Considering Political Identity: Conservatives, Republicans, And Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump strode to the podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as the iconic bass riff from "For the Love of Money" thumped un-ironically in the stuffed ballroom. He was a late addition to the list of CPAC speakers, and the surprise drew an overflow crowd, the largest in conference history. "Some people got to have it" was the last line the O'Jays' Eddie Levert sang before the volume faded. "You're hired," someone screamed. Trump thundered that he was called to campaign because the country had become "a whipping post for the rest of the world." The nation was a global "laughing stock." His speech was full of standard stump Trumpisms. The world was "screwing" America. The nation's leaders were too "weak" to negotiate with the chief offenders: Mexico, China, India, and the OPEC nations who would, he predicted, charge seven to nine dollars per gallon of gas "within a year or two." "We have nobody that calls up OPEC and says," Trump complained, "'That price better get lower, and it better get lower fast.'" What the country needed was someone "well acquainted with winning," a nonpolitician who "fairly but intelligently earned many billions of dollars," an alpha dealmaker who knew all the key players, someone to "rebuild our country," a leader to make the nation "great again."¹ The Washington Times praised Trump's showmanship as well as his appeal to conservatives. Trump pressed "most of the buttons required for a candidate to satisfy the economic, national defense and social conservative strains in the GOP electoral coalition."²

There was only one discordant moment amid this "frenzy of approval." When Trump told the crowd he wished the nation had better leadership, someone yelled "Ron Paul." Trump leaned into the microphone and declared that Ron Paul could not get elected, and, for a few moments, the crowd of conservatives divided against itself, some booing lustily at Trump, some booing lustily at Paul's supporters. It was 2011, after all, and the "Ron Paul Revolution" had not yet ended.³ Rand Paul had yet to be elected to the Senate, and, for that matter, neither had Ted Cruz, who introduced Trump as a "conservative" to that rowdy crowd.

Trump road-tested lines that upended American politics in 2016—"Remember the old days of General MacArthur," "I'm the king of building walls," China is "taking our jobs big-league," "We either have borders or we don't," "Our country is a total mess," and, of course, "Make America great again"—at CPAC in 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Trump's appeal to conservatives in 2016, however, was thick with discordant moments. Although he bested a crowded field of Republican candidates, many self-identified conservatives were slow to rally to his presidential campaign.⁴ National Review published a lengthy "Against Trump" issue,⁵ the Republican Party leadership did not endorse him, and the vast majority of noteworthy Republicans did not participate in Trump's nominating convention in Cleveland.⁶ After rumors of a mass walkout circulated, Trump backed out of CPAC in 2016.⁷ In the end, however, conservatives sided en masse with Trump over Hillary Clinton, and, in so doing, they may have changed the meaning of conservatism. Trump returned to CPAC in 2017 as a conqueror for what he called "conservative values."⁸

A conventional suspense movie dénouement sets a tense scene in which legal authorities are foiled by dozens of people dressed to resemble the suspect. The confusion is massive and hilarious; nobody can tell who is a criminal and who is an impostor. A ubiquitous bowler's hat disguises the actual art thief in The Thomas Crown Affair; the worker's jumpsuit conceals the real bank robbers in Inside Man; white carnival masks transform a crowd into a recognizable freedom fighter in V for Vendetta. Faced with such criminal hijinks, the cops' quest to separate criminal from citizen and legality from illegality is rendered foolhardy by their inability to distinguish one person from the next. Historians of American conservatism can, I speculate, sympathize with the...