With numbers like these, it’s clear that the GOP needs to find a way to nudge Trump off the stage. The trick is how to do so while keeping his voters. If the GOP snaps back to the free-market libertarian party it was. pre-Trump, that won’t happen.
What’s wanted is a party that is progressive on economic issues and conservative on social ones. That’s the sweet spot in American politics, and if progressive conservatism sounds like an oxymoron that’s because of an imperfect understanding of progressivism, conservatism, the GOP and America.
Indeed, the party’s leading statesmen were progressive conservatives: Lincoln for making an issue of economic mobility, Theodore Roosevelt for his willingness to tackle corruption, and Eisenhower for making peace with the New Deal. They knew, with Edmund Burke, that “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”
Lincoln invented the American Dream—the idea that, whoever you are, wherever you come from, you can flourish and know that your children will have it better than you did. He ended slavery, of course, but on July 4, 1861 he told Congress that the fight to preserve the Union was about a more encompassing principle. The central idea of America was the promise of income mobility and the possibility for everyone, black or white, to rise to a higher station in life.
From Lincoln on, America’s progressive conservatives supported policies that would permit free men to rise and knew that the American Dream didn’t happen by itself, that it required progressive reforms, things like sensible immigration policies, good schools, and the rule of law.
But are we still the country of the American Dream? When polled in 2014, a majority of Americans said no, and the evidence bears them out. In First World rankings of intergenerational mobility, we’re near the back of the pack.
That should have been the sign of an impending political revolution and a leading issue for Republican candidates. In 2016, however, only one of them spoke to it. We elected him president.
But now it’s time to ease Trump out, and whether or not he is ready to go, his voters will only stick with a Republican Party that adopts his policies.
So how do we do that? What do we have to do to bring back economic mobility? For an answer, look to countries that are much more mobile than we are. In part, that points to a progressive agenda, such as limiting government educational loans to colleges unless they cap tuition. I would also offer bankruptcy protection for student loans, and make colleges pay the bill for the students they have mis-educated.
Moreover, a majority of Americans would support replacing Obamacare with a national catastrophic health insurance plan. We don’t mind $25 co-pays, but don’t like learning we’re bankrupt when we walk out of a hospital.
Then there’s immigration. Our immigration system imports immobility because we pass on immigrants who would perform better and make American citizens better off. There’s no mystery about how to fix this. It’s called the points system, and it’s something Trump supported. The immigrant would get points for being young, speaking the language and having job-related skills. We wouldn’t admit people just because we expect them to vote Democratic.
Another crucial component of a progressive conservative agenda is education. The Democrats are creatures of the teachers’ unions and oppose school choice programs that have helped students in other countries. As it is, our students perform very poorly on international tests, but the Democrats want them to remain captives of the unions.
The regulatory state burdens people who want to get ahead, but it’s the briar patch in which many of our elites live. It provides direct employment for many of them as civil servants and indirect employment for the lawyers, lobbyists and economists hired to navigate around it and shape its rules. Combatting this reality is another crucial component of progressive conservatism.
As you can see, it’s not hard to come up with progressive conservative policies that would make us more mobile. Ironically, those who oppose them are Democrats who for self-interested reasons would keep things just as they are: unequal and immobile. They might plead their ignorance, but self-deception only makes it worse.
What especially rankles is how Democrats complain about racism when it’s their policies that disproportionately harm African-Americans, through open borders that compete away jobs from them and bad schools. If you think you’re opposed to structural racism, ask who built the structure.
So there you have your answer to how to keep Trump’s voters while nudging him out of the party: Speak to their interests and their values. It’s not hard to do.
F.H. Buckley is a Foundation Professor at Scalia Law School. His latest book, Progressive Conservatism, was published this year by Encounter Books.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
