Trumpist Conservatism: How It Differs From Classical American Conservatism – Analysis
Did the Republican Party sell its soul to the devil by choosing Donald Trump as its nominee for the third time? How can it support a man who defies all the safeguards of democracy and radically reinterprets conservative beliefs?
The Republican Party has fully embraced Donald Trump, who has represented it in three presidential elections (2016, 2020, 2024). The last time a political figure dominated an American party with such absolute power was during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four presidential campaigns in the 1930s and 1940s. Whatever the outcome of the November 2024 election, Trump’s longevity has already had a profound effect on his party. Based on an analysis of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July 2024 and Trump’s campaign since then, this essay seeks to define the ideological positioning of the “Trumpified” Republican Party by situating it within the long history of conservatism in the United States.
Republican Classics
Trump’s rhetoric is reasonably consistent with an ideological core that upholds the Republican classics established by Ronald Reagan since the 1980s. On the economic front, promises of tax cuts and support for growth through supply-side policies clearly dominate this approach. Trump repeatedly boasts about the huge tax cuts passed by Congress during his first term (2016-2020). He often claims that these tax cuts are the largest in history, a point he is right to emphasize given that his 2017 tax reform surpasses the already impressive tax cuts implemented under Ronald Reagan (1981) or George W. Bush (2002, 2003). In a campaign where his economic agenda has been extremely ambiguous, taxes are Trump’s single unambiguous promise: “No tax on tips!” – the goal being to exempt from taxation the tips earned by “waitresses, golf caddies, and chauffeurs,” as he stated at the Milwaukee Convention.
Another “classic” staple of Republican electoral campaigns: the culture wars. Indeed, the Milwaukee Convention ticked all the boxes expected by the party’s evangelical base: rejection of trans gender claims (Democrats “can’t even define what a woman is!” complained Florida Governor Ron de Santis, while Trump’s son, Don Jr, accused “left-wing teachers” of “teaching our children that there are 57 different genders”); the denunciation of the U.S. government’s decision, following the Black Lives Matter movement, to rename numerous U.S. military installations bearing the names of Southern generals; or the repeated promise, ad nauseam, to fight the left’s “socialist-Marxist utopia” that seeks to replace traditional American values (“faith, patriotism, work ethic and family”) with “race, gender, sexuality and climate change.” The Republican mission remains unchanged: to save traditional America.
A Renewed Corpus
The Trumpian ideological framework adheres to the essential tenets of American conservatism while simultaneously instituting a significant doctrinal transformation regarding foreign policy and the connection to populism. The Republican Party had long embraced isolationist thinking, but the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the entry of the United States into the war discredited it. Later, during the Cold War, Republicans adopted an Atlanticist, interventionist vision, which explains, for example, their support for the Vietnam War and Ronald Reagan’s attack on Soviet influence in Central America in the 1980s.
This legacy also explains the neoconservative wave that swept the party in the early 21st century, leading to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trumpism rejects this tradition altogether. Following in the footsteps of the George W. Bush administration, Republicans have never acknowledged the mistakes they made in the war on terror, nor have they revised their foreign policy principles. Trump has capitalized on this thoughtlessness and lack of courage to force the party to reevaluate its foreign policy principles. This has led to a remarkable resurgence of isolationism, which was evident in 2016 but has become even more pronounced in the 2024 campaign.
In Milwaukee, the Iraq War that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and all the Republican leaders of the time wanted was portrayed as a “disaster” and a “lie.” As for the “America First” slogan used by pro-German isolationists like Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s, it is ubiquitous in the campaign. Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News star and close Trump ally, summed up the perception of interventionism as a betrayal of the American people during his convention speech, saying, “I’ve seen members of Congress step over the prostrate bodies of their fellow citizens dying of drug overdoses to go to Congress to vote for aid to foreign countries.”
Accusing America’s NATO members of enjoying American security without adequately contributing to the alliance’s funding, Trump has constantly criticized them throughout his presidency, building his reputation as tough in diplomatic and military circles. These sermons are even more worrying in 2024, as the situation in Europe has deteriorated sharply with the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Going down the isolationist path means knowingly abandoning European allies in favor of Putin’s Russia. Tucker Carlson makes no bones about it: “You don’t see our commander-in-chief [Joe Biden] suggesting that we use our armed forces to protect our country or the lives of our fellow citizens. No, that’s for Ukraine!”
Trump’s populism, recognized as early as his 2016 campaign and credited by American political scientists as a primary factor in his victory, is naturally reflected in his focus on elites who would betray the American people. The 2024 campaign confirms this turning point, which represents a landmark evolution for the Republican Party. While presidents like Nixon or Reagan had used conservative populism in the past to attract working-class votes, Trump’s rejection of elites takes a much more massive and insurgent turn. This is important because, historically, the Republican Party has been precisely the party of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) elites – the party known for its closeness to middle class, big business, and Wall Street. These ties persist, as evidenced by the contributions of many large corporations to Republican campaign financing.
