in Campaign 2016, Conservatism, How the Right Got It Wrong, Metapolitics Comments Off on Donald Trump Is the Candidate Conservative Intellectuals Conditioned Their Base to Want

It’s been said that societies elect the governments they deserve. That’s certainly the case with the American Right and Donald Trump. In spite of this, many Republicans have been beside themselves about the man for the past 12 months. According to his critics, the former reality-TV star is a gross departure from the conservative tradition. They couldn’t be more wrong. One group of Trump disparagers were so discontented with their future nominee that they vowed to found their own rump organization, the Renegade Party, in…

The Trump Victory Proves the GOP Is Fundamentally Broken

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If 2012 was the presidential election in which data-driven journalism really came into its own, the 2016 Republican nomination contest has been the one in which the conventional wisdom has continually been shattered. Besides driving Republican officials to distraction, Donald Trump has been the bane of journalists from data geeks like Nate Silver and the New York Times’s Nate Cohn to more old school analysts like Ron Brownstein of National Journal. The former television star’s unorthodox background and brash demeanor has upended the conventional wisdom…

The Rise of Irreligion is the GOP’s Real Demographic Crisis

by in Conservatism, Demographics, How the Right Got It Wrong, Ideology, Metapolitics, Religion Comments Off on The Rise of Irreligion is the GOP’s Real Demographic Crisis

In the past several years, many trees have been felled and pixels electrocuted in the service of discussion about the impact of Hispanics on the American electorate. No one knows for sure which way they’ll vote in the future but everyone is interested in discussing it. Curiously, though, an even larger political shift is taking place yet receiving almost no attention whatsoever from political reporters—the emergence of post-Christian America. Judging solely from the rhetoric and actions of the Republican presidential candidates this cycle, you would be…