OXON HILL, Md. – The conservative movement must have a cohesive set of principles to build a coalition after President Donald Trump, said Ed Corrigan, president of the Conservative Partnership Institute.
“It’s easy to generate principles. It’s much harder to figure out what combination of principles creates a palatable coalition,” Corrigan said Wednesday at The Forum, an event sponsored by The Heritage Foundation at National Harbor in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.
President Donald Trump, Corrigan said, put forward a clear agenda to Americans: stopping illegal immigration, reindustrializing the United States, ending “forever wars,” and restoring law and order.
“I remember Trump saying, I’m gonna be the jobs president, jobs, jobs, and he never stopped talking about the quality of the jobs,” Corrigan said. “That’s a certain vision of how you make America great again.”
He said the “big question” is whether conservatives can build a coalition around those same principles after a crushing defeat in last week’s midterm elections and before Trump leaves office in 2029.
Corrigan participated in a panel discussion titled, “What is the Future of American Conservatism?” The discussion came just a week after Democrats flipped at least 43 House seats and will hold at least a 254-168 majority in the chamber. They also picked up at least seven Senate seats, and Democratic Senate candidates lead in Alaska and Mississippi.
O.J. Oleka, CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, noted that the fiscal matters touch many other issues where conservatives have an advantage. He noted state financial officers have opposed using tax dollars to advance the left’s climate agenda and DEI, short for diversity, equity and inclusion.
“At the State Financial Officers Foundation, we work with state treasurers and auditors and comptrollers across the country to make sure that your taxpayer dollars are not weaponized,” Oleka said.
“That’s a clear example of leadership and action, [something] that you’d be taking for 2028,” Oleka added.
Matthew Spalding, dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College, said voters shifted in the midterm elections, but not in a fundamental way.
“I think what happened here was a shift of opinion, pushing away from the current rule book,” Spalding said. “But this question, what else is going on? Donald Trump is a great outside candidate. I’m not sure he’s a great realigning candidate as far as where we are now.”
He said Americans are “deeply unsettled.”
“The left took advantage of that, but I don’t see the election as evidence that Americans have shifted and become fundamentally aligned to the left,” Spalding said.
“Our job as conservatives is not to follow public opinion but to lead it. … I think we are in a societal debate about America, and we’ve got to step up to the plate,” Spalding continued.
Yoram Hazony, president of the Herzl Institute, compared last week’s election with 2006, when Republicans also lost their majorities in both chambers of Congress.
A few years later, he noted, the tea party movement emerged.
“The tea party was a rebellion not just against President Obama, who came in two years later, but a rebellion from the right against the perceived, anemic, out-of-touch Republican establishment,” he said.