The End of Old Guard Conservatism
Over the past few weeks, Old Guard conservatives have been making a concerted effort to attack Vice President JD Vance and the New Right.
Many were critical of Vance’s support for a Trump Administration proposal to allow federal dollars to go to stay-at-home parents. Dana Loesch suggested that those who accepted such funds weren’t “man enough.” Another conservative called it a “scheme” and “a longstanding tenet of the Postliberal/Orbanist policy agenda.”
Old Guard critic Jay Caruso mocked Vance for saying the administration would not “let” companies exchange American workers “with cheap foreign labor,” accusing the vice president of turning his back on the free market. Simultaneously, a chorus of Old Guard conservatives have been blasting Vance for supposedly refusing to distance himself from Nazis and groypers—and from a group of trinitarian Christians, the Society for American Civic Renewal.
These tantrums stem from the Old Guard’s belief that history was meant to unfold differently. Many conservatives mock the Left for their notion that America had reached an “end of history,” epitomized by the expected crowning of Hillary Clinton in 2016 as successor to Barack Obama, an outcome that would have solidified progressive rule for at least a generation.
But many fusionist Old Guard conservatives have their own version of an end of history, which the unlikely rise of Donald Trump has so far prevented. And as the date of the resurgence is pushed further back, their impatience is crystallizing into fury.
