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      The Ohio Primary and the Return of the Republican Civil War

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      Why has the Ohio Republican Senate primary, which reaches its conclusion Tuesday, been so interesting (if not always edifying) to watch? In part, because it’s the first time the divides of the party’s 2016 primary campaign have risen fully to the surface again.Six years ago, under the pressure of Donald Trump’s insurgency, the G.O.P. split into three factions. First was the party establishment, trying to sustain a business-friendly and internationalist agenda and an institutionalist approach to governance. This was the faction of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, much the party’s Washington D.C. leadership — but fewer of its media organs and activists.Those groups mostly supported the more movement-driven, True Conservative faction — the faction of Ted Cruz, the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus, talk radio. This faction was more libertarian and combative, and richer in grassroots support — but not as rich as it thought.That’s because Trump himself forged a third faction, pulling together a mixture of populists and paleoconservatives, disaffected voters who didn’t share True Conservatism’s litmus tests and pugilists who just wanted someone to fight liberal cultural dominance, with no agenda beyond the fight itself.When Trump, astonishingly, won the presidency, you might have expected these factions to feud openly throughout his chaotic administration. But that’s not exactly what happened. Part of the establishment faction — mostly strategists and pundits — broke from the party entirely. The larger part, the Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Nikki Haley camp, essentially ran policy in the early Trump era — passing tax reform, running the national security bureaucracy, bemoaning Trump’s tweets while setting much of his agenda.The movement faction, Tea Partyers and TrueCons, was given personnel appointments, the chance to write irrelevant budget proposals, and eventually a degree of personal power, through figures like Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. (Trump clearly just liked the Freedom Caucus guys, whatever their ideological differences.) The populists, meanwhile, won some victories on immigration policy and trade, while complaining about the “deep state” on almost every other front.But because both the TrueCons and the populists delighted in Trump’s pugilism — even unto his election-overturning efforts in 2020 — it could be hard to see where one faction ended and the next began. And this pattern often held in Trump-era Republican primary battles, in which candidates with TrueCon or establishment backgrounds recast themselves as Trumpists by endorsing his grievances and paranoias.But in the Ohio Senate primary, finally, you can see the divisions clearly once again. First you have a candidate, Matt Dolan, who is fully in the establishment lane, explicitly refusing to court Trumpian favor and trying to use the Russian invasion of Ukraine to peel Republicans away from the America First banner.You have a candidate in the TrueCon lane, the adaptable Josh Mandel, who tried to hug Trump personally but who draws his support from the old powers of movement conservatism — from the Club for Growth to talk radio’s Mark Levin to the political consultancy that runs Ted Cruz’s campaigns.And you have J.D. Vance, who is very clear about trying to be a populist in full — taking the Trump-in-2016 line on trade and immigration and foreign policy, allying himself with thinkers and funders who want a full break with the pre-Trump G.O.P.Given this division, it’s significant that Trump decided to endorse Vance, and that his most politically active scion, Donald Jr., is enthusiastic for the “Hillbilly Elegy” author. It’s also significant that Trump’s endorsement hasn’t prevented the Club for Growth from continuing to throw money against Vance, prompting blowback from Trump himself. For the first time since 2016, there’s a clear line not just between Trump and the establishment but between Trumpian populism and movement conservatism.That line will blur again once the primary is settled. But the battle for Ohio suggests things to look for in 2022 and beyond. First, expect a Trump revival to be more like his 2016 insurgent-populist campaign than his incumbent run in 2020. Second, expect populism writ large to gain some strength and substance but still remain bound to Trump’s obsessions (and appetite for constitutional crisis).Third, expect many of the movement and TrueCon figures who made their peace with Trump six years ago to be all-in for Ron DeSantis should he seem remotely viable. Fourth, expect the remains of the establishment to divide over whether to rally around a candidate of anti-Trump principle — from Liz Cheney to certain incarnations of Mike Pence — or to make their peace with a harder-edged figure like DeSantis.Finally, expect a potential second Trump presidency to resemble the scramble for his endorsement in Ohio: the establishment left out in the cold, no Reince Priebus running the White House or McConnell setting its agenda, but just constant policy battles between movement conservatives and populists, each claiming to embody the true and only Trumpism and hoping that the boss agrees.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Filing Provides New Details on Trump White House Planning for Jan. 6

