Do Conservatives Do Anything but Lose? Eight Reasons Why the Leaders of the Right Lead Only to Defeat
Most professional conservative leaders have other priorities than ours. That is why they can be counted on to lead us only to disaster.
This piece is published today in American Thinker under the simpler title, “8 Reasons Why Conservatives Lose.” You can read it there in its entirety for free. You can also comment on it there, and that might reach a wider readership, but you may be required to have a subscription to leave comments, so of course you may also comment here.
Do Conservatives Do Anything but Lose?
Eight Reasons Why the Leaders of the Right Lead Only to Defeat
Stephen Baskerville
It is time to face the stark reality of why the extreme Left has been able to seize power in the United States: The logical and inescapable corollary to the Left’s victory is the Right’s defeat. The conservative professional political class lost.
Yet the Right refuses even to acknowledge the Left’s victory. The reason is clear. If you admit that the Left won, then people will start to ask why the Right lost, and the next logical question is why we should continue listening to what they say, giving them money, and so forth.
In fact, it has now become so glaring that a few of the Right’s parlor intellectuals are starting to reluctantly acknowledge their failure at almost everything:
The establishment Right’s failures over the last generations have been manifold. … Since the end of the Cold War, what trajectory-altering successes or victories can the Right cite to demonstrate its worth? … Despite spending billions of dollars supporting its infrastructure…the establishment Right has registered no clear gains and many clear losses. Much of the nation was conquered on its watch.
Thus writes the editor of an unusually forthright recent book assessing professional conservatism. One contributor goes further. “You could even argue that it abetted most of it[s defeats],” he suggests. “Where official conservatism’s opposition hasn’t been ineffectual, it’s been collaborationist.”1
Conservative media today are full of horror stories about the wicked deeds of the Left (and they are indeed wicked). They rant and rave, and then they offer wish lists of how they would put things to rights if they had magic wands. But about their own failure the silence is deafening. This confirms suspicions that the failure involves more: incompetence, cowardice, perfidy, or betrayal.
Imagine a military leader or athletic coach, reviewing a recent defeat with his team, who just lambasted the opposing side for their successes but never critiqued his own team’s performance or told his men how to improve. (…)
Read the rest at American Thinker.
If you want to read more analysis of this kind, you can find it in my new book, Who Lost America? Why the United States Went "Communist” — and What to Do about It — available from Amazon.
Stephen Baskerville is Professor of Politics at the Collegium Intermarium in Warsaw. His books and recent articles are available at www.StephenBaskerville.com.
Arthur Milikh, ed., Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right after a Generation of Decay (Encounter, 2023), Introduction, vii; Michael Anton, “The Pessimistic Case for the Future,” ibid., 14.
Conservatism Inc. -- Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Drudge, Bill Kristol, Sean Hannity, Prager University ad nauseum -- provide two essential benefits to the anglo male living under the Leftist (feminist) dominion of the past 50 years. To wit:
1) he may pretend he is Fighting the Good Fight without risking the rage of the Feminist Left, and the (very) costly personal results of incurring that attention and rage;
2) he may continue to partake of the material fatness of his society while demonstrating to himself and others that he is 'living on the edge' and opposing totalitarianism when, in reality, he essentially embraces the Leftism of recent decades past.
Donald Trump is the hero of this position -- a billionaire New York real estate salesman who asserts Eighties Liberalism, backed by a feminist wife and an uber-progressive daughter. This is The Alternative which, in reality, is no alternative whatsoever. The GOP is the major party of this position . . . the Washington Generals playing perennial loser to the Harlem Globetrotters.
The modern Conservative thus is water-skiing in the Sahara, whilst waving to the adoring crowd. The grift brings in dollars, fawning attention and accolades, while evading the Horrible Truth (we all are ruled over by onerous and totalitarian collective female power).
Tangentially, the rank-and-file men who support Conservatism Inc. likewise can continue living splendid material lives, sending their daughters to Whore University to attain profitable DEI degrees in Crushing Patriarchy and Of-color Persons Empowerment, while themselves avoiding the real problem (collective female power) and living flush lives in the modern -- if dying -- anglo West. Most importantly, to be sure, nothing of substance ever is risked. Somebody Else takes the heat and the hits.
All-round then, Conservatism Inc. is a wholly satisfactory -- if hypocritical and cowardly -- arrangement, both for its leaders and followers. As long as the economy doesn't completely tank.
Addendum: The American Thinker, much like Taki´s Magazine of years past, essentially silenced its unruly and uncomfortable commentariat by requiring 'subscriptions' in order to participate. In short, Conservatism Inc.
Cheers to all! Michael
There’s only one savior, and He’s not in politics. There was only one 2024 presidential candidate who agreed with me about COVID “response” catastrophe accountability, and he’s no longer running. He made the same decision I did: to support one of the two remaining candidates in hopes of moving some worthwhile improvement of what is important versus none at all. I won’t be believing that Trump’s victory would be a mandate to do anything but be less bad than the other one. That, as my grandfather used to say, is better than a stick in the eye.
I’ve been a constitutional purist all my life. I figured out a few decades ago that my heart’s highest desire isn’t on the election menu—isn’t going to be and never has been in my lifetime. In the realm of the possible, I don’t mind picking up a quarter from the sidewalk versus kicking it into the gutter because it isn’t a stack of C-notes. That said, I’m no longer voting for Democrats or establishment Republicans. I laughed tradcons out of my life ten years ago.