As I walked into a Tuesday morning meeting, a notification appeared on my phone: “NYYRC Endorses President Donald J. Trump for Reelection.” The email came at 9:28 a.m., before the former president had officially announced his bid for office, and with over a full year before campaigning begins in earnest. I rolled my eyes. It was — in so many ways — way too early for this.
The body of the announcement continued: “The American People needs a leader who champions its values, heritage, and interests. President Trump has battled the Deep State since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign. Since then, he has demonstrated a level of care for American society unmatched by current or would-be politicians; he consistently sacrifices to improve Americans’ lives, and his persistence shows an unparalleled commitment to our cause.”
It was signed by Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republican Club.
This letter, ill-timed and out-of-touch, irked me more and more as the day wore on. While a strong conservative can loudly acknowledge President Trump’s many wins — establishing the Abraham Accords, boosting the economy, achieving massive deregulation, limiting federal government powers during a national crisis and getting three Supreme Court justices confirmed — she can also think critically about the implications of his many losses.
Take the midterms, for example, after which the party attitude saw a defining about-face. Trump undercut incumbent candidates in favor of his own, which he propped up out of personal loyalty. Most lost big, some in previously red districts. Not to mention that in 2020 he didn’t come close to a majority of the popular vote and left Republicans feeling cornered and embarrassed.
The takeaway? Trump can’t win, and Republicans finally know it. Rough rhetoric, damaging immigration policy, election denialism and rule-by-chaos no longer resonate with the base. NYYRC may tout itself as America’s oldest and largest club of its kind, but Wax’s statement is certainly not representative of the overwhelming sentiment of the city’s young conservatives.
Nor is Wax himself, whose social media posts, fawning endorsements and personal appearances represent ties with the party’s most divisive figures. Perhaps more concerning are his tweets, in which he harasses Venezuelan dissidents and advocates for country-wide “mono-ethnicity,” the “Americanization of all names for [US] immigrants”, a 10-year immigration moratorium, and an end to dual citizenship and the First Amendment, to name a few.
What happened to the admirable aims of the NYYRC mission statement, as set forth on Feb. 19, 1912? They are “...to develop sound principle and public spirit in party politics; to promote honest and fair electoral methods, to the end that the expression of the popular will by whatever party or body, shall be as free, untrammeled and equal as possible; to resist and expose political corruption; to advocate merit rather than partisan service as entitling to public office; to watch legislation and to encourage public attention to and efficiently criticize the conduct of government.”
Young conservative thought leaders are being chased away from a once-great organization by a man whose ideology is, in fact, not conservative at all.
Great conservative candidates in the past have been grounded in prudent rhetoric and earnest self-criticism. Critical to their identities has been an acknowledgment of Edmund Burke’s social contract to be enforced not by the state, but through individual responsibility and close-knit communities. According to this contract, an individual’s freedom exists not to further one’s own interests — or political aspirations, for that matter — but to preserve the liberty of their neighbors within these communities. Legal immigration as an extension of this neighborly care remains part of the core framework of the conservative view of the United States, along with the principle that all people are equal under the law.
It’s high time for conservatives to clean house.
“We are generally united behind a set of policy principles, and we are genuinely opposed to what the Democrats are doing. So that gives us the potential,” said Chris Christie to Peggy Noonan in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. “But we have to have the internal family argument about the nature and character of our leadership.”
As we foster a new generation of conservative citizens and voters, we must seriously reconsider who we elevate on the national stage. Trump — and Wax — have proven themselves unworthy of the pedestal.
Bydalek is a young conservative living and working in New York City as the lead for Young Voices’ Dissident Project.
Published in the New York Daily News on November 30th, 2022.
Images: Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News