{"id":16654,"date":"2025-09-05T15:35:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T21:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/national-conservatism-asserts-its-dominance-in-trumps-washington\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:37:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:37:43","slug":"national-conservatism-asserts-its-dominance-in-trumps-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/national-conservatism-asserts-its-dominance-in-trumps-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"National conservatism asserts its dominance in Trump\u2019s Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sen.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., speaks during the confirmation hearing for Kash Patel, at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 30.\u00a0(Ben Curtis\/The Associated Press)<\/span>Ben Curtis<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2013 An ideological faction is transforming the Republican Party in President Donald Trump\u2019s second term. Now firmly in power, its leaders gathered this week at a downtown Washington hotel to bask in their triumph \u2013 and to chart what comes next.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump\u2019s victory was not just a win for his movement but for the ideas of the people in this room,\u201d Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt told the crowd. \u201cNational conservatism is an idea whose time has arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of Congress, Trump administration officials, donors and right-wing pundits convened for the annual National Conservatism Conference \u2013 once seen as fringe, now asserting itself as the GOP\u2019s dominant ideological force. Panel titles ranged from \u201cThe Threat of Islamism in America\u201d to \u201cThe Bible and American Renewal\u201d to \u201cOverturn Obergefell,\u201d the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

The event underscored the movement\u2019s vision of an America rooted in limited immigration, Christian identity and the preservation of what speakers called the nation\u2019s traditional culture.<\/p>\n

Schmitt, a first-term senator, followed a GOP donor\u2019s speech on \u201cThe Problem of Our Time: White Guilt\u201d with a talk titled \u201cWhat is an American?\u201d He criticized some legal immigration, declared that \u201cAmerica doesn\u2019t belong to them \u2013 it belongs to us,\u201d and insisted, \u201cWe can no longer apologize for who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur people tamed the continent, built a civilization from the wilderness,\u201d Schmitt said. \u201cWe Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims who poured out onto the ocean\u2019s shores.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018America is not just an idea\u2019<\/div>\n

In July 2024, then-Sen. JD Vance used his Republican National Convention speech after accepting the vice presidential nomination to declare: \u201cAmerica is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That idea is central to national conservatism. With its first U.S. conference in 2019, the movement is a project of the Edmund Burke Foundation, a conservative think tank. Its founder, Israeli political theorist Yoram Hazony, defines national conservatism as a philosophy centered on restoring national and religious traditions \u2013 ideals he says are essential to a nation\u2019s strength and cohesion.<\/p>\n

Vance has spoken at multiple conferences and in 2021 credited Hazony as \u201cquite influential to me.\u201d His elevation to vice president \u2013 and the policy shifts that followed \u2013 signaled the movement\u2019s arrival in power.<\/p>\n

In 2021, while campaigning for the Senate, Vance delivered the keynote, calling on conservatives to \u201chonestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.\u201d Four years later, the Trump administration followed through, cutting university funding.<\/p>\n

In the shadow of the White House<\/div>\n

This year\u2019s conference was held just blocks from the White House.<\/p>\n

Speakers included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, White House budget director Russell Vought, Trump border czar Tom Homan, and three U.S. senators. Also featured were controversial figures like John Eastman \u2013 an ex-Trump attorney central to efforts to overturn the 2020 election \u2013 and Calvin Robinson, a Michigan priest who lost his license after mimicking a gesture interpreted by some as a Nazi salute.<\/p>\n

Many speakers defended Trump administration policies and criticized opponents. Vought declared that the Government Accountability Office \u201cshouldn\u2019t exist\u201d after it said his latest effort to claw back funds approved by Congress is illegal. On rescissions, he said, \u201cIf Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we\u2019re going to use that authority aggressively to protect the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the \u201cOverturn Obergefell\u201d panel, Katy Faust, a right-wing author, argued that legalizing gay marriage weakened the rights of biological parents: \u201cThe moment the state has the power to assign parenthood to strangers, it can unassign it from you. Your legal relationship to the children you\u2019ve begotten is weaker than it was a decade ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Klingenstein, a top Republican donor, said the greatest problem facing the nation is \u201cwhite guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMany Americans voted for President Trump in 2016 because he told them what they knew but needed to hear: America could be great again,\u201d said Klingenstein. \u201cNow, Trump must tell them something else they know but need to hear: America is no longer guilty of systemic racism, or most any racism for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018What winning looks like\u2019<\/div>\n

The 2025 conference also served as a celebration. Hazony opened with a speech about \u201cwhat winning looks like.\u201d Vought urged attendees to push the movement forward \u201cso that the movement built around President Trump is a durable intellectual river.\u201d<\/p>\n

But no one made a louder entrance than Missouri\u2019s junior senator, Schmitt.<\/p>\n

Opening his 30-minute address with force, Schmitt called the moment \u201ca revolt within the right.\u201d He pointed to immigration policy as a prime example.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old conservative establishment may have opposed something like illegal immigration on procedural grounds, simply because it was illegal,\u201d he said. \u201cAt this point, it should be clear that the fact that something is sanctioned by our government does not mean it\u2019s good for our country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat much is obvious with various forms of legal immigration today.\u201d<\/p>\n

He closed by outlining his view that America is \u201ca nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

That heritage, he said, is one of pilgrims and settlers who repelled \u201cwave after wave of Indian war band attacks.\u201d He said \u201cevery great feat of the modern world bore American fingerprints,\u201d citing those who built skyscrapers, split the atom, invented the airplane and walked on the moon.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It\u2019s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny,\u201d Schmitt said.<\/p>\n

Though the ballroom was only half full, Schmitt\u2019s remarks quickly reverberated online, as his team pushed out clips across social media.<\/p>\n

In just over two years, he has built a close alliance with Trump, helping move key legislation through the Senate. But this speech marked something more: a signal that national conservatism now has a firm foothold in Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not sorry. Why would we be sorry?\u201d Schmitt said in closing. \u201cAmerica is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Conservatism Conference asserts itself as the GOP’s dominant ideological force<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16654"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20319,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16654\/revisions\/20319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16654"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}