Donald Trump is conservatism's realization -- not its betrayal

Donald Trump is conservatism’s realization — not its betrayal
He gave the GOP permission to be themselves, says historian Allan Lichtman

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published August 30, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) Nearly eight months into Donald Trump’s second term, many in the mainstream media and political class are still clinging to an outdated understanding of Trumpism and the country’s collapse into competitive authoritarianism. To them, even after eight years of experience, the president is some type of sui generis figure, an aberration in American politics and culture. They continue to desperately search for “principled conservatives,” those “adults in the room” who “believe in the institutions” to stop him.

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To understand the deeper history behind this moment and how we got here, I recently spoke with historian Allan J. Lichtman, whose latest book “Conservative at the Core: A New History of American Conservatism” will be released on Sept. 1. The author of fourteen books and writing that has appeared in leading outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, he serves as distinguished professor of history at American University. But Lichtman is perhaps best known for his 13 Keys prediction system, which has successfully forecast the results of 10 of 11 presidential elections since 1984.

In this conversation, Lichtman details how Trump and the ascendance of American authoritarianism represent the end goal of American conservatism’s last 100 years — and warns that there is no quick fix that will resolve our democracy’s current crisis.

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What is new — or not — about today’s Republican Party and conservative movement?

What conservative Republicans and Donald Trump are doing today is not new. It has precedent in the last 100 years of the history of conservatism, which, for a time, was not just in the Republican Party, but also included the Jim Crow Southern Democrats. The Southern Democrats are a faction that has been fully absorbed by the Republicans…

Virtually everything that conservatives have been publicly professing for 100 years is false. They violate, in fundamental ways, everything that they’ve claimed to strongly believe in. Take, for example, free enterprise. Republican presidents have repeatedly enacted tariffs. Conservatives also subvert markets and free enterprise by picking and choosing “winners” and “losers” through special tax breaks, subsidies and loan guarantees for big business. Conservatives are destroying limited government through the buildup of ICE, suppressing LGBTQ rights, controlling education and taking away women’s reproductive rights. Those are examples of big government interventions and not support for limited government or free enterprise. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/30/donald-trump-is-conservatisms-realization-not-its-betrayal/