“Whatever the election brings, three things are true: Trump is broadly unpopular, he will soon be a lame duck, and, at some point, the Trump era will come to an end. So now is the time to contemplate in earnest what decisions Americans must face in that new era, and whose vision for confronting the existential problems these United States face will win out.” - The Dispatch
“When I sat down with Brian Kemp at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta earlier this week…. I was intrigued during our hour-long conversation to hear the 62-year-old governor draw some distinctions between his own brand of Republican politics and those of the current leader and his presumptive heir, J.D. Vance” - The Dispatch
“I believe that conservatism cannot save itself…. But if conservatism is going to be worth anything, it must bow the knee to Christ. It must repent and be born again.” - Christ Over All
“Pence’s new book, What Conservatives Believe, breaks no new ground. It does not yield to the performative narcissism of the age by settling old scores or dishing insider gossip. What it does provide is an accessible, practical 21st-century update of the conservative canon.” - Acton
“Those of us who retain the skepticism about ambitious government that once seemed to define the right are ceaselessly told that we are obsolete. We do not, the cliché has it, know ‘what time it is.’” - Cranach
“One might readily identify The Conservative Mind as seven books rather than as one. While the first four editions possess a righteous anger about them… the last three editions carry a more comfortable feel.
“Today that “fusionism” is being challenged by a new kind of conservatism that favors big government, a centrally controlled economy, and nationalistic populism. As Republicans try to sort out what kind of conservatives they are, an important strain of the coalition that Reagan brought together risks being overlooked: the cultural conservatives.” - Gene Veith
“Merging Christianity and conservatism will compromise the purity of the gospel. So the editors of this edition of FrontLine decided to frame the question this way: ‘Is Conservatism Enough?’ Enough for what?
“In a recent column for The New York Times, Ezra Klein proclaims that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have killed the ‘vibe shift.’ The cultural momentum that conservatives gained post-pandemic, particularly in the last year of the Biden presidency, is gone, Klein writes.
The phrase “sheep in wolves’ clothing” caught me off guard when a friend recently used it to accuse me of being a political progressive in disguise—a supposed infiltrator pretending to be a conservative. It blindsided me, not because I feared the label, but because it revealed how fractured our moral and political rhetoric has become. I hadn’t changed much, but the public square around me had. Our definitions of conservatism, liberty, and morality have drifted so far from their roots that holding to their original meaning now looks subversive.