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      Testimony disclosed by the House committee investigating the attack showed that Mark Meadows and Freedom Caucus members discussed directing marchers to the Capitol as Congress certified the election results.WASHINGTON — Before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump White House officials and members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus strategized about a plan to direct thousands of angry marchers to the building, according to newly released testimony obtained by the House committee investigating the riot and former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.On a planning call that included Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer; Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio; and other Freedom Caucus members, the group discussed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, according to one witness’s account.The idea was endorsed by Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who now leads the Freedom Caucus, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Meadows, and no one on the call spoke out against the idea.“I don’t think there’s a participant on the call that had necessarily discouraged the idea,” Ms. Hutchinson told the committee’s investigators.The nearly two-mile march from the president’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol, where parts of the crowd became a violent mob, has become a focus of both the House committee and the Justice Department as they investigate who was responsible for the violence.Mr. Meadows and members of the Freedom Caucus, who were deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, have condemned the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and defended their role in spreading the lie of a stolen election.Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony and other materials disclosed by the committee in a 248-page court filing on Friday added new details and texture to what is publicly known about the discussions in Mr. Trump’s inner circle and among his allies in the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 assault.Read the Jan. 6 Committee’s Filing in Its Lawsuit With Mark MeadowsThe committee alleged that Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that an effort to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with plans to hold a rally in Washington anyway.Read Document 248 pagesThe filing is part of the committee’s effort to seek the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against it by Mr. Meadows. It disclosed testimony that Mr. Meadows was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent. Even so, he pushed forward with the rally that led to the march on the Capitol, according to the filing.The filing also disclosed new details of Mr. Meadows’s involvement in attempts to pressure Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, over Mr. Trump’s loss there.At rallies in Washington in November and December of 2020, Mr. Trump’s supporters did not march to the Capitol and mostly refrained from violence. But on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump encouraged a crowd of thousands to march to the building, telling them: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.” He did so after the White House’s chief of operations had told Mr. Meadows of “intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th,” according to the filing.Two rally organizers, Dustin Stockton and his fiancée, Jennifer L. Lawrence, have also provided the committee with evidence that they were concerned that a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 would mean “possible danger” and that Mr. Stockton’s “urgent concerns” were escalated to Mr. Meadows, according to the committee.In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Mr. Meadows said Mr. Trump “ad-libbed a line that no one had seen before” when he told the crowd to march, adding that the president “knew as well as anyone that we wouldn’t organize a trip like that on such short notice.”Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony contradicts those statements.She said Mr. Meadows had said “in casual conversation”: “Oh, we’re going to have this big rally. People are talking about it on social media. They’re going to go up to the Capitol.”Police officers resisted protesters outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesA mob of protesters breaching the building.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAnd, speaking about the planning call involving Mr. Meadows and Freedom Caucus members, a committee investigator asked her whether Mr. Perry supported “the idea of sending people to the Capitol on January the 6th.”“He did,” Ms. Hutchinson replied.A spokesman for Mr. Perry, who has refused to speak to the committee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Justice Department and the committee both have been investigating the question of how the crowd moved from the Ellipse to the Capitol.Committee investigators have, for instance, obtained draft copies of Mr. Trump’s speech. This month, they pressed its author, Stephen Miller, a former top White House adviser, on whether Mr. Trump’s repeated use of the word “we” had been an effort to direct his supporters to join him in moving on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying his defeat.Rally planners, such as the prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, also had a hand in getting people to move from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Mr. Alexander, at the request of aides to Mr. Trump, left the speech before it was over and marched near the head of a crowd that was moving toward the building.Joining Mr. Alexander that day was Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy-driven media outlet Infowars, who encouraged the crowd by shouting about 1776.On Wednesday, Mr. Jones revealed that he had recently asked the Justice Department for a deal under which he would grant a formal interview to the government about his role in the events of Jan. 6 in exchange for not being prosecuted.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

