Why Voting for Harris Can't Save Conservatism from Itself

An appeal to David French

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

It was with some sadness but no surprise that I read David French’s New York Times opinion column, “To Save Conservatism From Itself, I Am Voting Harris.” I had long looked up to French as a kind of elderly conservative political commentator. While he has a libertarian streak I don’t share, we do have a lot in common. We’re both bald and presbyterian (or, at least, he was, I’m not sure if he is anymore). We’re both social conservatives and we’ve both been labelled “NeverTrumpers.” I followed him during the tumultuous 2016 election when he and his family were vilified and viciously attacked by other conservatives for refusing to bend the knee to Trump. I admired his courage and principles, and I agreed with his warnings about the dangers of Donald Trump on America and conservatism in general. However, over the next eight years, like many people, I grew weary of his repeated criticisms of MAGA evangelicals and Trump, even while I remained sympathetic to his concerns. They were coming out of a place of genuine frustration and real hurt from people in the church and out of a desire for justice.

But where the David French of 2016 had social conservative capital to persuade fellow evangelicals, by 2024, he’s spent much of that capital. He’s writing for the New York Times, not the National Review. He’s endorsing Kamala Harris, not a third-party candidate. And in his endorsement of Harris, he concludes by claiming, “If Harris wins . . . conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life.”

Most of French’s column is devoted to criticisms of Trump, which I have little to disagree with. The man is unfit for office, in my opinion, as is Harris. But it’s his argument for Harris that I take issue with: the idea that we can “build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life” if we just let Harris win. I don’t think that’s true. In fact, I believe on closer examination we’ll find that what we need right now is to do the deep, difficult, time-consuming work of culture change to uproot Trumpism in conservatism.

Let us set aside the fact that “saving conservatism” isn’t the greatest good of voting. We ought to vote for the common good of our nation, not to save a political movement. But if you believe that your political tradition is the best path towards the common good, as David French and I both do (and most people do!), then it makes sense to at least be concerned about how your vote will shape the future of your party. For the sake of this article, I will be focusing on French’s framing of the argument around saving conservatism, rather than a larger argument about who to vote for in general.

So, will defeating Trump defeat Trumpism, the populist demagoguery fueled by lying and various other vices like lust and malice? I don’t think we have any indication that Trump losing will stop this train. He lost in 2020 and here we are again. If he loses in 2024, he probably won’t run in 2028, but someone like him will. Trump has remade the party in his image. We’ve seen that in the way he altered the party platform in 2024 to weaken the GOP position on abortion and traditional marriage. We can’t expect voters to make the choice for a more electable candidate in 2028 if Trump loses in 2024, because voters aren’t always rational. They are moved by all sorts of forces, vibes. And if our culture remains fundamentally the same, locked in the same deep culture war, I don’t foresee right-wing voters calling for anything but another Trump, another strong man advocate who will fight for them regardless of morality and justice and legality.

French knows that the biggest objection from his fellow social conservatives (yes, I still consider him a social conservative even though I believe he has made a wrong prudential judgment) is that the Harris/Walz ticket will be one of, if not the most Pro-Choice presidential tickets in American history. How can he, someone with deep Pro-Life commitments, now vote for one of the most virulent Pro-Choice candidates? Well, French reasons, if we look at the issue pragmatically, abortions were up under the Pro-Life Trump administration, and since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Pro-Life referendums have failed in red states. French’s conclusion is: “If present trends continue, then abortion opponents will have won an important legal battle, but they’ll ultimately lose the more important cultural and political cause.” I think French is right here. The Pro-Life movement, by-in-large, did not know what to do when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the culture was not and is not where the Pro-Life movement would like it to be. The burden has shifted to the states, but at the state level, people generally don’t mind abortions, with a few restrictions. In other words, culture is driving politics. And in order to see real, lasting Pro-Life change, we need to be working hard at the level of culture as well as law. So French is right, politics is downstream from culture.

But it is precisely because politics is downstream from culture that voting for Harris will not save conservatism. Did Trump losing in 2020 change the culture of conservatism? No. It did not. Why should we expect it to in 2024? Trump losing will not be a referendum on lying for conservatives. Trump losing will not be a claim that republicans should not try to steal elections or engage in conspiracy theories. That would require deeper, spiritual, cultural change. And what’s more, by publicly advocating for Harris as a notable social conservative, I believe French is missing an opportunity to support cultural change by publicly endorsing a third-party candidate; instead, he is lending credence to a platform that is diametrically and exuberantly opposed to the Pro-Life values he holds dear. Is supporting the Pro-Choice candidate going to sway conservative culture back to a force for “genuine good” again? It’s just as likely to convince conservatives that Trump is right, that a Pro-Life platform is too politically costly! At a time when Trump is weakening the Pro-Life platform, we need more solidarity on such issues, not less. I understand it’s wearying to support third party candidates, knowing that they are not going to win most elections, but if we want to signal our dissatisfaction to the GOP and inspire cultural change, supporting a platform that actually represents most of our values is important.

Maybe most significantly, conservatism can’t be saved by embracing a party that denies the sanctity of life and undermines the traditional family and does so boldly. They glory in their shame. I understand and agree with French’s frustrations and objections with Donald Trump and the contemporary GOP, but the answer cannot be to turn to those who oppose our values in hopes of defeating Trumpism. Only we can do that work. In other words, I think we have “a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life” today, regardless of whether Trump wins or loses. And that begins by not letting Trump set the agenda of our advocacy and discourse.

One of the realities we must accept is that whatever flaws exist in conservatism today, they didn’t begin with Donald Trump and they won’t end with him. The seeds were planted by the conservative leaders, politicians, commentators, cultural influencers who came before him. For example, I’m reminded of the visceral hatred and conspiracy theories that spread around Obama for eight years by so many conservatives. That culture led to where we are today, just as the prior culture led to it. And I don’t think we’ve quite reckoned with that past, yet. The poison has been in the water a long, long time. The reckoning won’t happen at the ballot box, but through deep cultural change—a change in the narrative we share about what it means to be a human person, what obligations we have to our neighbors, our leaders, and God, and who we are as a nation.

I understand that making a prudential judgement about how to vote as a social conservative in this election is a difficult matter. I do not begrudge any individual for their private conscience-bound decision to vote. But if French is specifically concerned about the state of conservatism, instead of voting for Harris and publicly encouraging others to do so in a desperate bid to purge the conservative system of Trumpism, I would invite him to devote his energy to shoring up the ruins, building up a positive image of what conservatism should look like in the 21^st Century, grounded in the great tradition, reckoning with the mistakes of the past, and focused on the common good of the future. One of the things I have long respected about David French is his commitment to principles. It is on the basis of those principles that I would appeal to him. Harris cannot save conservatism. Only the long, difficult work of cultural renewal and prayer can do that.