The thing that really broke up the conservative movement was the surrender on social issues - the "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" intellectual fad - followed by the utter and total collapse of fiscal discipline in U.S. government.
It sounds like a simple, almost tautological diagnosis in retrospect - our thought leaders gave up on half of their ideology, then gave up on the other half - but it wasn't obvious to those thought leaders at the time, and the order in which the surrenders occurred was important.
Throwing in the towel on social issues stripped the conservative movement of populist energy. Politicians and pundits threw away the ability to speak passionately about subjects of elemental importance to normal people. They gave up red-blooded debate to talk about red ink.
That decision left the Right unable to resist the radical expansion of government, completely unmoored from its income stream. Many of its leading politicians meekly signed off on that expansion, which was demanded in populist terms by the Left, citing its social issues.
In retrospect, it's amazing how quickly the "fiscal conservative/social liberal" dodge was followed by confident assertions from all the Smart People that nobody wanted to talk about fiscal issues. Only insurgents and outsiders even tried: Perot, the Tea Party.
The thing about giving in to the deficit-fueled expansion of the State is that you're abandoning all the moral arguments in favor of liberty, tradition, and civil society. You're down to merely arguing about what the Leviathan State should do, not whether it should exist.
And as we've all seen with painful clarity during the Trump years, the Leviathan State can very effectively resist efforts to reform it, trim it down to size, or bend its vast powers towards conservative ends. It cannot be used the way "Big Government Conservatives" hoped.
That's why so much of establishment conservatism is bloodless and bitchy, mostly concerned with conducting purity crusades against others on the Right, while criticizing those with real power on the Left with eloquent impotence.
That old effort at a "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" libertarian compromise had an unpleasant side effect that's been bubbling through conservatism for decades now: many of its leaders just plain dislike the culture they agreed to abandon to the Left.
They certainly don't feel any fire in the belly to fight for those people. Why would they? They long ago decided conservative cultural issues are icky, which means the people who live by those traditions are icky, unworthy of the attentions of top conservative intellectuals.
But what else is left, now that the towel has also been thrown in on fiscal conservatism and the expansion of the State? The result is a conservative movement that talks endlessly about grand strategy but cannot be bothered with tactics.
Its "principles" are swords kept forever clean and shiny inside their sealed display cases, their edges never dulled or bloodied by effective use on the political battlefield. They talk about what color of drapes to hang on the Overton Window, not how to move it.
After the pandemic, that Overton Window has moved from statism to outright authoritarianism. Where is the passionate argument against it? Which hill will the armchair strategists finally be willing to die on? How will they rally a base they view with disdain?
Conservatism was the only thing keeping classical liberalism from degenerating into progressivism, which is profoundly illiberal. The big problem with today's conservatism is that "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" destroyed LIBERALISM. Only progressivism remains. /end
Addendum: I see some hearty debate about whether fiscal or social conservatism failed first. I can see the argument for pointing to something like "read my lips, no new taxes" as the beginning of the post-Reagan downward spiral, but I think social conservatism COLLAPSED first.
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