There seems to be a growing populist movement among some Republican presidential candidates. That’s bad news. Populism has historically been associated with liberalism and even authoritarianism—not what you’d call the Republican approach, or at least it shouldn’t be.
Most definitions of populism stress the same essential points. The Cambridge Dictionary defines populism as, “Political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want.” And the Free Dictionary writes, “A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite.”
Consider some of the U.S. politicians often referred to as populists: Louisiana Governor and later Senator Huey Long, presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who founded the “Progressive Party” after splitting with the Republican Party. And both Ralph Nader and Ross Perot had strong populist leanings.
President Obama regularly taps into populist sentiment. In December 2011, he journeyed to Osawatomie, Kansas, to speak in the same place that Teddy Roosevelt had delivered his populist “New Nationalism” speech.
So just which of these populists and their ideas are Republicans hoping to emulate? In fact, populism is antithetical to conservatism and libertarianism for several reasons:
Populism flourishes in times of political turmoil. And we’ve certainly had a lot of political turmoil the past six years. President Obama’s constitutionally questionable actions and executive orders have created a political backlash—the kind that understandably breeds populism.
But economic policies that create a stable, growing economy, which creates opportunities for all, tends to tap down populism. If a Republican president ignites a booming economy, the populist fires will die out.
Populism is based on fear. Populism pits one group against another—which has been the Democratic playbook for years. Whether it’s rich against poor, male against female, one race against another, Wall Street against Main Street, someone is a threat to you and your way of life.
And that means somebody has to stand up and protect you. As the New York Times reported of Obama’s Kansas speech, the White House had decided, “the best course for Mr. Obama is to try and present himself as a defender of working-class Americans and Republicans as defenders of a small elite.” That’s still his mantra, and it will be Hillary Clinton’s as well.
Even some Republicans and conservatives are picking up this theme. John Fonte, writing in National Review, points out: “[I]n July 2013, Rich Lowry and Bill Kristol, the editors of two leading conservative journals, National Review and The Weekly Standard, added a pro-working-class populist argument to the more common ‘enforcement first’ stance. In a joint op-ed attacking the Senate bill, Lowry and Kristol wrote that ‘the last thing’ low-skilled workers ‘should have to deal with is wage-depressing competition from newly arriving workers.’”
The politics of fear pits one group against another and is diametrically opposed to Ronald Reagan’s politics of “freedom and optimism.” In his last public appearance, in 1992, he said he wanted to be someone who “appealed to your greatest hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts.”
Populists tell the masses what they want to hear. As one French politician from the 19th century is quoted as saying, “There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.” Actually, that sounds a lot like Obama’s “lead from behind” strategy.
There is an inherent conflict between principle and populism. One stands by the rule of law; the other the rule of the mob. The former stands by what the Constitution says regardless of what the people want; the latter stands by what the people want regardless of what the Constitution says.
Populism always leads to more government. Every Republican is campaigning on reducing the size of government, but populism leads to more government—and especially higher taxes and more government intrusion into our lives. That’s because only by relying on the power of the government can a populist politicians force people to do what they think the public should be doing.
Populist politicians stand against every thing that conservative and libertarian politicians stand for—limited government and the rule of law. Republican presidential candidates should shun the politics of populism.