From the Mencken Club: THE FUTURE OF THE RIGHT: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

One of several voices that are worth considering.

If conservatism inc. does begin to disintegrate, what challengers on the Right could take its place? One possibility is there will be no replacement, because no rival to the conservative establishment will acquire the resources and media connections necessary to replace it. These long entrenched opinion-shapers still dispose over massive financial and media backing; and it’s not at all clear that any rival could muster comparable resources. In some Western countries, like Canada and Germany, the Right has shrunk to near non-existence, and any attempt to revive it has been met with cries of “racism” and “fascism.”

In this at least imaginable American future without a Right, some token opposition to the Cultural Marxist Left will remain but mostly as a meaningless place-marker. This neutered Right in all likelihood would provide a constant diet of Max Boot, Rich Lowry, David Brooks and Ross Doutat, and I doubt anyone in this room would be able to read this pap without losing his dinner. A friend told me about how a gathering of conservative dignitaries sponsored by an organization headquartered in Indianapolis turned into a therapy session for those who were panicking that someone might identify them, however remotely, with the Altright. One of the most frightened attendees was the young owner of a website that claims quite implausibly to speak for “the people.” It is at least conceivable that conservatism in the future will be dominated by such wusses. Watching an ad run by Fox-news multiple times every night celebrating October as LGBT Month, I had to ask myself whether the conservative movement could rise to even higher levels of misrepresentation. The answer of course is an emphatic yes.

And then there is this unpleasant possibility: If a future Right starts out looking different from conservatism, inc., it might be ultimately forced to rely on the same donor base as the one that now funds the official conservative movement. Defense industries, Las Vegas casino owners who are Middle Eastern super-hawks, the pro-immigrationist and pro-amnesty Koch Brothers, the gay-rights promoter Paul Singer and liberal media that will only deal with a domesticated opposition, may turn this Right into the spitting image of its predecessor. I have to think about this when I consider the prospects for adventurous websites like Daily Caller or TV personalities like Tucker Carlson, who try to chart an independent course within the conservative movement. How long will they be able to continue this course, before their patrons and the movement’s ideological censors come down on them for straying too far from party lines?

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But I’m assuming hypothetically that some group on the independent Right can make it over the hurdles. And for the sake of argument, let’s imagine this Right looks markedly different from the one we now have. From whence will it come and who will support it? Quite possibly, no one group on the now marginalized Right would be able to unify all the competing factions. This alternative Right might find itself in the same position as the anti-Communist opposition to Soviet-controlled dictatorships in the 1980s. Groups that were brought together by a common tyranny began to compete for power as the occupying empire withdrew. Would paleolibertarians, the Alt-Right, and what is left of the Old Right suddenly come together in a sacred union with the weakening of their shared enemy? More likely, different groups on the Right would vie for public attention; and even conservatism, inc. might survive, as one of several alternatives being marketed as “conservatism” or “the Right.”

What I’m suggesting as a possible future is a free market of right-wing ideas in place of the sclerotic democratic centralism that presently characterizes the conservative movement. Given our present situation, I’d find nothing objectionable if this were indeed our future. In fact given the relative powerlessness of outsiders on the Right, what I’m outlining may look like a dream. But for any of this to happen, two preconditions must be met. The conservative movement must begin to come unglued from internal contradictions; and another Right must be able to crash the party (for certainly it won’t be invited in) with sufficient resources to become a media force. Unless these things happen, any repeal and replacement of the conservative establishment will remain beyond our reach.

Let me however close on this upbeat note. I applaud those who labor to improve the American Right properly understood; and I am pleased they have not yet abandoned themselves to despair. Their labors remind me of a line from the golden oldie movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which the youthful Jimmy Stewart tells the corrupt Senator Payne, famously played by Claude Raines: “the lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.” I know everyone in this room believes that. I certainly do.