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      in Elections

      Trump Found Crucial Support in Congress as He Fought to Stay in Power

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      WASHINGTON — Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone.Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies.Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghue’s cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the president’s case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could “do something” about the president’s claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, left, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., two days after the 2020 election.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe lawmakers — all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.The men were not alone in their efforts — most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically — but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.There was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the pugnacious former wrestler who bolstered his national profile by defending Mr. Trump on cable television; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, whose political ascent was padded by a $10 million sweepstakes win; and Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who trafficked in conspiracy theories, spoke at a white nationalist rally and posted an animated video that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona, left, and Louie Gohmert of Texas spoke at a news conference this month expressing concerns about the treatment of those who had stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThey were joined by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who was known for fiery speeches delivered to an empty House chamber and unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to interfere in the election certification; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a lawyer who rode the Tea Party wave to Congress and was later sued by a Democratic congressman for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry.Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, knew the six lawmakers well. His role as Mr. Trump’s right-hand man helped to remarkably empower the group in the president’s final, chaotic weeks in office.In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Mr. Meadows insisted that he and Mr. Trump were simply trying to unfurl serious claims of election fraud. “All he wanted was time to get to the bottom of what really happened and get a fair count,” Mr. Meadows wrote.Congressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” he said, according to Mr. Donoghue’s notes of the call.Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, promoted several conspiracy theories as he fought the electoral process.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNovemberOn Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.At a news conference later that day, Ms. McEnany delivered the message.“This election is not over,” she said. “Far from it.”Mr. Jordan’s spokesman said that the meeting was to discuss media strategy, not to overturn the election.On cable television and radio shows and at rallies, the lawmakers used unproved fraud claims to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. Mr. Brooks said he would never vote to certify Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. Jordan told Fox News that ballots were counted in Pennsylvania after the election, contrary to state law. Mr. Gohmert claimed in Philadelphia that there was “rampant” voter fraud and later said on YouTube that the U.S. military had seized computer servers in Germany used to flip American votes.Mr. Gosar pressed Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, to investigate voting equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems, a company at the heart of several false conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies spread.Mr. Trump’s supporters protested at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix as ballots were being counted in November 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMr. Gosar embraced the fraud claims so closely that his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, rushed to an airplane hangar parking lot in Phoenix after a conspiracy theory began circulating that a suspicious jet carrying ballots from South Korea was about to land, perhaps in a bid to steal the election from Mr. Trump, according to court documents filed by one of the participants. The claim turned out to be baseless.Mr. Van Flein did not respond to detailed questions about the episode.Even as the fraud claims grew increasingly outlandish, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. Critics inside and outside the Justice Department slammed the move, saying it went against years of the department’s norms and chipped away at its credibility. But Mr. Barr privately told advisers that ignoring the allegations — no matter how implausible — would undermine faith in the election, according to Mr. Donoghue’s testimony.And in any event, administration officials and lawmakers believed the claims would have little effect on the peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump, according to multiple former officials.Mainstream Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Nov. 9 that Mr. Trump had a right to investigate allegations of irregularities, “A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the Republic,” Mr. McConnell said.Mr. Gohmert unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence, center, in an attempt to force him to nullify the election results.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesDecemberOn Dec. 1, 2020, Mr. Barr said publicly what he knew to be true: The Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Biden was the lawful winner.The attorney general’s declaration seemed only to energize the six lawmakers. Mr. Gohmert suggested that the F.B.I. in Washington could not be trusted to investigate election fraud. Mr. Biggs said that Mr. Trump’s allies needed “the imprimatur, quite frankly of the D.O.J.,” to win their lawsuits claiming fraud.They turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Mr. Pence was to officially certify Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Jordan, asked if the president should concede, replied, “No way.”The lawmakers started drumming up support to derail the transfer of power.Mr. Gohmert sued Mr. Pence in an attempt to force him to nullify the results of the election. Mr. Perry circulated a letter written by Pennsylvania state legislators to Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, asking Congress to delay certification. “I’m obliged to concur,” Mr. Perry wrote.Mr. Meadows remained the key leader. When disputes broke out among organizers of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies, he stepped in to mediate, according to two organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence.In one case, Mr. Meadows helped settle a feud about whether to have one or two rallies on Jan. 6. The organizers decided that Mr. Trump would make what amounted to an opening statement about election fraud during his speech at the Ellipse, then the lawmakers would rise in succession during the congressional proceeding and present evidence they had gathered of purported fraud.(That plan was ultimately derailed by the attack on Congress, Mr. Stockton said.)Mr. Trump at the rally outside the White House on Jan. 6. “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he told his supporters.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesOn Dec. 21, Mr. Trump met with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss their plans. Mr. Jordan, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Meadows were there.“This sedition will be stopped,” Mr. Gosar wrote on Twitter.Asked about such meetings, Mr. Gosar’s chief of staff said the congressman and his colleagues “have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches.”“None of the members could have anticipated what occurred (on Jan. 6),” Mr. Van Flein added.Mr. Perry was finding ways to exert pressure on the Justice Department. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mr. Clark, the acting head of the department’s civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movement’s most ardent supporters.Then, after Christmas, Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to share his voter fraud dossier, which focused on unfounded election fraud claims in Pennsylvania.“I had never heard of him before that day,” Mr. Donoghue would later testify to Senate investigators. He assumed that Mr. Trump had given Mr. Perry his personal cellphone number, as the president had done with others who were eager to pressure Justice Department officials to support the false idea of a rigged election.Key Aspects of the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 8The House investigation. More

