By Will Gunter
“People can make money. They provide goods and services people want, need, and desire? That’s America. It’s called freedom,” said Sean Hannity, beginning his nightly newscast in July 2020. His introduction captures the ethos of Republican politics since the days of Goldwater. Freedom and capitalism go hand-in hand and are the basis of what makes America great. No argument could be less controversial on Fox News.
Yet Hannity’s remark was met with derision rather than plaudits, and his ensuing apology indicated a paradigm shift in conservative politics. His unscripted comment pushed back against a segment on the preceding show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, in which the network’s primetime anchor lamented Jeff Bezos’ exorbitant profits amid a sputtering pandemic economy. Carlson’s opening chyron, “Fat Cat Bezos Rakes in Cash During Pandemic,” is more reminiscent of Eugene Debs than Ronald Reagan. But this brand of economic populism is central to the new philosophy of the Republican party.
Supplanting the small-government conservatism of the Reagan coalition, Carlson represents an ascendant wing of the Republican party that claims to take on business elites rather than represent them. This new form of right-wing politics-best known as National Conservatism-views freedom as subordinate to its goal of a traditionalist American culture, and it won’t shy away from state intervention to achieve its goals. The movement has caught steam since Donald Trump took office in 2017, and the official National Conservatism Conference-inaugurated two years later-outlines their vision for America.
In its most coherent formulation, National Conservatism is best articulated by Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony. In his speech at the 2019 conference, he identified three main pillars of “true” conservatism: nationalism, economic growth, and religion. For Hazony, nationalism is an unapologetic commitment to put one’s own citizens above others. A robust economy is industrial and autarkic. Crucially, Hazony believes that America is inherently Christian nation, and believes the bible should be taught in schools to foster a more virtuous society. Unlike the ideology of the Republican establishment, which prioritizes limited government above all else, this political philosophy doesn’t lay out a consistent view of the state’s role in society. Instead, it views the state as one tool, among many, that can be used to promote prosperity congruent with traditional Christian values.
At the same conference, however, a very different version of National Conservatism is espoused by prominent Republican politicians. When Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Josh Howley took the podium at the conference’s 2021 iteration, the audience’s attention was drawn away from visions of a traditionalist American society, and toward a single, amorphous boogeyman: the left. In their keynote addresses, this triumvirate of the populist right detailed how the elite forces of academia, journalism, big business and the Democratic party have merged into a woke cabal that threatens the existence of America as we know it. This view resorts to reductionist, Trump-eseque rhetoric that overlooks the various-and often diametrically opposed-interests of these disparate groups. However, it was massively successful at riling up the like-minded crowd.
Therein lies the appeal of National Conservatism as articulated by its most visible proponents. It does not provide a coherent governing agenda, but a playbook of maximalist rhetoric that reliably invigorates the Republican party’s Trumpian base. Broadening the jurisdiction of the state, National Conservatism creates new enemies for the Republican party. It focuses on the idyllic ends of a virtuous Christian society and isn’t concerned with a consistent strategy for achieving it. Thus, proponents of this ideology can accuse all opponents of conservatism-from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Mark Zuckerberg-of being complicit in a scheme to corrupt the moral foundations of the country.
While National Conservatives bemoan the economic decline brought on by business-friendly politics, they are conspicuously scant on solutions. In his keynote, Marco Rubio called for “a capitalism that creates jobs-American jobs-that allow Americans to get married, own a home, raise a family in a safe neighborhood… and leave their children better off than themselves.” Yet, his depiction of an ideal American economy was not buttressed with policy proposals to achieve it. Beyond calls to break up big tech, National Conservative politicians eschew economic policy for state-backed social conservatism. Economic populism is central to their rhetoric but is absent from the legislative agenda. Meanwhile, their calls for abortion restrictions, anti-trans bathroom bills and race-blind revisionism to history curricula echo the demands of the establishment Republicans they constantly disparage.
The figureheads of the National Conservative movement spend so much time railing against the dangerous leftist elite that they neglect to detail how they would change the modern politics that they profess to despise. For its proponents in power-from Carlson to Cruz-National Conservatism is little more than a rhetorical veneer on the same material politics as the Hannity-Reagan wing of their party.