Daily Caller: George Hawley, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama and author of the new book “Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism,” talked with The Daily Caller this week about the Trump phenomenon and how it is affecting the conservative movement.
“The conservative movement would be in serious decline even if Trump had stayed out of this race,” Hawley told TheDC. “The movement simply does not know what to do in a world where big business is allied with the cultural left, secularism is on the rise, changing demographics are weakening the GOP’s base of support, there is no evidence that regime change and democracy are panaceas for terrorism, and we have economic problems that won’t be solved with another tax cut.”
In his opinion, Trump’s candidacy has merely exposed the already-present weaknesses of the conservative establishment, particularly GOP voters’ lack of concern for its continued health.
“All the major figures of the conservative intelligentsia denounced Trump and the public responded to their critiques with indifference. This demonstrated that huge numbers of voters, even those who regularly vote Republican, simply do not care about the conservative movement. Trump showed the world that the conservative movement is a Potemkin village. Or to switch metaphors, it is an army with many well-compensated officers, but very few grunts,” Hawley said.
…That ideological vacuum could be filled by a number options, according to Hawley’s estimation.
“Some will try to reassert the old conservatism, or a more progressive variation of the old conservatism. Others will push for a libertarian approach. Some will openly embrace some kind of white identity politics,” he remarked.
