George Will cites nine tenets of progressivism in arguing that the Trump administration is “the most progressive in history”.

• Link: washingtonpost.com/opin…

Examples: Trying to infuse society with politics; government activism in trying to fix perceived social problems; central planning of economy in trying to pick winners and losers.

I’m not sure if “progressivism” is the right label to use to describe what the current administration is doing. But it sure isn’t “limited government conservatism” or “constitutional conservatism” or any other kind of conservatism.

In seeing no real difference between J.D. Vance and whoever progressive Dems might nominate in ‘28, George Will says that it would be better, from a conservative point of view, for Republicans to lose the presidency in ‘28. Then, as an oppositional party, traditional conservativism might rise again from the ashes.

If Vance is nominated, the GOP will offer voters an echo, not a choice: a (slightly different) flavor of president-rampant, government-everywhere, everything-politicized progressivism, fueled by the seething animosity that such high-stakes politics begets.

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What would be worse for actual conservatism: Four years of forthright progressivism (stoutly resisted by congressional Republicans remembering their former convictions)? Or four more years of government under a Republican Party that would stammer incoherently if required to identify fundamental disagreements with forthright progressivism?

To me the question is this: Are traditional conservatives even trying to take back the Republican Party? Is there any strategy other than hoping, after more than a decade of transformation into a Trumpian-populist party, that the GOP magically snaps back to what it was like before?

There is no evidence that the “wait and hope” approach will work. The party won’t become conservative again, it seems to me, until there is an organized and sustained effort to reclaim the party.

No, it won’t be the same kind of conservatism that Mitt Romney ran on in 2012. But ideally, it would entail some basic elements of conservatism: respect for the rule of law, belief that political freedom is better than authoritarianism, and a sense of actual fiscal responsibility.