Erica Grieder: The Conservative Case for Hillary Clinton – Texas Monthly

5 comments on “Erica Grieder: The Conservative Case for Hillary Clinton – Texas Monthly”

1. I remain open to further arguments along these lines, but this one leaves me unmoved, except further disappointed and annoyed at the effort. “Psychologically stable” — unserious, ad hom. “Toddler-type state of mind” — same; and while I hope conservatives urge Trump to corral his language, his effective neutralizing of unfair and untruthful arguments is of incalculable value to our politics, the blueprints to the Death Star. Case in point: debate-ending, low-class-surrender name-calling like “bigot.” Every conservative who’s earned the name is already a bigot.

   “Clinton is less risky” — no mention of SCOTUS except that Clinton “has at least heard of the Constitution” = unserious, ad hom, and that “Republicans should have thought about that before settling on Trump as the man to oppose her in November” = lie down and give up. How rousing.

   “Clinton is more conservative on key issues” like “trade” — what about other issues, which Trump’s supporters find more urgent and important, like immigration? Again, unserious. The smart set’s stupidity on immigration trumps Trump’s stupidity on trade (& most everything else).

   “Clinton is a Democrat” is the Hamilton Rule restated, which I find a potentially interesting line of argument, if only someone would follow the argument through: what does rebuilding look like once we’ve lost SCOTUS for a generation? Conservatives had the last eight years in the wilderness, and the support early on of the Tea Party successes, and their best idea was…a third Bush? The intellectuals don’t pay their promissory notes. They need to put up the security of a serious plan for a way forward.

   While poorly argued, the arguments all contain valid points. But they are all secondary. The reasons for Trump’s support are the very ones ignored in pieces like this: status quo is not desirable (or, for that matter, conservative); GOP doesn’t deserve a presumption that it’ll make everything all right after a Hillary tenure — its recent track record instead earns it the burden of proving what fundamental changes will accomplish, and how it means to do so.

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2. Thanks, TK. I’ll have a reply later. Not sure yet whether I’ll do it as a comment or a post.

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3. Thanks for responding here, rather than Twitter, Tim.

   A primary feature of any presidential election, and I think especially of this one, is the difficulty of speaking about any aspect of it in isolation from much larger questions, which range from the bases of personal and collective identity to the action of great historical forces to the nature and purposes of politics. I’ll try to confine myself as much as possible to your argument as you state it, point by point, but I suspect the strain will show, and I see no alternative to “going long” on this response.

   In your dismissal of Grieder’s “conservative case,” you move initially to some comments meant, apparently, to express your “annoy”-ance:

   “Psychologically stable” — unserious, ad hom. “Toddler-type state of mind” — same; and while I hope conservatives urge Trump to corral his language, his effective neutralizing of unfair and untruthful arguments is of incalculable value to our politics, the blueprints to the Death Star.

   Both here and in your response to “Clinton is less risky,” you apply the common mis-characterization of personal criticism as “ad hom.” Invoking the “ad hominem” fallacy here is inappropriate in two ways.

   The form of an ad hominem argument is “this argument is wrong because these people whom we all dislike believe it.” Indeed, your last statement on the term “bigot” is much closer to the actual fallacy – something like “Because this argument is often made by the enemies of conservatives it is untrue or repugnant.”

   More to the point, for someone arguing on behalf of Donald Trump or in favor of supporting him (perhaps two different things) to be criticizing anyone for engaging in insulting or “low class” language or “unfair and untruthful arguments” is risible. Whatever else a vote for Donald Trump may be, a vote for a more temperate or “high class” political discourse it cannot be, unless, perhaps, under some kind of borderline nihilistic “the worse, the better” theory: Is that what you’re advocating? Is that the meaning of the second part of your statement on Trump’s “incalculable value”?

   “Incalculable” seems a telling choice of words here: How is an observer supposed to “calculate” accurately the effect of… whatever exactly it is you believe Trump has accomplished or is accomplishing? Which “untruthful arguments” are we to expect no longer to have force as a result of Trump’s conduct in this campaign? By what mechanism is this alteration in attitudes and mores supposed to take place? How will conservative support or opposition, or Trump’s success or failure, affect the judgment – if judgment of something “incalculable” is possible for us mere mortals at all?

   You at times seem to be suggesting that, by himself engaging constantly in bad arguments, or by constantly reversing himself, or by constantly misstating or inventing facts including in attempted self-defense, Trump somehow exposes the falseness of contemporary political discourse in general. So, for example, his surrogates are now saying that, in seeking disqualify a judge on the basis of the latter’s ethnicity, Trump is turning leftist identity politics against the left and exposing their evil.

