P ete Spiliakos doesn’t see Trumpism as the fulfillment of Buchananism. Trump is rather evidence of “the erosion of the Buchanan coalition.”
Buchanan's appeal didn't depend on his views on trade or foreign policy. He appealed because of his social conservatism. In recent cycles, Spiliakos notes, social conservatism gets no traction:
In 2016, Ted Cruz was able to repeat the feats of Huckabee and Santorum in tapping Iowa’s evangelical social-conservative networks and winning the Iowa Caucuses. Cruz also followed Huckabee and Santorum in losing New Hampshire because he only appealed to a tiny sliver of that state’s non-evangelical voters. Cruz was eventually able to add strongly ideological conservatives and Mormons to his coalition. He won a somewhat larger share of the popular vote than had Buchanan, Huckabee, or Santorum—though he still finished a distant second for the nomination. What is more disturbing is that, even among Cruz’s base of Republican-leaning evangelicals, a figure as outlandish and unprincipled as Trump should have outdistanced Cruz significantly among evangelicals who rarely attend church services.
Beneath all the bombast and hand-writing, the most important story of the 2016 race may be the final liberation of the Republican Part from social conservatism.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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