How Trump Changed Conservatism, by John J. Waters and Adam Ellwanger

Donald Trump put things at the center of conservative politics.

Since the 1950s, conservative intellectuals have championed individual liberty, limited government, and free markets as integral to the American way of life. Libertarians defended liberty from the encroachment of the state. Traditionalists urged a return to Judeo-Christian beliefs and Western values. Neoconservatives argued against the expansion of Communist ideologies. And, later, fusionists sought to combine these currents into a single ideology.

Together, conservative thinkers and politicians sought to pay a “common respect to the legacy of their civilization,” in the words of Russell Kirk, an intellectual godfather to the conservative movement. But by the time Trump made his arrival in Republican politics, this idea had become more important as fodder for speeches and editorials than as a springboard to action in the physical world. …

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