Ashley St. Clair and the Failure of Conservatism Inc.

Conservative insiders often mock their supporters privately. Ashley St. Clair is an exception: she mocks them openly.

She is a young woman who recently wrote an article for the reborn Human Events. She represents the conservative organization Turning Point USA in campus debates and promotional material, and is often photographed posing with guns. She also makes snide tweets about political correctness, and made a stir when she dismissed a “Star Wars” fan as “undateable.”

In a recent video, Miss St. Clair ridiculed Donald Trump supporters for caring about immigration. “The right is losing elections because of this identity politics,” she said. “Like, in Colorado, the biggest issue among Republican voters is immigration. You know how many illegal immigrants we have here? Like f***ing 12.”

Miss St. Clair is right that white Republicans practice “identity politics” — just not for whites. Take a look at Turning Point USA’s conferences.

She’s wrong about illegals. The Pew Research Center says 4 percent of Colorado’s population is illegal. “That’s about 200,000 people, which is larger than the population of Fort Collins,” says Colorado reporter Kyle Clark. The data are from 2014, so the figure is probably higher today.

Miss St. Clair complains that immigration is “not an issue, but that’s the top issue among Colorado Republican voters” while “the top issue among Democrats is education — things that actually matter.”

Of course, immigration affects everything else: education, infrastructure, taxation, crime, and even foreign policy. The country is the people, and the people are determined by immigration. Modern California shows what mass immigration does to a middle-class paradise.

Immigration also has massive electoral implications. In 2000, Colorado was just over 17 percent Hispanic. George W. Bush won it by over 8 points. In 2010, Colorado was more than 21 percent Hispanic, and the percentage was almost certainly higher by 2016. A 2014 survey found that 40 percent of Colorado Hispanics do not speak English at home. Hillary Clinton won the state by about five points.

In the 2018 midterm elections, almost 70 percent of Hispanics supported Democrats in Congressional races. Colorado’s 6th district, once represented by Tom Tancredo, was among those that swung Democrat. The Federalist observed that the last Republican incumbent, Mike Coffman, learned Spanish and “made a great deal of effort to successfully build relationships with minority constituents” in his increasingly “diverse” district. Representative Coffman also condemned President Trump many times. It wasn’t enough. Polls show that Hispanics want more government spending even more than they want more immigrants. Republicans can speak Spanish all they want; it won’t make Hispanics love them.

In the same video, Miss St. Clair heaped further scorn on the president’s supporters: “They’re just screwing themselves over with this just ‘build the wall’ and this is all we care about.” Co-panelist Steeve Strange agreed. “It’s not going to happen,” he said. “The whites are having less kids, there’s essentially zero white immigration, the whites are eventually going to lose majority status in this country, inevitably.” In fairness, Mr. Strange was not saying this gleefully — just declaring an “inevitable” fact.

It’s not inevitable. It’s the result of government policies that could be changed. One way to increase “white immigration” would be to give Afrikaners refugee status. Revoking birthright citizenship would also slow down dispossession. The president has talked about this but done nothing.

One panelist (Dylan Perentis, @realTFSD) suggested America should “completely close the borders and stop letting anybody in, legal or illegal.” “What’s wrong with legal immigration?” asked Miss St. Clair. She dismissed the idea that immigrants will assimilate, or that they should have to. She would be happy if they spoke English but suggested no way to force them to.  Steeve Strange admitted that countries such as Japan have an advantage because they are homogenous, but America was “multicultural from the start.” (He must not know about the 1790 Naturalization Act.)

Miss St. Clair mocked her own organization, suggesting it does nothing useful and exists only to “provoke people on campus.”  She contemptuously referred to “a bunch of white dudes with hard-ons” who attended a Turning Point USA event.

Yet she also made a good point: The president has done little for his base despite censorship and violent attacks from leftists. “Why are people still sticking their neck out all the time [for him]?” she asked. She’s right to wonder. Yet the panelists all agreed they can’t publicly condemn Mr. Trump lest they lose followers — a cynical admission.

Miss St. Clair recognizes the president’s failures (I’ve said much the same thing about President Trump), but her importance lies in what she says about the conservative movement. She is now on Twitter trumpeting supposed presidential accomplishments, including “moving the embassy to Jerusalem” and “low unemployment for blacks, Hispanics, AND women.” This is what she mocked previously. She also claims to support immigration control, the same thing she said was not an issue.

I despise “scalping.” I don’t want Miss St. Clair fired. Yet when TPUSA tolerates someone who openly mocks the president, the organization, and its supporters, it makes the whole operation look like a scam.

Turning Point USA is defensive about accusations of racism. It has cut off members who made “offensive” private comments. It once prevented Gab from sponsoring one of its events, for fear of hostile media attention. But or course it still faces racism accusations from the media and other conservative organizations.

Campus leftists mostly organize around race, sex, erotic preference, and opposition to “whiteness” and Western culture, but conservative organizations like TPUSA tell followers to avoid “identity politics.” Instead, they pander to non-whites and focus on minority unemployment rates and tax cuts for a hostile elite. This means their followers cannot fight back. The 2016 Republican primary showed that the overwhelmingly white GOP base is increasingly impatient with this kind of bad advice. It wants to fight for its own interests, not those of minorities and rich people.

If someone wants a career in Conservatism Inc., he can’t touch certain issues, especially race. Everyone knows this. The result is a movement of cynics or fools who profiteer from patriots. It cannot win.

Like Ashley St. Clair, I believe the conservative grassroots are being misled. I agree with her that the president has done very little for his supporters. Unlike her, I want to help them, not ridicule them. I also won’t tell them what they want to hear just to get clicks.

Miss St. Clair admits it’s publicly acceptable to attack whites. “Half of Twitter is devoted to mocking white ppl,” she tweeted on June 2.  Yet Turning Point USA doesn’t have any solutions to this attack on whites. We don’t need tax cuts, or presidential cheer leading, or minority summits. We need widespread recognition that whites have the right to defend themselves as whites.

In the current media climate, white advocates pay a price. Those of you reading this have a choice: grift your people or lead them. If you choose the former, Conservatism Inc. will welcome you. If you choose the latter, Conservative Inc. will purge you. If we are to have a future, we will have to build it ourselves.