TPAC: Tucker Carlson, Kellyanne Conway Demonstrate That The Trump Cult of Personality Is Well Under Way

In a fascinating interview with The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, Fox News star Tucker Carlson laid out his political philosophy – or rather, its labyrinthine and conveniently shifting nature. Carlson has become an uber-celebrity in conservative circles in recent weeks since taking over Megyn Kelly’s slot at Fox News for his series of interviews with bizzaro-world leftists straight from the madhouse. So what’s his guiding star in terms of policy?

He doesn’t have one.

As The Atlantic reports:

Carlson’s politics have undergone more than one evolution over the course of his career in television. When he started out in the early 2000s on CNN’s Crossfire, he generally played the part of a mainline partisan—a champion of the Iraq War (he soured on the endeavor after a year), and an ardent Bush defender (he soured on the president after a term). After leaving CNN in 2005 he landed at MSNBC, where he morphed into a libertarian. And when his show there was cancelled less than three years later, he ended up at Fox News, serving as a utility pundit and eventually emerging as a mischief-making advocate for Trump-style nationalism.

A cynical soul might detect careerism in that trajectory. Carlson, for his part, readily admits that his worldview has transformed over the years. These days, he tells me, “I’m not much of an economic conservative, and I’m not conservative at all on foreign policy.” Nevertheless, he insists the evolution has been organic. “If your politics don’t change when circumstances do, you’re an idiot, you’re a reactionary.”

More to the point, he says, “My views are not super interesting.”

No, they aren’t. Ever-shifting Rorschach tests aren’t particularly fascinating. If he’s not an economic conservative or a conservative on foreign policy, what exactly is he? He’s supposedly a warrior against the “elites,” against smugness. He’s against things, and those things change, and so he changes. He is definitionally reactionary.

In fact, it’s not “reactionary” to hold fast to principles and values which undergird politics. It’s all well and good to smack around befuddled-looking leftist students and protest organizers and Kurt Eichenwald – it’s often hilarious entertainment. But that doesn’t mean that you’re espousing anything of particular value.

But smacking people around – VIIIIICTORYYYYY!!!!1! – is now the only thing that matters to many conservatives.

And that means worshipping a Powerful Leader™ who is Always Fighting™.

Which brings us to Kellyanne Conway at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Conway – making her first public appearances in weeks – told a moderator that Trump had affected the conservative movement so deeply that “I think by tomorrow this will be TPAC” (Trump Political Action Conference). She added that conservatism was “sclerotic and dusty.”

This is nothing new, given the fact that some Trump fans long ago substituted Trump for God in the slogan “In God We Trust.” And it’s not wrong for CPAC to celebrate Trump – he’s a Republican president with a Republican Congress, and he will undoubtedly push some conservative policies and already has (which I have thoroughly celebrated). But to substitute Trump worship for adherence to conservatism is a recipe for disaster.

The Trump cult of personality is well underway. It was ugly on the left with Barack Obama, and it’s uglier on a right supposedly built on ideas rather than idolatry.