What I Saw at the National Conservatism Conference (2022)

This morning, I was thinking about an old essay, “What I Saw at the National Conservatism Conference”, from the Winter/Spring 2022 Issue of Religion & Liberty. It is available online at the Acton Institute’s website.

The essay was the first of three I’ve written trying to unravel the riddle of National Conservatism. Incoming Vice President J.D. Vance concluded the conference after being slightly preempted by a surprise interview with the Orlando Magic’s Jonathan Isaac. Vance was not yet a senator and the charismatic Isaac had recently made headlines by declining the COVID-19 vaccine. It was a different world then.

The most striking difference between Natcon 2 and later National Conservatism conferences was the strange absence of President Trump, which I noted at the time:

The couple whom I first tried to explain National Conservatism to that night by the fire outside the Orlando Hilton took my description of the National Conservatives as “Republicans who are concerned about the Republican Party and want to take it in a different direction” to mean that those Republicans were hostile to Donald Trump. The curious absence of Trump in this discussion of National Conservatism is no accident. He was rarely mentioned. Ted Cruz did mention the former president in his address to the conference, saying, “Look, Donald Trump is a unique individual …”—a knowing pause—“so many Americans love this man … because after all the weakness and surrender and imbecility, thank God the man stands up and fights.”

This was very similar to the language of the former president that was quoted on the banner outside the hall: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness.” I took a picture of the banner on the last day of the conference; it seemed like a real point of resonance between the former president and the National Conservatives. It was only later that I realized the quote in question was from his address on January 6, 2021, the day of the riot at the United States Capitol.

Full essay available here. Enjoy!