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      in World Politics

      Radical Republicans Are Not Conservatives

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      The House Freedom Caucus is routinely described as conservative, by its members, by the mainstream media and by Wikipedia. The caucus, which draws together 45 Republican Party members of the House of Representatives, is the furthest to the right of any major political formation in the United States. The most extreme and flamboyant politicians in America, like scandal-plagued Matt Gaetz of Florida and gun-toting Lauren Boebert of Colorado, are proud to call the caucus their political home. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, after threatening to form an explicitly racist “America First” caucus, chose ultimately to continue promoting her nativist, QAnon-inspired beliefs from within the Freedom Caucus.

      By any reasonable measure, the Freedom Caucus and its members are not conservative. Because of their disruptive tactics and rhetoric, their contempt for bedrock conservative values like the rule of law and their embrace of the most radical populist in modern US history, they are more akin to European far-right politicians like those in the Alternative for Germany and Fidesz. Traditional Republicans recognize that the caucus and its members have nothing to do with the party they joined many years ago. Former House Speaker John Boehner, a more traditional Republican, gave an apt description of the caucus when he said in 2017, “They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is.”

      Can the US Really Rally Other Nations?

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      The misidentification of the Freedom Caucus as “conservative” is not the only example of the misuse of this term. At various points over the last four years, Donald Trump was called a “conservative” president. Certain policies, like the dismantling of environmental regulations or the promotion of laissez-faire economics, have also been erroneously called “conservative.” Various media outlets and personalities, from One America News to Glenn Beck, have likewise been mislabeled “conservative.” When The Washington Post tries to rectify the problem by labeling far-right activist Ali Alexander an “ultraconservative,” it only makes matters worse. An ultraconservative should be even more determined to uphold the status quo rather than, like Alexander, trying to undermine it.

      The recent ouster of Liz Cheney from her position as the third highest-ranking Republican in the House has only further muddied the waters of this definitional quagmire. True, Cheney has upheld law and order in defending the integrity of the 2020 election against the revolutionary fervor of the “Trump Firsters” in her party. Prior to her recent stand, however, Cheney herself flouted many of the principles of conservativism by embracing the more radical policies of the Trump-inflected Republican Party, voting with the former president over 92% of the time on such issues as gutting the environment.

