Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Conservative New York Times reporter Brett Stephens shamed President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement in a conversation with colleague David Leonhardt, noting the knack MAGA has for spreading "pessimism" among its followers.
"What you have today among conservatives, and certainly with the president, is essentially a pervasive pessimism about the future of liberal democracy: the idea that ultimately free citizens sorting out their problems through experiment and collaboration, the contestation of ideas, is going to yield good results," said Stephens.
"The conservatism that Trump expresses is better classified as illiberalism. That’s to say, a set of ideas often based in ethnicity, race or place that may have something in common with the conservative traditions of Europe, but have much less in common with the conservative traditions of the United States," he continued.
Stephens noted one of the "many reasons" that he was never a Trump supporter, despite being a traditional, Reagan-Republican.
"At its heart, there’s a dark vision of the future of the free world, a real pessimism or doubt about whether liberal societies can succeed," he said.
The only solution he has, however, is the hope that the GOP will "see the light" on immigration, once they have "exhausted the available alternatives. ... But I don’t think that’s happening in the next two years. I wonder if it’s happening in the next 20."
By contrast, Reaganism, he said was more "optimistic" about "possibility."