However, speeches at the Milwaukee Convention consistently denounced the “establishment,” accusing “wealthy elites” of “selling out American workers” to “big banks” and “big technology companies. Leading Republican voices reinforce this message, sometimes creating cognitive dissonance. For example, JD Vance, a former investment banker close to Silicon Valley billionaires and now Trump’s vice presidential running mate, rails against politicians who are “in the pocket of corporate America” and against “the barons of Wall Street” who have destroyed the American economy. But consistency is not the priority of the Trumpified Republican Party. Instead, Trumpism resorts to an accusatory inversion in which the Democratic Left replaces the Republican Right as the enemy of the people in the collective American imagination.
Trumpist Obsessions
To understand Trumpism, one must take into account the obsessions that have fueled it since Trump declared his intention to run in the Republican primaries in 2015: immigration and how it affects crime in the United States. Trump frequently appears at his rallies with the slogan “Deport Illegals Now” emblazoned in large letters on the wall behind him, and his supporters wave placards with the slogan “Mass Deportation Now.” Terms like “invasion” or “occupation” are now commonplace to create the impression of a country at war with immigrants.
For Trump, these millions of illegals entered the United States with the complicity of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, although it would be more accurate to speak of impotence, since the outgoing administration never found a way to reconcile humanitarian and border security policies. As a result, the number of illegal entries into the United States has increased since 2020, leading Republicans to claim that Democrats have betrayed the country. Eric, Trump’s son, made it clear in Milwaukee that the Biden administration not only sends “illegals” to the most expensive hotels in New York, but also reduces “homeless veterans” to “sleeping under bridges.” Worse, once these illegals settle in, they are supposedly the catalyst for violence in small towns and big cities. Because of them, according to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, “Americans are dying every day; they are being murdered, assaulted, and raped” and “young boys and girls are being sold into sexual slavery. But it is to American women that these immigrants pose the greatest threat. Condemning immigration through its alleged effects on women is a particularly astute strategy for Trump and the Republicans, especially in light of the former president’s conviction in the Stormy Daniels case in the spring of 2024. Women are a highly coveted demographic in this election cycle. Framing immigrants as a formidable threat allows Trump supporters to engage with the issue without addressing their significant vulnerability to female voters, particularly their role in the Dobbs decision that led to the Supreme Court’s revocation of federal abortion rights in June 2022.
Trumpist discourse conveys a very traditional vision of women as perpetual victims. Whether they are portrayed as wives (a young woman at the Milwaukee Convention explains how her husband died of an overdose), as mothers (a weeping woman comes to tell how her 15-year-old son, Weston, died after taking a fentanyl pill), or as sexual prey (a family recalls their sister, Rachel Morin, who was raped and killed by an undocumented immigrant), the underlying mechanism of persuasion remains consistent across these narratives: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have perpetuated open-borders policies that have resulted in an influx of immigrants and drug cartels permeating numerous American cities. They bear the burden of guilt. Trump, for example, has made much of the case of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl who was tragically raped and strangled by two undocumented Venezuelan immigrants. If re-elected, Trump vows to “protect women” threatened by an “army of illegals from Third World countries” and “rapists” whom “American women don’t want coming into their homes.” The Republican base responds favorably to the rhetorical mechanism that combines racism, miserabilist pathos, and an obsession with sexual violence. In Milwaukee, several elected officials, just like Trump, brought up the tragic story of Jocelyn Nungaray to a crowd of activists who angrily chanted, “Send them back!” Hence, Trump’s new flagship promise, after building a wall on the border with Mexico, is to deport the more than ten million undocumented immigrants currently living on U.S. soil.
An Illiberal Drift
Such rhetorical excesses have led many historians and political scientists since 2016 to analyze Trump’s success through the concept of “illiberalism,” popularized in the United States by Fareed Zakaria in a famous 1997 article in Foreign Affairs titled “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” According to Zakaria, illiberal democracies are “democratically elected regimes” that “routinely ignore constitutional limits on their power” and “deprive their citizens of basic rights and freedoms”.
Since 2016, a slow illiberal drift has accompanied the Republican Party’s capitulation to Trump. Despite facing numerous challenges during his presidency, including the January 6, 2021 Capitol Rebellion, the party has consistently supported Trump, with only ten elected House Republicans voting to impeachment him during his second impeachment. In 2024, Trump easily won the primaries, confirming this blind loyalty to him.