   The notion of voting a satire into office, or selecting a fool for king in order to bring down the monarchy, does not strike me as a conservative political notion – or a responsible or patriotic one. I’d like to think it too contrived and self-contradictory to be intended seriously by a mature, self-styled “conservative,” but, in light of the above and other comments you’ve made on Twitter or at the New Reform Club, I have to wonder if that’s not the underlying theory of your case for Trump.

   We don’t know each other very well. I wonder if over the last few years, you have moved to an authentically radical, reactionary, and revolutionary position that qualifies as “conservative” only by historical affiliation, not by any intrinsic “conservatism” regarding national governance or political affairs.

   I’m not yet sure what you mean to suggest, however. In other words I’m not sure what type of “Trump supporter” you really are. If you instead believe we are seeking a comparatively “better” person to become President of the United States of America, so are making a choice that doesn’t reduce purely to program or ideology, then the question of the character of the individual to be entrusted with executive power is not some unusual or trivial or in any way inappropriate question. It is an ancient question. It was a question of great concern to the American Founders and Framers. It has often been considered a conservative question – not least since overly privileging the ideological, and ignoring questions of character and virtue, has been typically considered an ill of the progressive left.

   It goes without saying that voters for better or worse seek to formulate and act upon judgments about the kind of person seeking high office. Strauss pointed out that this assumption is an unacknowledged classically “aristocratic” element of our mass democratism. We seek an outstanding person for the office – a war hero, an experienced legislator, a particularly well-spoken and thoughtful individual – rather than “just anyone.” Jefferson hoped we’d exploit the talents of our “natural aristocrats.”

   Of course, lacking perfect, trustworthy information about the private lives of politicians, voters have always had to satisfy themselves with making a statement about character or the kind of character they would like in a leader. At the same time, it is thought to speak well for a party or cause that it attracts “good people” or the best person.

   The question of “stability” is independently important, for reasons that Grieder partly outlines, given the powers of the American presidency, and the pressures to which the American president is subjected. If we lack a truly heroic or wise candidate, it is incumbent upon us – or some of us might take it as obligatory – to make an at least safe choice.

   To return to the Grieder and her case, she makes a strong argument regarding the public characters of Trump and Clinton. You do not address it on its own terms, and instead dismiss it as somehow improper and demeaning, then stand on that conjecture about an attribute of Trump’s campaign that seems, as discussed above, to rest on Trump’s evident lack of virtue.

   You next turn to Grieder’s argument about Clinton’s conservatism on some issues. Grieder gives an example of one issue on which Clinton is demonstrably more “conservative,” by recent policy definitions, than Trump. You’re right that she ignores immigration and the Supreme Court. More on the latter in a bit, and perhaps we can discuss both issues in relation to this election at another point, but I believe Grieder is arguing here under the general proviso that Trump cannot be trusted at all: Any issue positions he takes should not be taken very seriously – and we have extraordinarily plentiful evidence, with new exhibits added daily or more often, supporting this conclusion.

   Considering the very good chance that Trump will not win, the question before you is also more complex than what positions you think he, compared to Clinton, might be more likely to realize as policy – or in the form of appointments to the Supreme Court. We may or may not differ about the odds of his winning, but all that is certain today is that as a political matter Trump and his positions are now understood to represent the Republican Party, which is still understood to be the “conservative” party in the United States. I consider this predicament terrible for principled conservatism in America. I think every step further in this campaign on its present course, even today with Republican officials North, East, West, and South desperately seeking distance from their nominee while still endorsing him, deepens the damage.

   One does not have to agree with everything one’s candidate says and does in order to vote for or endorse him or her, but every issue discounted in that process is a potential advantage you have ceded to the other side. On matters of ethnic discrimination, coherent economic and fiscal policy, national security, and the precepts of our constitutional and liberal-democratic order, the question may soon be whether the political damage to conservative credibility will be reparable in our lifetimes. (This argument is the basis for a prudential argument or argument from conservative self-interest against supporting Trump.)

   As for whether or not you find Grieder’s or my arguments “rousing,” why should we consider it our obligation to be “rousing”? Maybe the political situation is in fact very bleak for American movement conservatives, at the moment. Maybe, not to put too fine a point on it, you screwed up royally, and are paying the price now for years or worsening error. Maybe a period of grieving by the survivors for the death by mass self-poisoning of the American conservative movement (as we knew it) would be more becoming. Maybe, at least, you’ll have to find the “saving power” somewhere else other than in a national campaign for and under the man who is destroying that movement.

