After my first few days volunteering in New Hampshire over Winter Break, my director from the Kasich campaign (scratch that, pro-Kasich super PAC, New Day for America) pointed out the meaning behind all my door knocking during painful wind chills or hundreds of daily phone calls to potential voters frequently ending in swearing or threats to call the police for harassment. This was not only a campaign for John Kasich. Rather, he explained, it was a “fight for the soul of the Republican party.” Perhaps his comments were a tad sanctimonious, as was Kasich’s proclamation of himself as “the Prince of Light and Hope.” But after several weeks participating in New Hampshire’s primary process, I indeed witnessed a great conflict over the soul of American conservatism, revealing tragedy, hope and absurdity all at once in the Granite State.
After months of news coverage, Trumpism remained for me very disturbing but distant enough to seem abstract or comical. But that changed to real horror in New Hampshire, when I saw Trump’s ads on actual television screens unashamedly bragging about plans to ban Muslim entry into the United States. Phone calls to Trump supporters provoked despair. One congratulated me for supporting a “loser” like Kasich. Others talked about how “illegals” were stealing their hard-earned Social Security payments or why Obama hated America. No information I presented about Trump’s vulgarity, lack of experience, unelectability or flip-flops worked; a possible rationalization always lay at hand. While candidates like Jeb Bush and Kasich would scramble to get 150 voters for a town hall event, Trump’s rallies amassed thousands.
But I saw too why hatred alone cannot explain the Trump phenomenon. There was a further element of tragedy and despair. Our team knocked on doors in more depressed, upcountry towns in New Hampshire, where Trump holds a stronger base of support. You can quickly spy crumbling homes, abandoned factories and storefronts and roaming heroin dealers. How could Republican voters there not inevitably be attracted to Trump’s eclectic populism compared to rehashed party economic orthodoxies?
I often spoke to Trump voters who scarcely mentioned immigration or terrorism. They were anxious about their retirement, finances and health care. They felt totally abandoned by a corrupt Washington elite. Their support for the candidate was driven less by excitement over Trump than despair at our nation’s political life.
We surely cannot deny the importance of racial prejudice in Trump’s ascendency. But New Hampshire reminded me of the folly of self-righteous, mean-spirited and simplistic denunciations of Trump supporters. We would do well to remember Solzhenitsyn’s insight that the “line dividing good and evil” passes not easily along any political division but “right through every human heart.”
Perhaps the most tragic (or pathetic) moment I witnessed of the Republican Party’s internal conflicts in New Hampshire was a town hall meeting with Bush. It was hard not to cringe throughout his address. Painful attempts to show more energy. Awkward body language. Giving a child a toy tortoise symbolizing his campaign. Ancient, flat jokes (“In Florida, they called me Veto Corleone …”). But I left feeling a great, sad respect for Jeb. His unabashed policy wonkiness was not a great communications tactic, but it revealed him clearly as the most intellectually engaged candidate in the Republican race (Kasich included). His concerns about education reform, poverty and immigration clearly came from the heart and were not superficial, marketing ploys to make the GOP look more “nice” and “diverse.”
The populist instinct within the American mind enjoys denouncing members of the establishment. But what if these establishment figures in both parties are more than caricatures of elite corruption and actually take the call of public service seriously? Should we not lament when such people are replaced by figures like Trump and Cruz seizing “the mantle of anger,” reflecting the worst pathologies of a debased democracy?
Now where was the hope in all this again? It arose out of numerous conversations with Republican voters disgusted by the party’s apparent descent into demagoguery, anger and nativism. It came from town hall meetings where voters’ questions to candidates showed their sense of responsibility to the entire nation as participants in the nation’s first primary. The greatest hope came from the character of the full-time, paid staff I worked alongside.
They broke every progressive stereotype of conservatives as either well-intentioned, naive, “useful idiots” or slimy, privileged villains. Coming from far less privileged family backgrounds than my own, they saw in Kasich, himself a man of humble beginnings, a candidate devoted to conserving and expanding the American Dream. They accepted the challenge of climate change and ranted about the prejudice and ignorance peddled by many party leaders and showmen. They were still conservative, of course. I heard more than enough passionate defenses of the Second Amendment and free market capitalism throughout my three weeks. But the spirit of the campaign gave me confidence that there is far more thoughtfulness, optimism and integrity left within American conservatism than progressives in journalism and the Academy assume.
Is my hope purely delusional in our age of angry, divisive populism? Perhaps. Maybe my coworkers’ labors in New Hampshire were a final eulogy for the Republican Party, honoring the past achievements of a party now forever lost and discredited. Or perhaps they were building up a renewed, modern conservative party guided “by the better angels of our nature,” as Abraham Lincoln would have said. Starting next Tuesday night, and in the months or years to come, we will come to know the answer.