Blake Masters and the limits of Fight Club conservatism

To be clear, it is perfectly defensible to make the argument, as his defenders have, that the goal of conservatives should be to support the most pro-life policies that are politically feasible in each state — and perhaps the sorts of restrictions Masters is now talking about represent the ceiling in Arizona. However, there is a tension between advertising Masters during the primary as the “bold” candidate who isn’t going to sit silently like the previous generation of weak-kneed Republicans and then trying to argue that he’s pursuing the prudent approach by soft-pedaling his defense of human life.

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For several years now, whenever traditional conservatives have pushed back against the current shift in the GOP (warning against embracing the Left’s view of expansive executive power, using the force of the state as a tool to reward friends and punish enemies, emphasizing the importance of constitutionalism and free-market economics), they are not only greeted with disagreement, but contempt. They have been pilloried as people who don’t understand the stakes and who want to surrender the culture war. Criticizing Trump and his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election, both on the merits and in terms of the atrocious politics of making an entire party subordinate to the bruised ego of an unpopular former president, triggers accusations of weakness, cuckery, and cowardice. And yet a leading light of this crowd, who declared, “It’s time for Republicans and conservatives to wake up and realize we’re in a culture war,” has climbed down on the most important culture-war issue, and the response from this same crowd is, “Well, that’s just pragmatic politics!”

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