Discussions about degrees of conservative purity are always lively, and now the rise of Donald Trump has set off the age-old principles-versus-pragmatism debate in earnest. Should we face reality and unite behind a candidate who is not one of us but who can stop Hillary Clinton? Or should conservatives try the Phoenix Strategy: Sit out 2016, let the GOP crash and burn, and then rise phoenix-like from the ashes to capture the GOP and dethrone Hillary in 2020?
As conservatives wrestle with the principles-versus-pragmatism question, we can be sure of two hard realities, and neither of them bodes well for a conservative revival in 2020.
First, as things stand now, those of us on the right will be no further along in solving the principles-versus-pragmatism dilemma in 2020 than we are now. The problem is not with the principles but the practice. It is not difficult to get conservatives to agree to principles such as those drafted by the Young Americans for Freedom in the Sharon Statement of 1960. Belief in a transcendent moral order as the basis for liberty, the superiority of free-market economics, limited government constrained by the Constitution, and opposition to totalitarian systems such as communism are central to the conservative worldview.
The problem for conservatives occurs when we have to put those principles into practice within the constraints of practical politics. Conservatives have principles, but we do not have a long-term strategy comparable to the left’s “long march through the institutions.” The strategy of Cultural Marxism drove leftist ideas into our cultural institutions over several decades, and the success of that strategy is evident to any conservative who browses through a child’s history textbook, watches television, or listens to the rhetoric coming out of the DNC.
