Abby McCloskey, The Bush Institute, Summer 2025
“I worry that my children may never get to experience true conservatism manifested in one of America’s major political parties – at least not like I did growing up. They may never feel the thrill I got from watching as an ideology that I believed was good and true was promoted by admirable institutions and leaders. Of course, they’ll be able to read about such moments in history books. But it may all seem so distant to them, so quaint.
Perhaps, while doing research for a university term paper, they’ll come upon the work of Phyllis Schlafly, who may as well have been Mother Mary in the Protestant Republican household of my childhood (at least to my father). I hope they do, because the title (more than the substance) of Schlafly’s infamous book, A Choice Not an Echo, frames much of what’s gone wrong with U.S. politics today.
The conservatism I knew growing up was a choice – a choice to adhere to longstanding principles and ideas, to hold onto a cord that stretched back to our nation’s founding. What I see in the Republican Party today is something very different: an echo, a reaction that defines itself largely in relation to something else.
Ask what Republicans stand for these days, and you’ll hear a lot about the things they are against: affirmative action, the deep state, international treaties and alliances, abortion on demand, free trade, the legacy media, open borders, the swamp, college protesters, boys in girls’ sports, or America being taken advantage of.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with being against things. I’m against unsustainable budget deficits and co-opting women’s sports and needless war. And today’s Republicans clearly do stand for certain things, such as “Made in America” and safe borders.
But I would argue that the modern GOP has become too focused on opposition to the way things are going – politically, economically, and culturally. These days, the Right’s policy solutions often feel like a call-and-response with the Left, and both sides’ solutions seem to have a similar substance and weight. Many contemporary Republicans exhibit a newfound comfort with expanded executive control and weakened norms, institutions, and constitutional guardrails – the kind of attitudes for which earlier conservatives would have criticized progressives. Too many Republicans now share a disregard for prudence and moderation and a predilection for rapid action. They eschew the tradition of civility and increasingly focus on an identity based on race, gender, and religion. Both the Left’s advocates of DEI, which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the White manosphere bros on the Right are obsessed with identity. Both the Left and the Right seem committed to escalation.
For those of us old enough to remember the old days – by which I mean those of us barely middle-aged – today’s politics often feel like an echo chamber. Sometime in the early 21st century, we became so divided that our political extremes started to resemble one another, at least in terms of methods and emotional intensity. Republicans and Democrats currently struggle to define themselves in the absence of the other….”