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I myself am not especially surprised by this. Hillary Rodham Clinton clearly intends to run simultaneously as the “change agent” in the race and the conservative. It may very well prove a successful strategy.
What “conservative” means is contested right now, and requires a little sorting out. There is ideological and philosophical conservatism, which you can learn all about in the pages of National Review. There is temperamental conservatism, which is natural to much of the American electorate, a deeply rooted caution about radical and sudden change. These two ways of being conservative often are at odds, the great example being Newt Gingrich, who is ideologically a conservative but temperamentally a radical. Much of talk radio and right-wing cable news relies on that combination, too, for the obvious reason that temperamental conservatism is not very exciting — in fact, it opposes excitation.
The Trump movement contains a different kind of rightism, which is found among people who are neither philosophically conservative nor temperamentally conservative but who are as a matter of cultural and social identity not so much with the Right as against the Left. These are the people who are moved by Trump’s denunciations of “political correctness” and railing against “elites,” even as they embrace the full Roosevelt-Johnson welfare-entitlement state and clamor for an even more paternalistic government. They are on the Right in the sense that Marine Le Pen is on the Right.
People who are ideological conservatives are not going to put down their Hayek books and Buckley conspectuses to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton, and neither are the resentment-filled anti-elitist Trumpkins. But among people whose conservatism is mainly temperamental, Mrs. Clinton may have some appeal.
Barack Obama has been a pretty poor president and has done real damage to the republic, but the walls have not fallen in upon us, and it remains safe to walk (most of) the streets. The United States still looks pretty sensible compared to much of the European Union, a declining Japan, a very nervous China, etc. People who own Apple shares and real estate have not been reduced to penury. What Mrs. Clinton mainly promises is more of the same. Trump, meanwhile, talks loosely about pulling out of every international arrangement from NAFTA to NATO, alliances and partnerships that took a generation to build and that, while surely imperfect, perform necessary and useful functions. He has zero respect for the separation of powers, and his models of executive excellence are authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin and various third-rate caudillos of the epaulet-wearing variety. If you are fearful of willy-nilly political innovation and dread an unpredictable government, Trump is not your candidate. Mrs. Clinton is nothing if not predictable.
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Is Clinton Running as the Conservative? https://t.co/dvphMYoBFX incredibly insightful post from @KevinNR This is the smart Clinton play.
— David French (@DavidAFrench) July 28, 2016
Her vice president is much more conservative than Trump. He is a life long Catholic Christian, pro-life, and those two things right there are what Trump will never be. I would vote for Clinton rather than Trump because she is not insane and will not push the red button and destroy us all.
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