Political Discipleship
As the House debates impeachment, and our nation is again flooded with a wave of (dis)information, it might be helpful - to me, if not to you - to think through what I’m trying to accomplish with the Rundown. There are dozens of great newsletters on Substack and elsewhere. You should probably subscribe to them, especially my friends at the Bulwark! But I’m doing this for a specific purpose designed to target a specific problem.
Any Trump skeptical or Never Trump conservative can tell story after story of friends and family - thoughtful but loyal Republicans - who were simply unfamiliar with right-leaning criticism of the Trump candidacy, campaign, and administration. For too many of them, it seemed that criticism could only come from the Left. Maybe this was the result of too much Fox News or talk radio, or it’s likely in many cases this was due to years of slanted media coverage among legacy media from NPR to CNN to the New York Times.
But while this skepticism might have been warranted under a normal Republican administration, it was an albatross during the Trump years. By retreating to their tribal bunkers, too many conservatives refused wise counsel about the danger that Trump posed to both the nation and the Republican Party. Now we find ourselves in a real mess, with Donald Trump and a great deal of the GOP apparatus refusing to acknowledge the outcome of the November election and Trump’s most devoted followers willing to commit violence in his defense (and a Republican Party willing to outsource the blame).
Perhaps some of this could have been avoided. While I don’t believe a good essay changes the everything, I do believe - call it intuition - that many conservatives were unable to give voice to their misgivings during the last four years. I like to think of it as a failure of political discipleship, as we’ve failed in the task of virtuous citizenship and engaged politics. By starting this project, I hope to introduce readers and subscribers to a healthy diet of thoughtful center-right policy and opinion, in hopes that this awful mistake never be repeated.
So who is the Rundown for?
Of course it’s for anyone who is interested - but specifically I have in mind legislative staff, heads of non-profits, donors from the legal or business community, party officials and volunteers. Anyone who seeks to be politically engaged but finds it difficult to determine what’s worth reading in such a chaotic time - I want to help you find reliable voices. I’ll come at this from a center-right perspective, which means much of my policy positions will align in general with the Republican Party and the conservative establishment. But I’ve been an outspoken critic of the Trump candidacy and administration, and I’ll be especially prone to a conservatism that longs to establish itself apart from Trumpism. I’ll have more to say about that in time.
In the meantime, here we are. Thank you for joining me. Please pass this along to a friend and ask them to sign up. I’ll continue with short missives like this until after the Biden inauguration, and then I plan to shift to three updates a week with maybe a few surprises thrown in the mix.
Until then, thanks for reading. Stay safe. Stay sane.