When Donald Trump Met Edmund Burke
But from that simple conservative premise—that the law is paramount—comes the most radical policy offered by any Presidential candidate in either party this year: the involuntary removal of some three per cent of the American population. (One estimate is that it would cost about thirteen thousand dollars per immigrant to implement a Trump-like mass-deportation plan.)
.. Which of these responses is “conservative”? The father of modern conservatism is Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British political philosopher who was deeply suspicious of radicals of any stripe. Burke generally viewed prudence and stability as the guiding lights of conservatism. “A statesman, never losing sight of principles, is to be guided by circumstances,” he wrote, in an oft-quoted passage, “and judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment he may ruin his country for ever.”
.. Trump, who would have the federal government spend billions on mass deportation and fundamentally transform America, is a revolutionary conservative on immigration. Bush, with his emphasis on “practical plans,” and Kasich, who insisted Trump’s proposal “will not work,” spoke as Burkean conservatives.
.. The Burkeans have been losing ground in the Republican Party for a while now. Too often their old conception of conservatism strikes others in the G.O.P. as a form of surrender or, at the very least, an acceptance of the liberal status quo. When a successful Democrat has been in power for two terms, the Burkeans can appear too ready to accept the other party’s legislative victories. It is the political equivalent of stare decisis, the principle by which judges generally respect precedents, or things already decided, to maintain stability and social order.
.. Two of the big stories of the Republican primaries so far are how the Party’s grass roots have rejected Kasich and Bush’s Burkean approach to immigration and how the Party’s foreign-policy establishment has rejected Trump and Paul’s Burkean approach to the Middle East. The two candidates on the rise, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, seem to have a better chance at navigating this terrain.
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On foreign policy, Rubio is in the revolutionary camp, often arguing, along with Bush, that America can and should enthusiastically intervene around the world to shape outcomes in our favor, though he is also careful to downplay the cost of such proposals in terms of troops sent aboard or dollars spent. Meanwhile, Cruz, though at times quite hawkish, has emphasized the limits of American power in the world.