Julia Weber
Staff Writer
Amid a polarized culture, the conservative movement has rapidly gained popularity throughout the United States with not only an increased audience, but a changing one.
Conservative commentator Kimberley Strassel delivered the morning lecture at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in the Amphitheater on the subject of this new movement in conservatism and what its potential implications could mean for the future of the United States.
Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and writes the weekly political commentary column “Potomac Watch.” She was initially invited to speak by Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, and the group partnered with the Institution to bring her to the Amp stage for Week One’s “Themes of Transformation: Forces Shaping Our Tomorrow.”
During her lecture, Strassel spoke about the changes she has observed in the U.S. political climate, as well as the evolution of the conservative movement and Republican Party.
“Americans, but also Europeans, in enormous numbers, have come to believe the government is fundamentally broken in the most basic ways; that it is incapable any longer of tackling and managing the big problems out there; that politicians no longer do their jobs; the government has lost sight of the people it’s meant to serve; that major institutions are no longer trustworthy and that nothing less than sizable shock is going to drag the government out of this stultifying autopilot that it has been on — in their minds — for far too long,” Strassel said.
While she has noticed these changes not only in the United States, but in Europe as well, Strassel has reported on the federal government and the U.S. political climate for 30 years and has never seen bigger problems of “structural and human nature” until now.
“We have not done ‘serious’ in D.C. in a very long time,” she said.
Strassel explained that she sees America’s political climate as less of a continuum and more of a pendulum in which the country’s political leanings swing back and forth — to the political right and left — over time. She argued that while this pendulum behavior is normal, the polarization seen as a result of the two-party system is born out of frustration with government dysfunction.
“My argument is that that polarization is actually a symptom of the wider government dysfunction, not the cause,” she said.
To Strassel, the pendulum swing toward the conservative movement is indicative of a reaction to what she views as government overreach, but also a feeling of “supreme dissatisfaction with government and a profound feeling that government is failing.”
Strassel offered an array of examples, on both sides of the political aisle, of government failing to meet the needs of constituents, and said that while many voters may not know the specifics of these failures, they feel the inadequacy of the system all the same.
“People might not know all these specifics, but they feel it,” she said. “They feel this brokenness.”
To Strassel, both parties are noticing this issue but are addressing it in different ways, and with different proposed solutions.
“If you’re seeing a theme here, (Democrats) are recognizing too that things are broken, that people feel ignored and that rather than engage all day long in demagoguery and finger-pointing, we need to be coming together to figure out how to fix and provide some real solutions,” she said.
“By the way, this is why we debate as Americans,” Strassel said. “Because sometimes — sometimes — people do find a position, a place where they can agree on things and then we move together in a better way forward.”
She partially attributed the rise in conservatism to how popular President Donald Trump is for his unconventional approach to politics and his commitment to following through on his promises. But, although Trump’s personality and approach to government were attractive to voters who were disillusioned by nonfunctional government, Strassel believes the shift toward conservative politics would have happened regardless of whether or not he was on the ballot.
She shared an anecdote from 2015, when she spoke with her father who predicted Trump’s 2016 presidential win.
“He said ‘I’m going to vote for him, millions of people are going to vote for him because he means what he says, he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks and he’s going to make shit happen. And shit needs to happen before it’s too late,’ ” said Strassel.
“That is the attitude of many, many Americans out there. The reality is true, that Donald Trump saw that moment for what it was, and he’s fully capitalized on it,” she said.
She argued that the conservative party is becoming branded, in her eyes, as “the effective party, the get-it-done party,” and it is a driving factor in how the movement is gaining traction and making an impact on American politics at the state and federal levels.
According to Strassel, the conservative movement is lending an ear to voters who feel disenfranchised by politics that do not represent their interests or lived experiences. In doing so, the movement has attracted a strong base of Americans who “have felt alienated as well in the political movement (and) ignored.”
Strassel provided the example of federal-level focus on student loan forgiveness. She said that for many working class and blue-collar families, college is out of the question; as a result, these voters don’t feel represented because the issue of student loan forgiveness does not affect them.
“That message really resonates across a lot of the country, that feel that many people in the Oval Office have not even been hearing them or talking to them in a very long time,” she said. “It’s got folks intrigued, and it has become one of the reasons you see more people registering as Republicans and moving over to that cause.”
She pointed to the changing demographics of the conservative movement and Republican Party as being indicative of not only the changing popularity of the movement, but also of a change in who each party represents.
“The promises that the conservative movement are making are shuffling entire voting classes in some really dramatic ways, creating the making of a broad and potentially pretty powerful coalition,” Strassel said.
She cited changes among geographic, economic and racial groups in voting trends during the past presidential election.
“This is a very disparate coalition,” said Strassel. “But, again, if you talk to these people, there’s a theme behind it. They voted that way because they wanted to see the change, they wanted to see things get done.”
She said that while, at face value, this seems indicative of a powerful coalition of unified voters, she is already noticing splintering in the movement between figures who lean more toward traditional conservative ideals and emerging figures who value economic populism.
“We’re already seeing a portion of the conservative movement that is operating under what I believe is a mistaken philosophy that (if) a little bit of something is good, a whole lot of it must be a lot better,” she said.
While Strassel sees populism within both political parties, she said what truly unites American voters right now is a shared dissatisfaction with how the federal government is being run. She said voters across party lines “want serious politicians who are going to stop abdicating their responsibilities and work again.”
“Not politicians pointing fingers and bringing impeachments and doing 24/7 TV hits and endless Congressional investigations, but doing the jobs that we do every day — i.e. working hard to fix a problem,” she said.
Strassel ended her lecture on an optimistic note, expressing hope for voters across the aisle to come together to address concerns and find solutions for the country’s most pressing problems.
“Americans believe in America, and they want things to get better. That is simply a deeply ingrained American value that has always been present,” she said. “Even in sour times, it never disappears.”
She expressed hope that citizens will work together to address some of the nation’s most prescient concerns in innovative, forward-thinking ways without the confines of political party affiliations or labels.
“No party out there has a monopoly on tapping into that desire, and my personal hope is that both sides begin to recognize this feeling that is out there, (to) try to step back and understand what’s really motivating people to go to the polls, what’s driving today’s shift and today’s political realignment — and to figure out that path to success, investing a lot more time into addressing those concerns and solving practical problems, a lot less into drama,” she said.
“Much as we see here in Chautauqua, a lot of very big, serious ideas, very little drama,” Strassel concluded.
