Source: Washington Post
by Ramesh Ponnuru
“During the age of Trump, conservative thinkers have had a recurring tendency to daydream about what might be possible now that the old verities of the right have been unsettled. After Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, two intellectuals hoped for ‘a conservative politics that stresses the national interest abroad and national solidarity at home.’ They went on to outline how Republicans could synthesize the best of pre-Trump conservatism with Trump’s most defensible impulses. I’ve advocated a similar version of nationalism and so find this vision appealing. But as Trump enters the second year of his second term, it is fair to say that it is still only a vision — and not one that has gotten much closer to materializing.” (01/21/26)