The Right Right

American conservatism has been a remarkably unstable thing since the end of the Cold War. Twenty years ago, the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush and the hawkish foreign-policy views of the neoconservatives were ascendant. A little less than ten years ago, the right was supposedly in the midst of a “libertarian moment,” and the Tea Party’s only rival appeared to be a high-minded and technocratic “reform conservatism.”

Then came Donald Trump. He campaigned in 2016 as a right-wing populist, neither libertarian nor technocratic and certainly not what Bush Republicans would consider “compassionate.” Unlike Bush and the neoconservatives, who went to great lengths to brand themselves as faithful successors to Ronald Reagan, Trump cared little for the appearance of continuity. Conservative intellectual orthodoxy no longer mattered, so a number of politically unorthodox thinkers began to make arguments for a new right.

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