National Conservatives made a bet on a major political realignment following the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency in 2016. The hope was that moderate Democrats might find appeal in a Republican Party that would pivot against liberal immigration policy, free markets, and defense of American interests abroad, advocating instead for closing the borders, introducing industrial policy, and expecting allies to rely less on our defense forces. That realignment has not surfaced. Why is that?

There are three reasons. The first is a misreading of voter analysis immediately after the 2016 presidential election, one that National Conservatives have refused to correct even after new data revealed a stable alignment within parties. The second is advancing an issue set that simply does not work for would-be Democratic voters or for conservatives outside the National Conservative milieu. The third reason is Trump himself, who has proved too divisive to be a bridge-builder between Democratic and Republican factions. This essay examines each of these problems in turn.

The Empty Quadrant Fallacy

In June of 2017, Lee Drutman published an article based on data from the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group detailing a key graphic for National Conservatives, one that illustrated the now famous “empty quadrant.” Drutman divides the American voting electorate into four quadrants. The X-axis shows the spectrum from economic liberalism to economic conservatism. The Y-axis shows the spectrum from social liberalism to social conservatism. Fully 44.6% of voters are found in the bottom left of the graph, meaning that they hold both economic and socially liberal views. Drutman calls these the “liberals,” and they vote for Democrats. The upper-right quadrant contains 22.7% of the voters, and these are Drutman’s “conservatives,” who vote for Republicans. The upper left of the graph contains 28.9% of voters, who are economically liberal but socially conservative. Drutman calls these the “populists,” and their votes are swing votes. The bottom right—those who are economically conservative and socially liberal—are what Drutman calls the “libertarians,” and they make up just 3.8% of voters. The joke among National Conservatives was to say all these people work for AEI.

Forming what Matthew Continetti calls “the left of the right,” National Conservatives want to appeal to those in the populist quadrant. In their view, the libertarian quadrant is empty, yet Republicans spent much of the Obama years wishing it were not, with Romney infamously confessing that he “likes to fire people” and:

There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. … These are people who pay no income tax. … and so, my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

For National Conservatives, Romney simply wrote off the populists and lost because he had no one else to persuade. Conservatives were already voting for him, but they were too few. Liberals will never vote for him. Yet Romney campaigned on entitlement austerity, pressing the War on Terror, and a pro-immigration stance that appealed only to the Republican donor class and Washington think tanks. The party obtusely built itself around the lonely few populating the otherwise empty quadrant.

This is the empty quadrant fallacy. National Conservatives want to believe that the populist quadrant is filled without would-be Republican voters who would gladly move right if only fusionism were kicked to the curb. What makes this a fallacy is that many voters in that quadrant vote for Democrats because they like the Democratic Party, and express views directly contrary to the principles of National Conservatism. Most importantly, they hate Trump.

Drutman’s analysis leaves out the issue of race. This is not as such to his discredit; Drutman did not intend for his analysis to become essential to the playbook of an insurgent ideology that did not yet exist when he published his findings. Yet, if one looks at another report, this time from the Pew Research Center, one finds that the so-called “populists” are not the vast, untapped source of working-class votes that National Conservatives believe them to be. Three months after Drutman’s analysis came out, Pew published this much more detailed analysis of the 2016 voting population. Their conclusions are less favorable to the future of National Conservatism.

Tracking the Populists

The study broke down Republicans and Democrats along a spectrum of reliability as voters. In a rank ordering of voters, starting with those most likely to vote for Republicans, Pew listed Core Conservatives, Country First Conservatives, Market Skeptics, and New Era Enterprisers. In a similar listing of Democrats, they identified Solid Liberals, Opportunity Democrats, Disaffected Democrats, and the Devout and Diverse. Out of the total range, 45% of those listed are on the Republican spectrum. National Conservatives are a combination of Country First (6%) and Market Skeptics (12%), who combined represent only around 18% of this 45% of Americans who vote Republican. Internal to Republican politics, the two oppose the Core Conservatives because Core Conservatives have a faith in political and economic liberty that they do not share. The same is true of New Era Enterprisers, who are more non-white and favor immigration. Those two groups combined account for around 29% (Core Conservatives being 20% and New Era Enterprisers being 9%) of the Republican base, meaning that, at least back in 2017, the National Conservative base was much smaller than the more traditional fusionist one. Indeed, the combined National Conservative constituency is smaller than the Core Conservatives alone.