Only two party heavyweights, Nikki Haley (former governor of South Carolina) and Ron de Santis (governor of Florida), dared to run against the former president. Although they were younger than him and considered to be fairly successful elected officials in their respective states, Trump defeated them rather easily. He barely campaigned against them, refused to participate in even the smallest debate, and spent months insulting them. Yet the party base didn’t hold it against him and triumphantly chose him as the Republican nominee in November 2024. The same scenario played out in Milwaukee. The Convention saw the creation of a veritable personality cult around the billionaire. Far from being a mere candidate, he has become, in the words of the many Republicans who spoke at the podium, a hero, even a superman, the “Braveheart of our time. His success and celebrity have captivated Hollywood and sports stars for years. His golf scores impress even professional golfers. He is credited with shaping the New York skyline in the manner of a modern-day ‘Midas’ (the most famous king in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into pure gold). He was reputedly “one of the best businessmen in the world” before his political career. All of this is demonstrably false. Nevertheless, these compliments, culled from Trump’s pre-presidential existence as a mostly tabloid figure, reinforce the populist aspect of his candidacy, portraying the former president as both a successful man and an eternal outsider.
But it was his “miraculous” survival of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, that gave him an almost supernatural aura among his supporters. In Milwaukee, party leaders declared that while “the devil” had come for Trump, “the hand of God” turned his head at the last moment and gave him the strength to stand up “like a roaring lion. Blessed by God, Trump can join the pantheon of the greatest American presidents in his lifetime, beginning with Ronald Reagan, but also with Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865, because he understands the risks and is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. He could have lived a life of luxury on his magnificent Florida estate, but he chose to go back into battle and endure the worst of it: insults, trials, and assassination attempts. That is why today’s Republican voters firmly believe that Donald Trump is a victim and that the Democrats are “persecuting” him. However, he bravely faces these “vicious” attacks because he understands that his “only crime” is simply to “love America.”
This kind of flattery may bring a smile to your face. But it points to a real erosion of certain democratic norms that, until Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, were thought to be secure in the American political system. The first erosion of democratic norms concerns the role of violence in the political arena. The 2024 presidential campaign conspicuously avoids the Capitol Rebellion of January 6, 2021. On the rare occasions it is mentioned, it serves to reverse the burden of blame in favor of the Republicans. While Democrats, first with Joe Biden and now with Kamala Harris, continue to portray the former president as a threat to U.S. institutions, Tucker Carlson acknowledged in Milwaukee that Republicans have grown tired of the constant criticism of democracy on television. After all, the “true definition” of democracy is “the proposition that the citizens of a country own that country. This would mean that a country’s leaders must “do what the people tell them to do.” But only Donald Trump “pays attention to what the people want.” Therefore, the surest way to strengthen and save American democracy would be to vote for him.
This is a bold rewriting of history, especially as the November 5, 2024 election approaches and Trump becomes more explicit about his willingness to use violence whether he is re-elected or loses at the polls. He firmly believes that his Democratic opponents pose a significant threat to the integrity of American democracy. “We have two enemies,” Trump said to Maria Bartiromo during an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” on October 20. “We have the outside enemies, and we have the enemies from within, and the enemy within, in my opinion, is much more dangerous than China or Russia and all these countries, because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily … The thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside.” Trump sees only one solution: to call out the army to prevent the “lunatics of the radical left” from disrupting the elections. He has identified specific targets in interviews and campaign rallies, including Adam Schiff, a Democratic representative who spearheaded the first impeachment proceedings against him in 2020, Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic Speaker of the House, and her husband Paul, who was attacked with a hammer by a far-right activist in his San Francisco home in 2022.
Conclusion
Each step in this seemingly endless escalation of Trumpian provocations represents a quasi-ontological test for the Republican Party: should the party’s supporters accept any verbal or ideological derailment in the name of winning back the White House? Admittedly, some Republican figures, including a number of Trump’s former secretaries or advisors (Mark Esper, H.R. McMaster, Mike Pence or John F. Kelly, Dick Cheney), have strongly denounced him during the current presidential campaign. However, these voices remain a minority within the party and do not have much influence. In fact, the party expelled Trump’s main internal opponent, former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, in 2021. The Republican Party in the Trump era is thus a monolithic body in which devotion to Trump is a condition of survival. This old party, profoundly renewed in both its ideological foundations and its leadership, has undergone an incredibly rapid metamorphosis, caught between a charismatic leader and a passionate base blindly loyal to him. Today, the mutation seems complete, and whatever the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, it is likely to affect every other actor in the U.S. political, partisan, and institutional system. For American democracy, there will be a “before” and an “after” Donald Trump.
