AMAC Exclusive – By Aaron Flanigan
During a panel at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month hosted by the California-based Claremont Institute, one of the nation’s leading conservative think tanks, a group of self-styled “America First” legislators and political thought leaders discussed the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
With discussions centered around a recent book, Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right After a Generation of Decay, the panel consisted of leading Republican lawmakers like Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY). Conservative intellectuals and influencers Michael Anton, Matthew Peterson, and Jeremy Carl also contributed to the discussions.
Vance, the first main speaker of the event (after a set of introductory remarks by Claremont’s Arthur Milikh, the editor of Up from Conservatism) left the audience with three key takeaways: (1) elected representatives must remember who they serve, and that American politics should be oriented toward “the lived experiences” of the voters rather than closed-door intellectual discussions in Washington; (2) conservatives shouldn’t be afraid of wielding political power for the betterment of their country and communities rather than capitulating to a flawed understanding of “limited government”; and (3) conservatives have to be less “ideological” and willing to build alliances and make compromises when necessary and appropriate.
Vance pointed to this year’s train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, as a key example of the failures of our nation’s political ruling class—observing that the derailment was just a symptom of a much broader political problem.
“This train crash was just another in a long line of leadership [failures] that kicked these people in the teeth,” he said, particularly following decades of setbacks from the effects of globalization. Even following the derailment, Vance continued, bureaucratic factors made it far more difficult to get Ohioans the help they desperately needed.
“I think the sacred tenet of conservatism is to remember who we serve, and to defend the people who actually make our communities what they are—not to defend railroad companies,” Vance stated. “Is it really our job to defend the railroads and not the people who had a chemical explosion set off in their community? If that’s your attitude about what’s going on in this country, then I think you’ve got a very screwed up notion of American conservatism.”
Vance also decried establishment Republicans’ refusal to wield government power for the betterment of the people they represent. “Isn’t it common sense that when we’re given power, we should actually do something with it?”
Rather than focusing on trimming down the government, Vance said, conservatives should instead focus on making it “more responsive to the will of the people”—particularly in the wake of the left’s weaponization of law enforcement agencies against conservative voters and its political opponents. Rather than simply calling for the Department of Justice to do less in our public life, Vance suggested, conservatives should appoint individuals who “actually take a side in the culture war—the side of the people who elected us—and not just pretend we don’t have to take sides at all.”
Vance concluded his remarks by reiterating the need for conservative officeholders to “get out of the abstractions and into the real world” and “focus on things that actually matter”—and to respond actively to the needs of the voters who sent them to Congress in the first place. “This is not a high-class debating society—this is the United States Congress, and it ought to actually respond to the people who give it all of its authority,” he said.
The event’s first panel, titled “Moving Up from Failed Conservatism,” featured Anton, Carl, and Peterson, and focused on ways the American right can work to improve its trajectory in the short term. Speakers proposed ideas like working more intentionally to take back the moral high ground from the left, as well as a wide slate of border security policies that could help to restore American sovereignty and fend off the left’s radical cultural agenda.
In his remarks, Peterson emphasized that the U.S. economy has become “a political and cultural warzone,” and that the right must not hesitate to treat it as such and become more diligent in resisting the tides of wokeism wherever they may appear.
The event’s second and final panel gave Reps. Babin, Bishop, and Hageman a chance to assess the right’s effectiveness in the House. Topics on the panel included the direness of the border crisis, the importance of Republicans using their House majority to effectuate real and lasting conservate change, and ways to hold the Deep State accountable—including by, in the words of Hageman, holding federal employees personally responsible for violations of the First Amendment and other constitutional overreaches, among other ideas.
The event concluded with a brief set of remarks by Rep. Banks, who urged the audience to remember that the right is now engaged in a “war” to preserve America’s status as the greatest nation in the history of the world. He finished, however, by signaling optimism for the conservative movement heading into 2024—stating that the “chaos” of some of the Republican Party’s internal fighting over the last year, as well as actions of the party’s freshman members like Vance, Hageman, and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), “are a sign of the new GOP winning.”
Banks concluded by saying, “Republicans are starting to fight back like we haven’t fought back before… and we’re going to keep doing it over the next year, so that after 2024, we have a chance to end and win this war for America once and for all.”
Ultimately, Republicans like Vance, Babin, Bishop, Hageman, and Banks are slowly but successfully leading the congressional GOP out of the establishment mold that has for too long hindered the party’s ability to effectively represent its constituents. With groups like the Claremont Institute at the forefront of the right’s intellectual movement, conservative voters have many reasons to be optimistic for 2024 and beyond.
Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right After a Generation of Decay can be purchased here.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
