The Global Crisis of the Center Right

Throughout the Western world, business conservatism is giving way to anti-establishment nationalism

Alternative for Germany (AfD)'s demonstrators in Berlin (Photo by TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Henry Olsen, a conservative columnist at the Washington Post has written a striking essay that spotlights a very important political trend: the splintering of the political right throughout the western world. In countries ranging from the United States to New Zealand to Canada to Germany, the co-called populist right is on the rise. Characterized by anti-establishment and nationalists instincts, hostile to immigration and global trade, the New Right is alienating many of the more moderate, college educated voters who traditionally lean to center right parties.

Adducing many election results to bolster his case, Olsen writes:

The same fissures in the old conservative coalition that plague the GOP appear in virtually every other modern democracy. Nationalist and populist parties have grown dramatically in the past decade, often gaining near parity with incumbent center-right parties. Urban and suburban moderate voters, meanwhile, have often swung to classically liberal or green parties that are comfortable aligning with left-wing governments.

We can see this clearly in European polls and recent election results. Scandinavian polls show national populist parties obtaining between 11 and 19 percent of the vote. EKRE, Estonia’s populist incarnation, now leads that nation’s polls with 22 percent, while the Flemish separatist and anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang leads Belgian surveys. National populist parties in Austria and Spain are polling in the high-teens, and a trio of nationalist parties garnered nearly a quarter of Dutch voters in recent surveys. No center-right coalition can emerge without these parties’ involvement.

The problem for the political right is that while this turn towards anti-establishment nationalism attracts new voters, it also turns off some traditional ones. In Europe, former moderate conservatives are now migrating towards classical liberal or environmental parties. Some of these parties are forming alliances with the center left. As Olsen writes, “Center-right parties that reject that option must invariably form governments with centrists or even their traditional center-left opponents. The incoming four-party Dutch government will include Democrats 66, a center-left party. This means the new coalition agreement includes substantial spending increases for education and climate change, leading ING bank to declare it was ‘a farewell to Dutch frugality.’ Austria’s conservatives govern with the Greens, resulting in a budget with tax cuts for business and working-class voters balanced by increases in carbon taxes to battle climate change.”

Olsen’s argument is convincing in broad outline. His account overlaps with that of other fretful elite conservatives, such as Anne Applebaum (writing mostly about Poland) and David Brooks (writing about the United States).

But a few provisos need to be added. A splintered right plays out differently in the two party system of the United States than it does in the multiparty democracies found in other Western countries. In a two party system, moderate conservatives are faced with a much starker choice. It’s true that offended by Trump, there was a cluster of Never Trump intellectuals, which mirrored a partly shift among white college educated voters. Disgusted by Trump, these voters have become moderate Democrats. But that shift has been minor in the grand scheme of things. Trump mostly held the Republican coalition together. He did so by offering policies (conservative judges, a nationalist foreign policy, tax cuts) that pleased traditional Republican constituencies.

Trumpism doesn’t seem to be costing the Republicans enough voters to create an incentive to give it up. Indeed, running candidates who voice Trumpian themes without having Trump’s personal defects seems to be a winning strategy for Republicans, as Glenn Youngkin proved in Virginia. There could eventually be a political cost to Trumpism, but that’s in the far future. The two party system is deeply entrenched in American politics; as a result, anti-establishment nationalists are likely to thrive in the United States much more than elsewhere.

Share and Subscribe

If you enjoyed this post, please share:

Or subscribe: