The U.S. Has No Conservative Party | Opinion

Ideology in the United States is an often muddled subject, not well understood by most, and usually confused with partisanship when people speak about it. In so doing, the common belief is that Democrats are liberal while Republicans are conservative, and each party represents the left and right ends of the spectrum respectively. This belief is so entrenched that most will use the partisan and ideological terms interchangeably, treating them as one and the same. However, the reality is that ideology isn't really a simple one-dimensional spectrum stretching from left to right, and in the United States, we don't really have a conservative party.

The reason ideology is so poorly understood in America is complex, but ultimately boils down to the fact that we have a two-party electoral system. As such, rather than allowing our parties take a nuanced and narrow ideological position, they must instead both be broad "big tent" groupings. This makes for strange bedfellows, such as when we see the likes of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump carrying the Republican label, while Joe Manchin and Elizabeth Warren are Democrats.

Multiparty democracies, on the other hand, better reflect the multidimensional nature of ideology, accounting not just for the liberal-conservative dynamic but also what is known as the authoritarian-libertarian spectrum. The former of these ideological dynamics speaks only to one's views on the proper role of government in economics, while the latter is focused solely on the extent to which the government may involve itself in society's social issues.

While Americans will often call an abortion-rights position liberal, that is a misnomer. Such a view should accurately be cast as a libertarian position, as it seeks to deny government the authority to regulate a woman's liberty to make decisions on her own. Only when a policy speaks to whether the government should involve itself in economic matters is a position accurately defined in terms of being liberal or conservative, with those seeking more involvement in this realm properly painted as liberals.

Knowing this, it now ought to be easy to see why the United States is truly without a conservative party and has been for decades. Republicans only ever campaign on the principle of limited government in the economy, but that is little more than lip service to a position they have never truly adhered to.

Nowhere is this Republican hypocrisy better evidenced than when it comes to the matter of government spending. In looking to the U.S. budget going as far back as Ronald Regan, we see a nearly four decade pattern of deficit spending under Republican presidents. Blowing up the national debt to finance an ever-growing government is not a conservative position, but it is a consistent result of what happens when a Republican is in the White House.

Even when it comes to the government's regulation of business, we see that Republican presidents do not try to limit the reach of government's heavy hand. Trump in particular, who loved to talk tough about cutting red tape, spent his final months in office rushing through more significant regulations than any other U.S. president in history to such a degree that he ended up passing more of these regulations than even Obama did in his entire first term. This is not an idiosyncratic quirk of one eccentric Republican president either, it's a sustained pattern of regulatory behavior that spans across Republican administrations.

Trump's capture of the GOP does mark the start of a time in the party where conservatism has taken a clear and faraway backseat to authoritarianism. This is a trend that looks certain to outlast him given that Republican upstarts are now actively emulating Trump's authoritarian leanings, particularly his penchant for feuding with corporations that cross him personally. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is now in the throes of a war against Disney that he declared after their CEO expressed dismay with his political agenda on a social issue.

Chris Christie, himself a Republican, called out DeSantis for being far from what we ought to expect from a conservative. Christie is absolutely right. The Florida governor was so angered at Disney's CEO for expressing his more libertarian policy preferences that he is now willing to do whatever he can to saddle them with more regulation and upend their bottom line. A conservative would be appalled at the thought of using the government's authority to choose winners and losers in the marketplace, but for Republicans its just business as usual.

Nicholas Creel is an assistant professor of business law at Georgia College & State University.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.