Cheer up, conservatives

Steve Prestegard

Aug 1

After losing the 1960 Republican presidential nomination to Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater had a bracing message for his sulking supporters: "Grow up, conservatives."

Charles C.W. Cooke has a different message for the same audience:

For a few weeks now, I've been trying to determine the shape and meaning of the amorphous reflex that has been rattling around my brain whenever I engage with contemporary politics, and, at long last, it has come to me in the form of an injunction: "For God's sake, Republicans, Cheer up."

Honestly. Could we not get some optimism back into the Republican Party? Over the last few years, the American Right has become so unbearably, habitually, self-indulgently depressing — morose, even. It's all panic, all the time. In speech after speech, the United States is cast as a disaster area, full of "American carnage" and backsliding and moral decay. The past is cast as a utopia; the present as a trip on Flight 93; the future as a crapshoot. Nine, ten, eleven times a day, I am asked by too-online edgelords if I know "what time it is," as if, rather than living in the greatest country in the world in the greatest time in history, I am living in Poland in the summer of 1939.

Well, I'm not. I reject the premise. America has many problems, yes. And, as my readers will have noticed, I'm not shy about pointing them out. But when, exactly, did we not have many problems? There is nothing particularly special about our time: Human nature is still human nature, progressivism is still progressivism, we are still obliged to battle in defense of the perdurable truths. If Ronald Reagan could be upbeat and patriotic and confident in 1980, then the rest of us sure as hell can be in 2023. As observers from the future, we know that, after the washout that was the 1970s, everything eventually worked out. But those who lived through that terrible decade didn't know it would. At the start of Reagan's first term, inflation was at 14 percent, mortgage rates were at 13 percent, unemployment was at 8.8 percent, and the Soviet Union — a monstrous tyranny that hated America and all it stood for — had 30,000 nuclear missiles pointed in our direction. That Reagan remained upbeat despite these challenges — and that the electorate responded to this act of trust — was a testament to the man and his coalition, not a reflection on the slightness of the challenges that they faced.

As an immigrant who is unironically "in love with the United States," my tolerance for the Right's habitual dejection is beginning to wear thin. I do not recognize the description of a conservatism that has "conserved nothing" and that has won "no battles" — for a start, look at the rise of school choice, at the end of Roe, at the rise of domestic energy production, at the diminishment of the tax burden at the federal and state levels, at the restoration of the Second Amendment and the expansion of the protections of the First, and at the end of affirmative action — and I do not recognize the characterization of the United States as a withered-out husk of a nation that is on the verge of becoming a banana republic. I look around and I see an open, wealthy, innovative, fun country that will survive and thrive if it sticks to its creed. Can it? As usual, that will depend on whether the conservatives are up to the challenge.

The Democratic Party is, quite literally, in despair. Measure it how you want — look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here — the data show that progressives are joyless, neurotic nihilists, which is probably what attracts them to their joyless, neurotic, nihilistic philosophy. For the sake of the United States — and of conservatism itself — conservatives ought sedulously to avoid suffering the same fate. One desolate political party is quite enough in a country that has only two major parties — and, besides, optimistic Republicans can convince voters to their side and win elections. In politics, as in life, happy people attract others; despondent people drive them away. A GOP that chooses to imitate the Democrats' relentless anguish is a GOP that will decay.

Who, among the party's current crop of presidential candidates, seems cheerful and optimistic? I can think of just one: Tim Scott. Donald Trump is an all-caps narcissist whose last major act was to try to stage a coup. Ron DeSantis successfully played the "Morning in America" card as governor of Florida, but now sounds increasingly Nixonian. Nikki Haley is yearning for a paradise lost. Chris Christie is angry with everyone, including himself. Mike Pence would perhaps like to be upbeat, but the Trump-shaped albatross around his neck will not permit it. It's remarkably off-putting.

Naturally, I write only for myself here, and I do so with the open acknowledgment that I am not your average voter. I moved to the United States twelve years ago, and I have disliked every single president that the country has produced since. I disliked Barack Obama. I disliked Donald Trump. I dislike Joe Biden. That the two leading choices for 2024 seem to be Trump and Biden is incomprehensible to me, as is the peculiar behavior of the GOP's second-place option, and the self-segregating tendency of the party more broadly. Looking at the polls, I feel like Michael Bluth in Arrested Development, looking at Ann Veal and asking George Michael: "Her?" Looking at the messages that are coming out of the right, I feel as if I need to start bulk-ordering Valium. This is America, damnit. Start acting like it, guys.

The gloom isn't just among Trump supporters, but among Trump opponents like Charlie Sykes. Scott indeed is the most Reaganesque candidate out there, but whether he can beat Trump for the nomination and beat Mumbles Biden and his cheating apparatus remains to be seen.

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