George Will On How Trumpism Became Republican Dogma

my next guest here tonight has spent decades writing about the evolution let's call it of the republican party his latest book displays a collection of his astounding work that closely examines america's experience including this from june of 2017 what an innocent time it was compared to now quote today conservatism is soiled by scowling primitives whose irritable gestures lack mental ingredients america needs a reminder of conservatism before vulgarians hijacked it and a hint of how it became susceptible to hijacking well back with us again tonight pulitzer prize winning conservative columnist for the washington post george will author of this new book american happiness and discontents the unruly torrent 08 to 2020 and george i want to begin right back with the quote i just read the hijacking of the party what in your view made it susceptible made it so ripe for a hijacking and then some a hostile takeover uh the republican party by one way of looking back on it folded faster than the afghan army that's a cruel but accurate way to put it brian when conservatism began to grow after the second world war it began with a book by a man at the university of chicago richard weber titled ideas have consequences and by the 1970s the man who became my very best friend senator pat moynihan of new york a democrat said something astounding has happened the republican party has become the party of ideas it was a bookish party buckley's gotten men at yale russell kirk's uh the conservative mind now fast forward do you remember the 2020 just 14 months ago the 2020 republican platform it's a trick question because there was no 2020 republican platform the platform such as it was said we will continue to support enthusiastically the president's america first agenda and any attempt to amend the 2016 platform will be ruled out of order that was essentially the party saying let's be candid this is a cult of personality we will believe what the president tells us we believe that question is how did a party that was the party of ideas in the 1970 hollowed out i think the answer is that it began to despair of arguing its case that's because it's case the case of conservatism is not that easy to argue it says there are principles and they are that we can't do everything at once that government is limited therefore limited in what it can do for you it can do much but not everything it's a hard message to sell but conservatives the conservative position is let's be the people who will say the difficult things and they just got wary of it and gave up when they turned themselves over to an entertainer let's talk about a quote that i call uh the dr phil factor in uh the american presidency uh this is on page 69 of your vote of your book all modern presidents of both parties have been too much with us talking incessantly they have put politics unhealthily at the center of america's consciousness promising promiscuously they have exaggerated government's proper scope and actual competence making the public perpetually disappointed and surly inflating executive power they have severed it from constitutional constraints to the audience playing our home game if you had alliteration for 60 you're among our winners tonight but to george will the author of that superb paragraph george i saw this happen in real time i guess with the arrival and advent of the clinton administration they were having almost daily events very crafty use of uh media time and attention for kind of customer service items the small stuff of american life that eventually writ large became the stuff of the executive actions i believe you're writing about in here that's exactly right but people say it's a shame that the presidents have usurped congressional power to which the answer is if only they had to use serpent congress under both parties has been all too willing to hand over their on a silver tray their power to presidents of both parties but it's become particularly bad under a conservative president because conservatives used to say it is very important that we understand that public opinion should be refined and filtered through representative institutions until it is made temperate and reasonable instead conservatism has bought into what is the reverse of conservatism which is populism the belief that public opinion should be translated directly and as fast as possible by presidents into policy without reference to other institutions furthermore the idea that mr trump has had and the republican party in its continuing loyalty to him has ideas is simply a mistake as evidenced by the non-existent 2020 platform the the republicans today and in a sense that democrats participate in this also happiness is defined by them as the unhappiness of the other team just as long as they're going through a kind of performative politics striking poses uh owning the libs uh disciplining the conservatives it the american people want things but a fair number of them who are setting the tone of our politics simply want to have their grievances acknowledged and their disparagement of the other side articulated it's very hard to take that kind of conception of politics and turn it into legislation how do you write a law that does justice to the resentments people feel or want to have ratified this is not politics as normally understood it's not transactional it has no way of being formulated into an agenda it's a kind of peculiarly empty politics and its emptiness they try to compensate for by its volume and its by tuperativeness it's a very discouraging moment [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 294,193

Keywords: Brian Williams, trump, trumpism, george will, conservative, republicans, gop, donald trump, trump gop, politics, us news, news, msnbc

Id: YOu8c-3OFc0

Length: 7min 11sec (431 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021