So close, yet so far away
Trump was an inevitable result of the conservatives reverting to form. The cold war tamped down their fascist adjacency, but it was inevitable that they would get here.
Last Thursday (August 14, 2025), at The Bulwark, their writer, JVL (Jonathan V. Last)[1] penned the daily Triad newsletter "Was Trump the Inevitable Endpoint of Conservatism?" (sorry, it is a pay-walled article, but a link to a PDF is here)
An interesting thesis, the distillation of many comments from articles and videos that they have published, was that there was a straight line from Ronald Reagan to Trump, and that once the Republicans started down that path, Trump was the inevitable end game.
Instead, this newsletter was taking a slightly different tact, that the "rational" conservatives that many of the Never Trump staff at The Bulwark pine for as lost due to the use of Trump was really the aberration. Ultimately that "conservatism" in the US was always more than a little Fascist (or Fascist adjacent).
From the post:
This isn’t the first time we’ve worked this corner, but as Trump’s fascist takeover becomes more obvious it’s worth talking about it again. Because it’s really three questions:
1. Is there a straight line from Reagan to Trump?
2. Or did the left goad conservatives into embracing Trumpism?
3. Or is Trump less about left and right and more about America itself?
Mr. Last concedes that the seeds of Trumpism do have some basis in the plantings of Reagan, but he argues that it is a path that squiggles. Ok, sure, I guess.
I don’t think so. You can connect Reagan to Trump, but it’s not a line—it’s a squiggle.
There are some obvious commonalities: The Southern strategy which began with Nixon, for example, leads pretty directly to Trump’s revanchist populism. But other aspects diverge: Reagan’s anti-communism and the conservative belief in the American-led global order, for instance, run counter to Trumpism. In that respect, you could draw a straighter line to Trumpism from the isolationist movement of the late 1930s and early 1940s, which modern conservatism rejected.
What I’m saying is you can pick certain traits of Trumpism to show that “conservatism” was always going to end with something like Trump. But that’s neither the fullest nor most meaningful understanding of how we got here.
And by “here” I mean: the place where “conservatism” is now fully coincident with authoritarianism in both popular understanding and practice.
All good, and it is encouraging that he recognizes that the "Southern Strategy" (aka appeals to racism) is a contributor to this evolution ("revanchist populism", my ass). He then goes on to zoom out and extrapolate something that I am familiar with, the evolution of the anti-vax phenomenon, something that was mostly contained in the "crunchy" left (Marin County California was a hot spot when I was active in the anti-anti-vax communities on Facebook[2],) but that shifted because of Covid, and now it is almost a completely Republican/MAGA/MAHA phenomenon. Alas many of the far left AVers jumped the narrow gap of the horseshoe to go full MAGA.
This leads Mr. Last to this argument, worth the large pull:
And this is where I think I pretty much land on the question of old-guard conservatism’s culpability for Trumpism.
There are aspects of modern conservatism that made it vulnerable to authoritarianism and of these the biggest is probably the political alliance it forged with the post-Confederate South. Race sits at the foundation level when it comes to explaining why conservatives were willing to go along with Trump.
But this tipping over of the Republican party and conservatism wasn’t inevitable. It was contingent on other factors and the biggest of those was the fact of Trump becoming a viable presidential candidate running explicitly on the promise of being a strongman. Once authoritarian-curious voters saw that this was a thing they could actually have, they flocked to him.
There is plenty of blame for conservatives and Republicans who chose to collaborate with the authoritarians. There were institutional and ideological failings both in the conservative movement and the Republican party that made them weak in the face of Trump’s authoritarian attempt.
But if Trump was inevitable, then the real fault lies with . . . America.
This, I think is the crux of the matter. The insanity and idiocy of MAGA was always part of America, going back to its founding. And in the podcasts, Mr. Last admits that his priors had two major blind spots: he never realized how entrenched racism was in the Republican party, and that he failed to notice how much antipathy to women were in his "tribe."[3]
I have listened to many of the discussions (alas, they are usually part of The Secret Podcast that you have to subscribe ($$$) to hear - bummer) between Mr. Last and his partner in crime Sarah Longwell, where they mostly take opposite sides.
The day after this newsletter was posted, they went into the discussion, and that was where Mr. Last admitted those two blind spots.
