What 'conservative' and 'liberal' mean in 2020

Stephen H. Provost is the author of three books on the Trump presidency, including his latest, Jesus, You’re Fired!, available now on Amazon.There have been plenty of different definitions of “conservative” and “liberal” over the years.

---

To some people, liberals are the counterculture advocates who demanded free speech areas on college campuses in the 1960s. To others, they’re the opposite: Trigger-warning obsessed champions of political correctness and shaming. How can they be both?

On the other side, it’s common to group conservatives into two or three camps: fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and defense hawks. And some of these things don’t seem to work well together, either. For example, if you want government to stay out of people’s personal affairs, you can’t very well be in favor of restricting how they have sex — at least not without being hypocritical. I’ve often said Republicans want government out of your wallet and in your bedroom.

But there are other ways of defining these terms, too. My father, a political science professor, offered this (which I always thought was pretty good): Conservatives like things the way they are, and liberals want to change them.

I’ve always thought that was a pretty good way of explaining things. It was broad enough to apply in a number of different contexts, but it was clear enough to make sense.

The third outlook

But my father also threw a third definition into the mix: One that neither party uses, but one that’s needed to complete the picture. If liberals (and progressives) are moving forward, or progressing, and conservatives want to maintain the status quo, there should naturally be a third group that wants to go back in time. And indeed, there is. My father called them reactionaries.

Most Republicans today would describe themselves as conservatives, but many of them are actually reactionaries. First and foremost among them, their leader: Donald Trump. Even his slogan, Make America Great Again, speaks not of preserving the status quo, but returning to a “golden age” he believes was better than what we have now.

Confederate symbolism is a nod to a time long past, and Trump seeks to preserve it. He talks of suburbs as though they’re bastions of an all-white middle-class, as they were in the 1950s and ’60s. These aren’t conservative values, they’re reactionary dreams.

So the Republican Party, despite all its talk of conservatism, has been largely reactionary since Trump hijacked it. It’s even pursued a level of voter suppression not seen since the era of racial segregation.   

Yet they still call themselves conservatives.

Here’s one explanation that, while different from my father’s, still explains things broadly yet clearly. Clearly, the Republicans are wanting to conserve something. But what? The answer is: power. It’s been slipping away from them gradually, over the past three decades, and they’re going to increasingly greater lengths to preserve it.

They’ve maintained their relevance through a combination of factors: They’ve made strategic moves, they’ve taken advantage of outdated mechanisms such as the Electoral College, and they’ve had some sheer blind luck (Supreme Court justices being appointed during Republican presidencies).

Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election is, primarily, an exercise in denial for the sake of preserving his ego. But his supporters’ willingness to go along with it stems from a real fear that they’re losing their grip on power.

It’s a fear that verges on paranoia, which is never entirely rationale — and it isn’t in this case, either. In our free and fair two-party system, there’s always been a tendency to get tired of one side if it’s in power too long. On top of that, if something goes wrong during one party’s time in power, there’s only one other alternative.

Double-edged sword

But Republicans have, unwittingly, hurt themselves by closing off this second option for many people.

A number of independent and moderate Democrats who once considered candidates from the opposite party on a regular basis now see Republicans as too extreme for them to take that chance. “Reagan Democrats” famously helped propel the 40th president to the White House; by contrast, there are precious few “Trump Democrats.”

Meanwhile, after traditional candidates (John McCain, Mitt Romney) failed to win the 2012 election, they turned to Trump, who abandoned attempts to lure moderates and independents in favor of a base-only, reactionary model. His base insulated him from criticism that would have toppled earlier presidents, but it alone wasn’t large enough to carry him to victory in 2020. Because of this, he — and the party — had to return to tactics of voter suppression practiced during the segregation era.

Granted, the Democratic Party has changed, too: It’s become more broadly liberal than it was back then. But if “conservative” today means trying to maintain power, it’s natural to suggest that “liberal” might mean trying to disperse it. And that, it turns out, is what the Democratic Party has been trying to do: disperse power traditionally concentrated in older white male hands among a broad selection of people and groups.

They’ve done so through legislation but also through expanding voting access through initiatives such as motor-voter, mail-in ballots, drive-through voting, etc. COVID-19 made all these options desirable as a health precaution, but Republicans fought against them tooth and nail because they were a threat to the party’s conservative stance on maintaining power.

These days, that’s what conservatism is really about: Maintaining power.