      The misuse of the term “conservative” is the result not only of a structural quirk of American politics, but also the evolution of political ideology in the United States.

      The Europeans

      In Europe, multi-party systems allow for greater nuance in political labeling. Thus, conservatives in the various Christian Democratic parties compete for votes against far-right populist parties that embrace anti-democratic, racist and even fascist positions. America’s two-party system, on the other hand, collapses such distinctions into a binary opposition between a single “liberal” and a single “conservative” party. If a faction emerges within the Republican Party, therefore, it is by definition “conservative” even if it so obviously isn’t. It’s as if politics in America is digital — either one or zero — while European politics reflect all the messy gradations of the analog realm.

      At the same time, ideologies have evolved considerably in the United States over the last half-century. “Conservative” once stood for preserving traditional arrangements in society such as family, faith, community and small business against the modernizing forces of the market. Conservatives have also adopted the British philosopher Edmund Burke’s distaste for the Enlightenment project of human rights and egalitarianism. Conservatives were also once conservationists (remember: it was Richard Nixon who, in 1970, created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act Extension).

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Reagan/Thatcher revolution changed all that. Conservatives suddenly became ultra-liberal in the economic sense. They wholeheartedly embraced the free market in their eagerness to deploy any powerful force against what they considered to be the primary evil in the world: big government. They supported laissez-faire economics — essentially, no government controls on the economy — even though unrestrained market forces tear apart communities, break apart families, undermine faith, destroy family farms and sweep away small businesses. But since such a market served as a counterforce to government authority, the neo-liberal conservatives prepared to throw out whatever babies were necessary in order to get rid of the bathwater.

      A further revolution in conservative thought came with the neoconservatives. These foreign policy hawks discovered a fondness for human rights and a taste for revolutionary change, as long as it was in countries the United States opposed. Overthrowing the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, which required a revolutionary destruction of the status quo, became a new addition to the conservative agenda.

      In some respects, Trump attempted to purge the conservative movement of these two newer tendencies through his rejection of both the cherished free trade of the neoliberals and the “forever wars” of the neoconservatives. In their place, the new president reverted to the older right-wing ideology of nationalism, populism and racism of the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s and the America First movement of the 1940s. At the same time, however, Trump retained the allegiance of these newfangled conservatives by slashing government involvement in the economy and championing higher Pentagon spending.

      As a result, the current Republican Party features a dog’s breakfast of right-wing ideologies. You can still find ardent neoliberals like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio who espouse free-trade economics and a few neocons like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas who rail against neo-isolationism. A solid majority of the party, Cheney notwithstanding, backs Trump no matter how much he deviates from conservative values.

      The Media

      Given the inability of Republicans to define themselves with any degree of precision and their preference for hiding behind labels like “conservative,” it’s no wonder that the media has difficulty parsing right-wing terminology. If the Freedom Caucus calls itself “conservative,” and the American Conservative Union agrees, should it really be the job of The New York Times to correct the record?

      And yet, that’s precisely what the mainstream media does for other ludicrously inapt designations. No major newspaper believes that North Korea is democratic simply because its official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. No mainstream journalists would mistake the far-right Sweden Democrats for the US political party of the same name. As for Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, it is nothing of the sort, since it’s only the personal political vehicle of the raving extremist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and pity the poor reporter who takes the party at face value.

      It’s long past time for the mainstream media to apply these common-sense rules of nomenclature to American politics.