Looking back to Drutman’s populist quadrant, one might ask: who is in it, if Country First and Market Skeptic Republicans are so few? The answer can be found in the Devout and Diverse category of Democrats, a population of politically disengaged, socially conservative racial and ethnic minorities. While they disapprove of business regulations (meaning they might be more economically conservative than even some Market Skeptics), they are also more likely to have financial hardships that lead them to rely on government entitlements. They are also more isolationist, and are the most skeptical of the benefits of immigration, perhaps because they view immigrants as competition for work and benefits.

Is this a natural constituency for realigning the Republican Party in a more populist direction? Well, no. Devout and Diverse Democrats also have favorable opinions of Black Lives Matter and of government doing more to help racial minorities, especially because many of them are African Americans themselves. National Conservatives do not share these views but rather repudiate them, and their constituency among Country First and Market Skeptic conservatives, who are much whiter than the Devout and Diverse. Indeed, given that National Conservatives are very much at odds with the immigration-friendly New Era Enterprise Republicans, and given that this contingent is the most non-white, the obvious commonality among National Conservative leaders and constituents is whiteness. Any inroads the National Conservatives hope to make in the populist quadrant, therefore, would require them to surrender core commitments of National Conservativism on issues like wokeness. If National Conservatives do this, then they are just Democrats. Moreover, opposition to wokeness is the glue that holds otherwise disparate National Conservative elites together, and also gives the movement purchase with conservatives outside their faction.

On racial issues, Country First and Market Skeptics are hostile to the position that more must be done to advance African American civil rights. They do not see racism as a problem and think the problem is more that people find racism where none exists. Devout and Diverse Democrats simply disagree profoundly with these positions, with massive gaps of around 50%. The only matter on which Devout and Diverse Democrats somewhat agree is that discrimination is the reason minorities cannot get ahead, but even there the gap is 20%. Devout and Diverse only somewhat disagree. Country First and Market Skeptics disagree profoundly.

Disaffected Democrats are another contingent in the populist quadrant, and also “majority minority” in composition. According to the study, they have strongly favorable views of the Democratic Party, and their disaffection mainly relates to the operation of the political system more generally. While 60% of the Devout and Diverse disapproved of Trump, 91% of the Disaffected Democrats did. The other data are equally discouraging for National Conservatives. The Disaffected Democrats want Democrats to win, not Republicans, and want Democratic policies, not Republican.

National Conservatives were right to note that the populist quadrant is full. But it is full of non-white Democrats who are often strongly supportive of the Democratic Party. Even in the National Conservatives’ best-case scenario, they are racial and ethnic minorities who reject significant planks of the National Conservative platform. The conclusion one must reach is that the National Conservatives are a minority faction within the Republican Party, with little to offer to Democratic populists. There are several reasons, but the main one is race. National Conservatives are too “white” in their assumptions and priorities.

Party Stability

In 2021, Pew Research Trust published a major update to their 2017 report, reassessing the changes in the party coalitions. Their 2021 report created a category of “Populist Right” that conflates the Country First and Market Skeptics of the 2017 report. Pew’s 2021 analysis is even worse for National Conservatives than the report of 2017, as the share of Populist Republicans in the GOP is a mere 23% out of 100%. However, National Conservatives made inroads with the 2017 Core Conservatives, now called “Faith and Flag Conservatives” who have a favorable view of Trump and believe that the 2020 election was stolen. These make up 23% of the GOP, meaning that the two are a combined 46% of Republicans (Committed Conservatives, 15%, are more fusionist, while Ambivalent Republicans, 18%, are moderates who dislike Trump; the other 15% are classified as Stressed Sideliners, who stay out of debates and do not like Trump). 

