There has been trouble in the conservative forest. While rise of populism, conservative constitutionalists and those who believed in the traditional fusionist emphasis on limited government and free markets, traditional values and a strong national defense found out that a substantial portion of the coalition supporting Republican candidates were not as aligned with us as we had thought.
These populists seemed to regard limited government and free markets as undesirable, traditional values and the rule of law to be negotiable and a strong foreign policy reducible to a belligerent isolationism. They seemed to see expertise and a commitment to intellectual rigor as a smoke screen to hide corruption.
Populism can be defined as the belief that “the people” (or a part of them) are being maltreated by a corrupt elite and must be resisted without much regard for law or process. As a result, it almost always calls for bad policy. But this doesn’t mean that the frustration and anger is not real or doesn’t have some basis in fact. While populism rarely sustains itself, it has not been unusual for party coalitions to find a way to address its underlying concerns while retaining core commitments.
Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan changed the Democratic party just as Teddy Roosevelt changed the Republicans. As the Trump era rolls to a close, it may be time to consider how that will happen in 2028 and beyond.
In partnership with Heart+Mind Strategies, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty recently released a report entitled “Bridging the Gap: Re-engaging Populist Conservatives with America’s Founding Principles. Based on surveys and focus groups involving 277 Republican and Republican-leaning voters in Wisconsin, the report seeks to understand why many self-described populist conservatives have become skeptical of traditional conservative ideas and how those ideas can be most effectively communicated to them.
The report found that Republican voters who passed a screen for populism, including a subset hose who self-identified as “MAGA,” overwhelmingly listed economic concerns as their most pressing issue. They are not happy with the economy and are unwilling to be talked out of it. Any attempt to move them on this issue must begin with acknowledging that concern.
Many of these voters are not traditional conservatives. A majority or near majority expressed support for at least some price controls on prescription drugs, energy and utility rates, mortgage interest, college tuition, gasoline prices and credit-card interest. A third of these self-described conservatives even expressed report for government control of corporate profits.
While populist respondents opposed overregulation and expressed some support for limits on Presidential power, they did so with a partisan skew – more supported limiting the power of Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers than Republican President Donald Trump. In contrast with traditional conservatism’s emphasis on the rule of law and limited government, only a bare majority agreed constitutional limits must be respected even when the majority disagrees. But a substantial minority (35%) say leaders should push through what a majority wants through even if courts stand in the way.
Populist respondents consistently expressed a distrust of institutions and elites. They were not moved by abstract invocations of principle and a preference for more concrete arguments. For example, pointing to what economics tells us about the adverse impact of price controls does not seem to move populist voters. But, after acknowledging that grocery prices are too high, pointing out that price controls will hurt small groceries and benefit large chains who have the resources to cope with them can move populists toward a more free market stance.
In explaining why industrial policy and government subsidies of business are counterproductive, a more effective argument would emphasize that we don’t want politicians rewarding their supporters by picking winners and losers. Constitutional theory won’t increase populist support for checks and balances unless they are characterized as a limit imposed on elites and tools for accountability.
This creates a challenge for traditional conservatism. If conservatism is an attempt to preserve the best in a national polity, then American conservatism must include a defense of our nation’s constitutional tradition with its emphasis on individual liberty, the rule of law, limited and divided government and a robust civil society in which people act together through voluntary associations.
Our Constitution establishes a deliberative democratic republic that requires consensus for major change and seeks to limit the exercise of power. Because populism is an expression of grievance demanding that a government do something and do it fast, it rests uneasily with American constitutionalism. The former wants action now. The latter cautions restraint.
This tension ought to be acknowledged and not all conservative arguments can be translated into populist terms, but traditional conservatives who wish to persuade populists must recognize that their concerns cannot be dismissed as racist, fascist or an irritable gesture. With the Iraq War, the financial crisis and COVID shutdowns, American elites have been having a bad century. Some of the voters have noticed. They need to need how our countries constitutional principles and institutions are the solution, not the problem.
Ronald Reagan famously said that liberty is never more than one generation away from extinction. For traditional conservatives, preserving it may require learning how to explain ourselves to our populist brothers and sisters. For us, this is what democracy looks like.
Rick Esenberg is the President and Founder of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