They then went round and round, arguing whether it was Democrats or Republicans, and thus the long discussion around the Republican mantra of dominating women. The Trad-Wife influencers, the manosphere, the Jordan Petersen effect, JRE, and the like.
This was centered around the rise of the young male voters who flocked to Trump, under the promise that the Republicans will make women subservient to men, keep them out to the workforce, and get back to the "greatness" of when women had much fewer rights. (Yes, that noise you hear is my eyes rolling into the back of my head)
With the recent posting by Pete "Kegs"heth of a video of pastor Doug Williams, a rabid White Christian Nationalist leader of his church who advocates taking the vote away from Women, it is clear that the Republican party has become aligned to the Christian Nationalist movement. (The video is pretty abhorent)
There was some back and forth, but in the end JVL conceded that he was blind to the white hot rage that his former conservative tribe has to the equality of women.
Oh, so close, but so far away
Thus far, I have merely been interpreting and filling gaps, but I was waiting for Mr. Last to make the final connection. The through-line, the connective tissue so to speak. But, alas, he didn't make the leap.
Ultimately, this is why I am letting my subscription lapse (besides saving $100 a year), because they get so close to the point so often, but then they revert back to form, blinded by their priors.
The banter between Longwell-Last was focused on "... well the parties have changed, and back in the early 1980's it was much more bi-partisan ..." yada yada yada.
But to me, the premise of this shift wasn't that the Republican trajectory from Reagan to Trump was a straight line. It was that "conservatism" in America, from the beginning was that straight line, and that the 50 or so years that mark Nixon to Trump were a relative aberration in the trajectory of American conservatism, and that with Trump, it is reverting to the historical norm.
There are a few points to make here. Prior to the Civil Rights Act, both parties, Republicans and Democrats had conservative and liberal factions. I have read the Rick Perlstein books (worthy reads, all of them) [4] that charted the 50's through the 80's and the Southern Strategy that began pulling all the conservative Democrats into the Republican party, and with that, the southern racists.
That is a big factor.
Second was that in the aftermath of WWII, after FDR and the New Deal began re-ordering society, the conservatives were seething, but the cold war, and the communist threat kept their authoritarian and oligarchical traits at bay to unite with the liberals to fight the Soviet threat.
If you binge a lot of the run up to WWII like I have been doing lately, there was a large fashy cohort in the US, operating under the German Bund, and "America First" (sound familiar) banners, who thought Hitler was on to something.
They never went away, but they parked those tendencies, peeking out only rarely with forays like the John Birch Society.
No, there has long been a strong thread of photo-fascism in American conservativism. But until the sorting that happened in response to the Southern Strategy, they were not only in one party.
That's what gets me yelling under my breath as I listen to the podcasts, both Sarah and JVL seem wrapped around the axle of parties. But it is not party (although it is now) but conservatism.
But that isn't the net-net of this session, I want to focus on the loathing of hatred that the current Republicans, and conservatives to women. Mr. Last admits that this is a blind spot, and the rabid misogyny that MAGA is running with.
Mr. Last is a Catholic. Not a recent convert like JD Vance, but a believer in the teachings, but a cradle-to-grave Catholic.
It is this faith that blinds him. I mean, you can count the number of Popes who have been women with one hand and have five fingers left over...
The hatred towards women in religion is not a new thing. In fact, much of the last 5,000 years has been men subjugating women in the name of God.
If you read my review of Wild Faith by Talia Lavin, the subjugation of women is front and center in their worldview.
Geoff Anderson
Alas, once Reagan opened his kimono to the Religious Right, giving them access and cover, that is the straight line from Reagan to Trump. No squiggles, no zigs.
Straight fucking line.
And now, as if on cue, The Lincoln Project has this piece on the rise of White Christian Nationalism:
Robert S. McElvaine
1 - The only reason I subscribe to The Bulwark is to read JVL, and I am not renewing because they are becoming rather trite
2 - That is one thing I miss from circa 2015 Facebook. Those people who are anti vax are fucking nuts.
3 - I will add that JVL claims to not be a Republican, never was a member of the Republican party, and has voted across party lines. But he did identify as conservative (small -c) leaning.
4 - Before the Storm, Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland. All are outstanding, read them in that order and you will see patterns and familiar characters that are the throughlines