      There are several efforts ongoing to wean the Republican Party of its addiction to Donald Trump. Perhaps a more important first step would be to reclaim the term “conservative” so that it applies in the United States to the same system of values that inspires conservative parties in Europe. Only then will the Republican Party have a chance of becoming once again a defender of the status quo rather than its chief wrecking ball.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in Elections

      Cynthia Lummis, a Bull-Coaxing Conservative, Heads to the Senate

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      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
      margin-right: 2px;
      display: inline-block;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      .nytslm_li_upcoming_loud {
      border: 1px solid #d0021b;
      color: #d0021b;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
      margin-right: 2px;
      display: inline-block;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      .nytslm_li_upcoming_loud:before {
      content: ‘Upcoming’
      }

      .nytslm_li_loud a:hover,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:active,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:focus {
      border-bottom: 2px solid;
      padding-bottom: 2px;
      }

      .nytslm_li_updated {
      color: #777;
      }

      #masthead-bar-one {
      display: none;
      }

      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 80px;
      align-self: center;
      display: flex;
      }

      @media(min-width: 600px) {
      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 100px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_notification {
      border-left: 1px solid #ccc;
      font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
      padding-left: 1em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_label {
      color: #D0021B;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      font-weight: 700;
      font-size: 0.6875rem;
      margin-bottom: 0.2em;
      letter-spacing: 0.02em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_link {
      font-weight: 600;
      color: #121212;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_headline {
      font-size: 0.875rem;
      line-height: 1.0625rem;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_wrapper {
      position: relative;
      max-width: 75px;
      margin-left: 10px;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image {
      max-width: 100%;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_live_bug {
      position: absolute;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      bottom: 7px;
      left: 2px;

      font-size: 0.5rem;
      background-color: #d0021b;
      color: white;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 4px 2px 4px;
      font-weight: 700;
      margin-right: 2px;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      }

      /* No hover state on in app */
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li a:hover,
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li_loud a:hover {
      border-bottom: none;
      padding-bottom: 0;
      }

      .Hybrid #TOP_BANNER_REGION {
      display: none;
      }

      .nytslm_st0 {
      fill: #f4564a;
      }

      .nytslm_st1 {
      fill: #ffffff;
      }

      .nytslm_st2 {
      fill: #2b8ad8;
      }

      State Certified Vote Totals

      Election Disinformation

      Full Results

      Transition Updates

      “),e+=””+b+””,e+=””,d&&(e+=””,e+=””,e+=”Live”,e+=””),e+=””,e}function getVariant(){var a=window.NYTD&&window.NYTD.Abra&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync(“STYLN_elections_notifications”);// Only actually have control situation in prd and stg
      return[“www.nytimes.com”,”www.stg.nytimes.com”].includes(window.location.hostname)||(a=”STYLN_elections_notifications”),a||”0_control”}function reportData(){if(window.dataLayer){var a;try{a=dataLayer.find(function(a){return!!a.user}).user}catch(a){}var b={abtest:{test:”styln-elections-notifications”,variant:getVariant()},module:{name:”styln-elections-notifications”,label:getVariant(),region:”TOP_BANNER”},user:a};window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-alloc”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-expose”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”impression”}))}}function insertNotification(a,b){// Bail here if the user is in control
      if(reportData(),”0_control”!==getVariant()){// Remove menu bar items or previous notification
      var c=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_innerContainer”);if(c&&1 30 * 60 * 1000) return restoreMenuIfNecessary();
      // Do not update DOM if the content won’t change
      if(currentNotificationContents!==a.text&&window.localStorage.getItem(“stylnelecs”)!==a.timestamp)// Do not show if user has interacted with this link
      // if (Cookie.get(‘stylnelecs’) === data.timestamp) return;
      {expireLocalStorage(“stylnelecs”),currentNotificationContents=a.text;// Construct URL for tracking
      var b=a.link.split(“#”),c=b[0]+”?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-notifications&variant=1_election_notifications&region=TOP_BANNER&context=Menu#”+b[1],d=formatNotification(c,a.text,a.kicker,a.image);insertNotification(d,function(){var b=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_notification_link”);return b?void(b.onclick=function(){window.localStorage.setItem(“stylnelecs”,a.timestamp)}):null})}})}(function(){navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)||window.stylnelecsHasLoaded||(// setInterval(getUpdate, 5000);
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