Why Vance-ism won’t be the future

{"text":[[{"start":8.02,"text":"Flag, faith and family. "},{"start":10.399,"text":"That used to be a winning message for conservatism in America. "},{"start":13.767,"text":"Now, though? "},{"start":15.309,"text":"What if a target voter loves the flag but lacks the faith? "},{"start":18.451999999999998,"text":"What if he or she views the familial domain as unfit for political trespass? "}],[{"start":23.7,"text":"Now let us travel one letter up the alphabet. "},{"start":26.642,"text":"Readers might remember “God, guns and gays” as another alliterative précis of the right’s obsessions in the later 20th century. "},{"start":33.234,"text":"But in 2024? "},{"start":34.927,"text":"What if a swing voter is a Second Amendment absolutist with no strong views on the other Gs? "},{"start":39.843999999999994,"text":"Or even takes a liberal line on them as a generational reflex? "}],[{"start":44.4,"text":"We aren’t talking about exotic creatures here. "},{"start":47.141999999999996,"text":"The US is a nation of two-to-one support for same-sex marriage. "},{"start":51.022,"text":"Most people either “seldom” or “never” attend a religious service. "},{"start":54.501999999999995,"text":"At the same time, immigration is the top concern that voters name unprompted, and just one in three strongly objects to the idea that a president should be able to rule without much judicial or congressional restraint. "}],[{"start":65.68,"text":"Put this all together, and something becomes clear. "},{"start":68.84700000000001,"text":"Lots of voters now are what I will call “public authoritarians”. "},{"start":72.20200000000001,"text":"Porous borders, tent cities, woke colleges, perhaps even Chinese imports: these things upset them. "},{"start":78.619,"text":"But private morals? "},{"start":80.099,"text":"Affairs of the bedroom and the chapel? "},{"start":82.21700000000001,"text":"You do you. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

To win, the devout need the louche. Trump was a vessel in which to smuggle a cultural conservatism that couldn’t prevail on its own terms

"}],[{"start":84.16000000000001,"text":"Donald Trump’s electoral genius consists of never frightening these people. "},{"start":88.37700000000001,"text":"Even at his demagogic worst, a certain reticence about the private realm, combined with some well-documented peccadillos, assures the conservative-but-not-pious that he isn’t going to go all Cardinal Spellman on them. "},{"start":99.394,"text":"And so his coalition hangs together. "},{"start":101.64900000000002,"text":"The Republicans, it seems, have lost that balance of late. "},{"start":105.52900000000001,"text":"The Dobbs ruling on abortion was the start. "},{"start":108.034,"text":"The elevation of JD Vance — conservative Catholic, scourge of the childless, worrier about porn — is a move in the same vein. "}],[{"start":116.54000000000002,"text":"Vance himself might be the future. "},{"start":118.86900000000001,"text":"He has the time and the brain. "},{"start":120.67400000000002,"text":"He has the most underrated asset in politics and perhaps life: unembarrassability. "},{"start":125.45400000000002,"text":"But Vance-ism? "},{"start":126.82200000000002,"text":"There aren’t enough private authoritarians in the electorate to sustain it. "},{"start":130.389,"text":"And this assumes no further secularisation. "},{"start":133.044,"text":"Church membership in the US under Reagan: 70 per cent. "},{"start":136.19400000000002,"text":"It is now below half.) Either he changes his outlook — he wasn’t too embarrassed to change his old distaste for Trump — or accepts that its natural ceiling is the lower half of a presidential ticket, shoring up the faithful as Mike Pence did. "}],[{"start":149.36,"text":"To be clear, there are millions of intense Christians who vote Republican to defend the creed. "},{"start":154.46400000000003,"text":"Just not enough to elect a president. "},{"start":156.56900000000002,"text":"For that, it is an arithmetical must to bolt on the kind of Trump fan that I am likelier to encounter. "},{"start":161.72400000000002,"text":"These characters react as I do upon seeing an ancient and sublime place of worship (“What a darling Sofitel it would make”) and aren’t just liberal so much as outright incurious about people’s domestic doings. "},{"start":172.217,"text":"Their grievance isn’t with the cultural settlement of the 1960s, but with that of the 2000s, if that means woke-ism, trade and a foreign-born population above 10 per cent of the total. "}],[{"start":182.66000000000003,"text":"To win, the devout need the louche. "},{"start":185.27700000000002,"text":"Trump was a vessel in which to smuggle a cultural conservatism that couldn’t prevail on its own terms. "},{"start":190.40700000000004,"text":"A clever scheme, this, as Dobbs proved, but not a lasting one. "},{"start":194.89900000000003,"text":"The inherent tensions were going to come out in time. "}],[{"start":198.05,"text":"In France, the hard right has never quite settled a question. "},{"start":201.829,"text":"If Muslim immigration is a challenge, what is it a challenge to: the secular republic or a Catholic nation? "},{"start":207.834,"text":"The voter who wants to protect laïcité and the voter who wants to reinforce the church can be kept in the same coalition, just about. "},{"start":214.614,"text":"But it requires constant and meticulous hedging. "},{"start":217.34400000000002,"text":"Pander to the second voter, and the first recoils. "},{"start":220.437,"text":"This is why populist winners — Boris Johnson, Silvio Berlusconi — tend to have something of the playboy about them. "},{"start":227.217,"text":"“Relax,” is the implicit message, “I’m not a prig. ”"}],[{"start":231.44,"text":"Trump gets it, or at least got it. "},{"start":233.832,"text":"He is said to mistrust the clerical zeal of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. "},{"start":238.849,"text":"He avoids talking about the childless as demographic shirkers. "},{"start":242.392,"text":"But then what a righteous choice of dauphin. "},{"start":244.709,"text":"And, lest he scare wavering voters in a secular age, what pressure on the young changeling to mutate once more. "}],[{"start":250.99,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/165089-1722076972.mp3"}