The Movement: ‘Freedom Conservatives’ hope fusionism comes back in style post-Trump
Key takeaways
- We re coming a little bit out of a period where fusionism, the sort of freedom conservative, has been kind of out of fashion.
- Some of those more traditional fusionists have made inroads and alliances to push issues like tax cuts and deregulation in President Trump s Republican party.
- That is almost entirely due to national conservative-driven self-inflicted errors like the tariffs, Chougule said.
Why this matters: political developments that affect policy direction and public trust.
Ideas and political philosophies are actually a lot more like fashion than we might want to acknowledge, Paul Mueller, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, said on a panel at last week s Freedom Conservatism conference.
We re coming a little bit out of a period where fusionism, the sort of freedom conservative, has been kind of out of fashion. I think it s going to come back into fashion, Mueller said. I am optimistic on the whole. I think there is going to be a lot of disruption.
Some of those more traditional fusionists have made inroads and alliances to push issues like tax cuts and deregulation in President Trump s Republican party. But they ve been largely sidelined while economic populism and enthusiasm for wielding government power have surged as Trump dominated the political scene — characteristics that have defined the national conservatives, or NatCons for short.