The fiasco Friday, with President Trump bullying and insulting Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, is one of the worst diplomatic incidents in U.S. history. It mortifies me as an American and a conservative — and especially as someone who, reluctantly, voted for Trump in the 2020 and 2024 general elections.
 The fiasco in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, 2025. |
I voted for Trump because he aspires to reverse lax border controls and to dismantle the administrative state (agencies of the executive branch that write, judge, and enforce their own laws), progressive educational institutions, racial preferences, and "woke" gender ideology.
But Trump 2.0 has in just over a month pushed me, a traditional conservative, to agree with Democrats on many key issues: that Russia began the war against Ukraine and must be defeated, that America needs free trade, a strong NATO alliance, anti-bribery laws, press freedom, an independent judiciary, and federalism. Additionally, I trust vaccines, mistrust cryptocurrencies, and respect the 2020 presidential election result.
These differences with the Republican Party find me, after 48 years as a loyal member, now a political independent. How did we get here?
The person of Donald Trump is not the answer: He is who he is. Rather, the cause lies in Republicans choosing him three times as their leader. How did a historically staid party associated with boardrooms and country clubs shun conventional politicians in favor of an immoral, greedy, litigious, egocentric, inconsistent, instinctive, and vulgar outsider?
In brief: The story began in the turbulent mid-1960s, when radicals rampaged (Chicago, 1968), following which liberals went too far left (George McGovern) and became too soft (hostages in Iran for 444 days). Those excesses and weaknesses spurred the morning-in-America reaction led by Ronald Reagan, a resounding conservative success that prompted Democrats to move back to the center, adopt the Third Way, and elect Bill Clinton as president.
Underneath the seemingly placid 1990s, however, a reinvigorated left repudiated that centrism and spoiled for a fight. The Battle of Seattle served as its spectacular coming-out party in late 1999. Seemingly out of nowhere, some 40,000 anti-World Trade Organization demonstrators battled law enforcement and took over much of Seattle's downtown. A year later, the bizarrely close 2000 presidential election led to liberal rage against George W. Bush (what Charles Krauthammer called "Bush Derangement Syndrome"). Barack Obama's two presidencies then confirmed the Democrats' leftward turn.
 The "Battle of Seattle" of late 1999, when tens of thousands of leftist activists protested a World Trade Organization meeting. |
The right responded with uncharacteristic fury, as first manifested by the Tea Party movement. Significantly, the intellectual David Horowitz criticized conservatives for being too polite and portrayed himself "as a former radical [sent] to conservatives to teach them bad manners," meaning, adopt the methods of leftist activists. Electoral losses by two achingly moderate Republican presidential candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona in 2008 and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in 2012, fueled the frustration, setting the stage for the immoderate Trump.
Trump uncannily articulated the Republicans' medley of anger, contempt, and radicalism. In House Speaker Paul Ryan's formulation, Trump "heard a voice out in this country that no one else heard." The Make America Great Again base came to adore him and consider him a four-dimensional chess genius, following him wherever he took them, no matter how uncouth ("Grab 'em"), puerile ("Little Marco"), corrupt ($Trump), false ("stop the steal"), disturbing (Jan. 6, 2021), imperialist (Canada, Greenland, Panama, Gaza), unprincipled (Ukrainian metals), or un-conservative (big government, huge deficits). MAGA loyalists cheered him for breaking taboos, violating norms, and infuriating opponents. They even rejoiced when he was convicted as a felon.
For his part, Trump grew into his role of their near-deity, evolving from an amateurish china-shop bull to a seasoned, highly skilled, and determined strongman. Foiled by "the adults in the room" during his first administration, he now demands and receives obeisance to his overweening persona. He refers to himself as "king" and flirts with an unconstitutional third term. His flood-the-zone tactic overwhelms opponents and opens the way potentially to acquire powers unprecedented in US history.
"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 19, 2025
–President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/IMr4tq0sMB
This perilous moment raises questions about the future of angry conservatism. I expect MAGA will go too far, slashing budgets with chainsaws rather than scalpels and weakening the United States internationally. Its radical agenda will collapse with relatively few accomplishments. Conservatives will look back on the whole interlude as an embarrassment of disorder, excess, and cult of personality.
I predict that abnormality and failings will burn out the revolutionary mood now dominating the Republican Party. MAGA will not last another decade, after which manners will return, along with ethics, constancy, expertise, and principles.
In the meantime, this conservative remains a resolutely unaffiliated independent.
Daniel Pipes worked in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Mar. 1, 2025 update: I almost agree with this.