The study explains that the Faith and Flag and Populist conservatives agree on Trump, but disagree sharply about everything else: “And there is a cleavage in the coalition around views of the economic system itself: Two typology groups who both hold highly restrictive views about immigration—Faith and Flag Conservatives and Populist Right—differ over corporate power, economic inequality and taxation of large businesses and wealthy individuals.” Even on religion, the two groups disagree, with Populist Republicans showing much less interest in a public role for Christianity than Faith and Flag Republicans. One remaining issue is that, as in the 2017 study, the Populists are the whitest group.

Moreover, the 2021 analysis features unwelcome news for those still hoping to reach out to moderate Democrats, playing on their dissatisfaction with liberal elites. Devout and Diverse and Disaffected Democrats are now broken into two groups: “Mainstay Democrats” and the “Outsider Left.” Composing 18% of the Democratic Party, Mainstays remain skeptical of increased immigration, stress the importance of religion, and dislike blaming structural racism for the economic conditions of minorities. However, Mainstay Democrats also really like the Democratic Party, favor American influence in the world, and want to maintain or increase spending on the American military. Forty percent of Mainstays are African American. There is little National Conservatives can offer them.

Unlike Mainstays, Outsider Democrats do not like the Democratic Party as much. They are also younger, and whiter than Mainstays, and they overwhelmingly think that the economy is rigged against them. This might seem like more fertile ground, but the priorities of Outsiders do not align with National Conservatives at all. They are not religious, and they favor increases in immigration, approve of cutting police budgets, and want to see college education made cheaper or even free. They also do not vote much. While composing 16% of the Democratic Party, only half are registered to vote. 

The biggest liability for National Conservatism is Trump. Both Mainstays and Outsiders strongly dislike him. As the 2021 report says of Mainstays, “They rate Republicans coolly and offer very negative evaluations of Trump (giving him an average rating of 10 [out of 100]). The same is true for Outsiders: 

Weaker attachment to the Democratic Party than other Democratic-leaning groups does not translate into positive attitudes toward Republicans among Outsider Left: Three-quarters say they feel very coldly toward Donald Trump, and just 13% say the Republican Party represents them very or somewhat well.

Therefore, in the four years after Trump’s term in office and after his defeat, the National Conservative constituency has not increased, and they can increase their appeal within the party only by rallying around Trump the candidate. Remarkably, Trump has shown zero interest in them, apart perhaps from John Eastman, whose legal theories about the 2020 election landed Trump in the hot water in which he finds himself today. One searches in vain for evidence that Trump has any intention of campaigning on policies advancing National Conservatism. As ever, his appeals are primarily personal, whether he is bragging about his superior ability to serve as chief executive, or bitterly airing his grievances about mistreatment by the press or Biden administration. As one can see in the graphics taken from the 2017 and 2021 Pew studies, the coalitions for both the Republican and Democratic Parties remain very stable. There is no sign of a realignment. 

Realignment Without Trump?

Earlier in the essay, I observed that National Conservatives would need to drop the issue of wokeness to have any hope of making inroads with the broader constituencies they hoped to integrate into the Republican Party. National Conservatives like Oren Cass and Sohrab Ahmari have nearly done that. While Cass sticks to labor economics, Ahmari publicly condemned the Republican Party as a vehicle for populist politics, yet somehow insisted that Trump would be the best president for Ahmari’s own ideas, even as he celebrated Democratic senators like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren whose social views are diametrically opposed to Ahmari’s pro-life, anti-contraceptive positions. 

Similarly, Gladden Pappin, writing in American Affairs, lamented that the Republican realignment along more European conservative lines had reached a crisis point. Soon after, Pappin moved to Budapest as the inaugural President of the Hungarian Institute of Public Affairs. Pappin and Ahmari are founding members of the Bonum Commune Society and have worked closely together in the past. It is clear to at least some among the National Conservative coalition of elites that their time might be running short. The Republican Party does not seem disposed to move dramatically to the left on economic issues. Failing that, the options seem to be, as with Ahmari, transitioning to the Democratic Party or, as with Pappin, leaving America altogether.