   Which brings us to:

   …what does rebuilding look like once we’ve lost SCOTUS for a generation? Conservatives had the last eight years in the wilderness, and the support early on of the Tea Party successes, and their best idea was…a third Bush? The intellectuals don’t pay their promissory notes. They need to put up the security of a serious plan for a way forward.

   At this rate, you are very likely to “lose SCOTUS for a generation” regardless of whether movement conservatives lend their support to Donald Trump. Were he to win, they would still have a political problem even beyond his personal trustworthiness: To say nothing of the real harms to the nation and the world, conservatives would risk association with a disastrous presidency. In that case, in relation to recovery from the current crisis in American political conservatism, the only thing worse for you than having supported the loser Trump would be having supported Trump the winner. You might not just “lose SCOTUS” for a generation, you might lose everything, in classically tragic fashion continuing your movement’s recent course of engineering the political apocalypse you’ve been trying to warn people about.

   I’m sure you’re familiar with the “doctrine of holes.” How are you supposed to start “re-building” when you’re still shoveling away at the bottom of the pit you’ve dug?

   The reasons for Trump’s support are the very ones ignored in pieces like this: status quo is not desirable (or, for that matter, conservative); GOP doesn’t deserve a presumption that it’ll make everything all right after a Hillary tenure — its recent track record instead earns it the burden of proving what fundamental changes will accomplish, and how it means to do so.

   Whatever else the above might constitute, it is not a conservative position. The “preference for the status quo” is the sine qua non of “conservatism.” The conservative presumption is that none of us is in a position to judge the “status quo” objectively and totally against its by definition non-existent alternatives. Appreciating the complexity of human affairs, constituted prior to and beyond “politics,” the conservative never promises to “make everything all right.” That is a utopian notion.

   The situation before, during, and after a “Hillary tenure” will be mixed, and the conservative will not look primarily to the political system, or to politics at all, for solutions to ills that run deep in culture or to the eternal predicament of life on Earth this side of the eschaton. Maybe the problem all along has involved those seeking from the GOP, and therefore from partisan politics, that which conservatives know, or used to know, is never to be found there.

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   • First, let me resist the binary that “you’re either for or against Trump,” at least for purposes of this discussion where we’re evaluating more than just a particular act in the voting booth. I don’t like much of Trump’s word choice, but Trump would not exist without the toxic, uncivil media and political environment we have today, full of double standards against people of a non-leftist point of view. (And yes, I’m operating in a bigger tent than just “conservatives” at this point in our political history.) Yes, this puts us in a “relativist” way of looking at things, which is discomfiting for me as a conservative. But from that perspective, Trump presents a possible way out of the leftist dead end. To square that with a more objective, the-ends-do-not-justify-the-means perspective, I have to assume that Trump’s media tactics can be cleaned up so they are not objectively distasteful and yet still effective. I think they can, but I grant that it’s debatable.

     But to be clear: no, I am not saying that lying or being gross is justified because the left does it too. I believe those are not the essence of his media strategy and that strategy, that incredibly effective strategy, could be cleaned up and made defensible and still quite effective.

     As for your line of argument based on “responsible” government, we have different priors. My assumption is that the reigning leftism in American government today is destructive and must be stopped. Fairly typically conservative. I also contend the destructive effects are imminent and becoming irreversible. Maybe I’m on the alarmist side, but still basically conservative. I gather from your comments, on the other hand, that you think we have a good long while to go before there is anything to be really alarmed about, even to the point that losing the Supreme Court would not be irreversible. I disagree. That is why I would risk a President Trump: not because I want “to bring down the monarchy,” but rather because I want to save it before it’s too late. A Hail Mary play is radical on the opening drive, but perfectly rational and conservative in the dwindling seconds of the fourth quarter. (For that matter, if I were to insist on my own priors – rather than acknowledge our respective priors are disputed – I could argue that you are trying to “bring down” what’s left of our constitutional republic by supporting Hillary, even if she will “safely” bring it down. For that matter, I do not believe it worthy to talk about the “safe” way to bring our own liberty to an end.)

     As for Trump’s policies, I will stipulate that he doesn’t have a core of values. Again, I make no secret that conservatives have a terrible choice in front of them. The way I approach it is this: I have to assume that I have no idea what Trump will do on any given issue, with the exception of those he’s made a big fuss about, like immigration, which he could not fail to carry through without a major blow to his ego, which he would not abide. But conservatives have a mediating force in the Congress, and so were Trump to go full left on a particular issue, conservatives would have about as much chance in thwarting it as if Clinton were in office. And obviously, a 50% chance that Trump will go left on an issue is better odds than Clinton offers.

