The New Right’s Self-Destructive Populism

For forty years, the dominant political philosophy on the mainstream American right was the fusionist conservativism of Ronald Reagan. Under Reagan’s formulation, the right formed an alliance between free-market economics, social traditionalism, and a strong anti-communist defense policy. The American right has changed in recent years, with the current GOP presidential ticket looking more like a bean bag chair than Reagan’s three-legged stool. While elements of the other planks remain, nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the political right’s retreat from free markets. In its place we have seen the emergence of a populist New Right typified by Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance.

Vance’s economics expressly reject free market principles by designating them as “neoliberalism”—a pejorative term that, until recently, was, mainly deployed by the far-left to attack Reaganomics. The result looks more like Bernie Sanders’s misguided economic vision plus a dash of nativism; and, although there has always been internal debate among conservatives about military interventionism, Vance adopts a selectively isolationist stance ranging from indifference to Ukraine to beating the war-drums on Iran. Even social conservatives are now disappointed by his weak support of their cause. 

Despite Vance’s ambiguous relationship to American conservativism, the left-wing media struggles to define Vance as anything but an ultra-conservative. If the strategy for opposing Vance is to warn of him banning abortion, ending social security, or bombing Iran, then they miss the mark. The old categories do not work. Mike Pence, Mitt Romney, and Ben Sasse are more likely to support one or more of those policies.

Vance is thus not a part of the political right in the way we are accustomed to the term in the USA. Yet he “owns the libs,” and to his populist supporters, that is what really matters. It doesn’t matter if reality squares with J.D. Vance’s “vibes,” because they echo the feelings of his base: resentment toward immigrants, liberals, libertarians, the economy, and, apparently, childless cat ladies. But the funny thing about feelings is that they can conflict and, in the end, lead to behavior that makes no sense, no matter how much we rationalize it. That is the case with the populist New Right’s attitude toward immigration and economics.

A Shaky Relationship with Reality

One of the more shameful things J.D. Vance has done is spread malicious disparagement about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. These included claims that Haitians were eating their neighbors’ pet cats and dogs, a claim that has been widely debunked. President Trump even mentioned it in his last debate. Maybe this was just another case of the online populist echo chamber; maybe Trump and Vance were deceived. But Vance insisted on doubling down even after he was corrected. He has not retreated from the claim, even after the Republican Governor of Ohio told him to stop, and even after Haitian children had to stay home because of threats. When called on it, he defended himself for creating a national news story that drew attention to a situation in Springfield. That is, he expressed no remorse, even after the Catholic Bishops of Ohio denounced it.

Vance’s minimal concern for the truth extends to his claims about the economic effects of immigration and to economics in general. The senator has repeatedly belittled economic science, calling it “fake.” This aversion to economics is certainly not based on Vance having a deep understanding of its faults, as is apparent in his breathtaking claim that “if the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous city in the world…. America would be the most prosperous country in the world, because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens.” In addition to the exaggeration of the number of illegal immigrants that have come into the country in the last four years, this statement is baffling for a different reason. The United States is consistently near the top, and sometimes at the top, in median income worldwide. In fact, the U.S. is easily the most prosperous large nation in the world, as seen in the chart below. The New Right’s denigration of America’s real prosperity and their misunderstanding of consensus economic claims, such as regarding the benefits of free trade, reveals a perspective on economics driven more by sentiment and populist talking points than engagement with economic reality. 

Now despite its prosperity, America has real issues to resolve, such as fiscal issues that will only get worse these next few years with an aging population and excessive government spending. When the vice-presidential debate moderators referred to the Wharton Model estimate of the effects of Trump’s tax and spending policies, that they would lead to an increase of $5.8 trillion to the deficit over a decade, Vance once again derided professional economists, without proposing any informed correction to their model. We should therefore have little faith that he knows much about the problem or a viable solution to it, which is unfortunate because neither do the Democratic candidates. 

Another issue that Americans face is housing costs, a problem that is more than anything the result of local zoning policies that limit the construction of new housing. In the vice-presidential debate, Vance instead blamed that problem on the growth in illegal immigrants. Vance’s plan to deport millions of immigrants, however, will likely do little to mitigate high housing costs, especially since 30% of construction workers are illegal immigrants. It may be the case that immigrants flooding one area can drive up housing costs in the short-term, but as someone who supports pro-family policies, Vance should know that adding people not only adds more consumers but also adds more producers, and more thinkers. In any case, we should focus on the artificial limits on our housing supply, as they have a far bigger impact. Democrat politicians who blame it on “corporate greed” miss the mark as well, neglecting that their own policies have made it nearly impossible for developers to build without jumping through onerous regulatory hoops imposed by the government.

An obvious concern of Americans right now is inflation and how expensive everyday goods have gotten in the last few years. The New Right claims to recognize that concern, and it is something they need to address if they want to alleviate the main source of the public’s economic anxiety. Unfortunately, many other sentiments driving New Right economic policy run into conflict with that goal. As noted, Vance wants to deport millions of illegal immigrants, and apparently even some legal ones (e.g., Haitians in Springfield, Ohio). The U.S. economy could perhaps better withstand the deportation of millions of immigrants—however inhumane and impractical that is—if it could replace the same goods produced by immigrants by means of trade with other countries. But the populist New Right also supports the policy of increased tariffs across the board to encourage the purchasing of American products. 

Deportations combined with tariffs will therefore make things even worse. On top of that, many of the immigrant workers deported provide services such as housekeeping and childcare—often services the native population is not too fond of providing. Therefore, New Right populists such as Vance will have to make a choice between deportations, tariffs, or lower prices. I would suggest they drop the first two and focus on the third through policies that free up trade and allow production, but that would be a free-market conservative approach (as well as a market liberal approach), not a populist one.

Some might object that the public persona of J.D. Vance is not the real J.D. Vance, that his exoteric populist policies are not the full story about what he wants. Suffice it to say, for now, all indications are that esoteric New Right is even worse than its main expositor’s public persona. 

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