Anti-Trump Conservatives Are Still Reactionaries
The health care debate shows how Anti-Trump conservatives don’t care about policy
As the past few weeks have shown us, Hillary Clinton may not have been the most agreeable candidate for those on the left, but there are some core structural reasons for leftist to still strategically vote for Democrats in Federal races. The most often brought up reason is the left-right balance on the supreme Court, as well as other judicial appointments, such as judges for the various Appeals Courts across the country. If that is not enough, there is the ever present reality that Republicans are just so fucking terrible that anything done to push back on them must be done.
There is another phenomenon that has shown itself in the Trump era, something that was very present during the Bush administration among the center-left coalition: the flattening of ideological discourse as an opposition party. Basically, take whoever you can get to be on your side because we need to have a popular front to oppose the bad guys. During the Bush administration this would manifest itself as leftists aligning themselves with explicitly centrist and free-marketeers as a way to find some kind of strength in numbers against someone like George W Bush.
This flattened discourse is alive and well in 2017. Liberals, in particular, are prone to this trend, as evidenced by the rise of the #resistance conservative being fawned over by your MSNBC obsessive friends. Look at a figure like Bill Kristol, a truly magnificent failure of moral clarity who never found a war he didn’t support, or Jennifer Rubin, another hawk who has always been deeply supportive of the Republican establishment. Both of these neo-conservatives have been embraced by #Resistance Twitter, constantly doing spots on MSNBC, the ostensibly left cable network.
A figure who has gained an immense amount of traction from this phenomenon is another Neo-Con who many of us hadn’t heard of until recently, maybe because for much of his adult life he was acting covertly for the CIA, an agency not exactly known for openness and transparency. I am speaking of Evan McMullin, generalissimo of the Never Trump brigade. After a successful public relations stunt in the form of a failed presidential campaign, McMullin has been welcomed into the world of #Resistance with open arms.
This week, after a groundbreaking level of support among the most powerful and popular Democrats in the Senate, Bernie Sanders unveiled his Medicare for All bill, the Senate version of the long standing bill by Rep. John Conyers. The time is ripe to make a stand for Medicare for All, as Democrats need a signature piece of legislation to energize the base for the upcoming 2018 midterms and the Republicans can’t whip votes to repeal Obamacare. This legislative void calls for action.
What did McMullin of the #Resistance order have to say about Medicare For All? “When populists of the far-left rise on the promise of free college and free healthcare, who will stand for liberty?” he opined on Twitter this Wednesday. Apparently this is a question of liberty and freedom, a question of amorphous principles, rather than the material conditions for people. To the conservative mind, these principles are of paramount importance to the actual results of the policies enacted. The privilege of a career at Goldman Sachs will do that.
By entertaining these kinds of people as allies, we are implicitly supporting their world view. By so vociferously attacking the notion that people shouldn’t go bankrupt for being sick, McMullin is highlighting the reason why these “Republican moderates” are allying themselves with partisan Democrats so aggressively. It is not that they disagree with Trump’s policy or worldview, but rather a question of the packaging and process.
This predilection for process arguments is why liberal centrists have been so drawn to figures like McMullin from the start of the Trump era. Centrist incrementalism is an ideology built primarily on arguments for process, for the status quo, and for materially detached wonkery. Instead of trying to build a “bipartisan” coalition that hands power to the reactionaries with better media training like McMullin, liberals must join with leftists to push the debate towards issues that actually affect people’s lives. Medicare For All may just be the way to do that.
Ben Udashen is a writer, teacher, and musician in Seattle, WA. You can follow him on here on Twitter