     As for protecting the GOP brand, I am pretty open about being a Republican, but I find less and less about it to defend. I’ve come around to the view that one of the biggest issues facing our country – cyclic government dependency – will never be fixed in the regular course of accounting adjustments (probably by design), and that it must instead be addressed by immigration policy (also likely left unfixed by design). Thus, I see immigration as a sui generis issue, a threshold before any other problem can be meaningfully resolved. Until then, GOP credibility will continue to dissolve with ever more promises that will go unfulfilled because no one lacks the will or ability to stem low-skilled immigration to a country that already can’t take care of its low-skilled citizens. I think Trump has a point here that criticizing his “tone” rings hollow when he’s been willing to grab the third rail and hold on.

     You say: “The “preference for the status quo” is the sine qua non of “conservatism.”” That is too facile. No one seriously argues that conservatives cannot criticize the welfare state or the alphabet-soup bureaucracy, which have been status quo for over a generation. Besides, what conservatives mean by “status quo” doesn’t control while we’re on a leftist trajectory. There is no “status quo” on a freeway onramp – and we’ll soon be on the highway to disaster. What I am interested to know is: what is there about the credibility of the GOP as it exists today that is worth such deference as to yield to the speculative concern that Trump would substantially harm it? And what will the GOP’s capital buy after a Clinton tenure when it has bought so little to date? Most people hate both parties, and I’m starting to agree – the GOP too consistently confuses defending markets with defending business, and is often too anemic a defender of life and religious liberty. Are we to believe the GOP could have made its big move and gained major victories if only Trump would get out of its way?

     Again, I do not and cannot argue that the best reasons supporting Trump are typically “conservative” ones, except to the extent that one believes, as I do, that we don’t have another quarter to play and our best move left to play is, in any other circumstance, a very poor one. For that matter, the arguments against Trump make conservatism sound like an argument for managed decline.

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     • Sorry for the delay in replying, Tim: Other business got in the way. I also found myself writing and discarding some comments expanding uncontrollably on my prior comment and climbing toward the thousands of words.

       I think the following statement of yours gets at the core of our disagreement:

       As for your line of argument based on “responsible” government, we have different priors. My assumption is that the reigning leftism in American government today is destructive and must be stopped. Fairly typically conservative. I also contend the destructive effects are imminent and becoming irreversible. Maybe I’m on the alarmist side, but still basically conservative. I gather from your comments, on the other hand, that you think we have a good long while to go before there is anything to be really alarmed about, even to the point that losing the Supreme Court would not be irreversible. I disagree. That is why I would risk a President Trump: not because I want “to bring down the monarchy,” but rather because I want to save it before it’s too late. A Hail Mary play is radical on the opening drive, but perfectly rational and conservative in the dwindling seconds of the fourth quarter. (For that matter, if I were to insist on my own priors – rather than acknowledge our respective priors are disputed – I could argue that you are trying to “bring down” what’s left of our constitutional republic by supporting Hillary, even if she will “safely” bring it down. For that matter, I do not believe it worthy to talk about the “safe” way to bring our own liberty to an end.)

       The language of “must be stopped,” “irreversible,” “too late,” “to an end,” in the context of a rejection of “responsible” governance at all, is absolute – or “radical,” whether spoken in the first quarter or the final seconds of the game. Whether or not is “irrational” at any given time or in any particular situation is a different question. Some teams are better suited to make up some deficits than others. Generally, the nearer the game is to an end, the less irrational such radical premises will seem.

       As far as politics and human affairs in general go, however, there are no true “irreversibles” as long as there still are politics and human affairs. We are not, in fact, playing a simple game heading into the final minutes, after which we’ll look into getting on with our lives. We are talking about the most complex and open-ended process of all, one in which every action inspires resistance and produces counter-action.

       This law of nature applies to your position as well, in many different ways. Among other things, it encourages and strengthens the position of those on the other side who also treat political conflict as “zero sum” and final.

       The general transformation of American movement conservatism from loyal political opposition to internal enemy camp, fighting a civil war at least in its own mind for the eternal soul of America, by any means necessary, seems clear in this casting of political differences between so-called liberals and so-called conservatives, or between Democrats and Republicans, as a fight for liberty versus enemies who “must be stopped” before it is “too late.” It’s part of what I mean when I referred above to movement conservatism’s death by self-poisoning.

       To switch back to your metaphor, the problem or one problem may be that the American Right, at least as a national movement, made Hail Mary-ing an integral part of its game plan years ago, helping to produce its current predicament.

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