David French’s conservative credentials are impeccable.
An evangelical “constitutional litigator” and former columnist at the National Review, French is strongly anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-campus protests (predating the current war in Gaza), pro-war when it comes to the neoconservative reshaping of the Middle East, and anti-Prince (the recording artist) because he supposedly replaced religion in people’s hearts.
At the National Review, he wrote things like this:
I’m confused. When arguments over gay marriage raged, there were theologians who assured us that Jesus was gay. Now he’s transgender? And all this coming from a movement that also seems committed to arguing that a divine Jesus is no more real than the mythical Flying Spaghetti Monster?
And yet, this past Sunday, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. He says it’s not because he agrees with her on most issues, but because he’s hoping Donald Trump’s Republican Party crashes and burns, creating the opportunity for something new to emerge.
In his op-ed for The New York Times, French justifies his endorsement this way:
The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn’t to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life.
Let’s not quibble about his idea of a conservative political party being a “force for genuine good.”
But I have also been deeply considering what a post-Trump Republican Party might look like.
Here’s what we know: MAGA is a world of grifters, and they celebrate each other’s grifting. Remember, for instance, that then-President Donald Trump pardoned former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was indicted for swindling Trump’s own fans out of millions of dollars that had been raised to supposedly build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
MAGA grifters include gun-rights extremist Kyle Rittenhouse, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk (who is now helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote program), consultant Roger Stone, Republican National Committeeman David Bossie, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, influencer Jordan Peterson, election-denying attorney Kurt Olsen, pillow salesman Mike Lindell, Senate candidate Kari Lake, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, former Trump body man John McEntee, self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, Donald Trump Jr., former prosecutor Kimberly Guilfoyle, as well as everyone in this article about a recent right-wing effort to stoke panic and raise cash around a mythical “Disease X,” among other grifters. Add Donald Trump to that list, even if his current grift is less to amass money and more to amass power.
Here’s my prediction of what happens to the Republican Party after Trump loses this year: Everyone on that long list of MAGA diehards has seen Trump use the power of grift to amass cash and power, and they want in on the action. We know that already. Thing is, though, these are all horrible people, and horrible people don’t play nice with each other. Trump is a unique force, mostly able to keep that hornet’s nest from turning on itself. But take him out of the equation? It’ll be a free-for-all. Every one of those names above and more (can’t forget former Fox News host Tucker Carlson) think of themselves as movement leaders, especially when such leadership translates to dollars. And yet none of them—not even Don Jr.—have the heft to inherit Trump’s kingdom. It will splinter.
David French dreams of that collapse and of the resurgence of a conservatism “that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion, and defends our foundational constitutional principles.” Will he get that reborn Republican Party, one that readmits the disaffected conservatives at The Bulwark, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, and the growing list of Never Trumpers?
Perhaps.
But it’s just as likely that something even worse emerges. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the modern conservative movement, it’s that they always manage to find a new bottom to hit.