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Flag, faith and family. That used to be a winning message for conservatism in America. Now, though? What if a target voter loves the flag but lacks the faith? What if he or she views the familial domain as unfit for political trespass?
國旗、信仰和家庭。這曾經是美國保守主義的勝利口號。但現在情況如何呢？如果一個目標選民熱愛國旗但缺乏信仰怎麼辦？如果他或她認爲家庭領域不適合政治的入侵怎麼辦？
Now let us travel one letter up the alphabet. Readers might remember “God, guns and gays” as another alliterative précis of the right’s obsessions in the later 20th century. But in 2024? What if a swing voter is a Second Amendment absolutist with no strong views on the other Gs? Or even takes a liberal line on them as a generational reflex?
現在，讓我們在字母表中向上移動一個字母。讀者可能還記得「上帝、槍枝和同性戀」(God, guns and gays)是對20世紀後期右翼執迷的另一種頭韻式簡述。但到了2024年呢？如果一個搖擺選民對第二修正案(Second Amendment)持絕對主義立場，而對其他「G」沒有強烈看法怎麼辦？或者甚至因爲一種世代反射而在這些問題上持自由派立場呢？
We aren’t talking about exotic creatures here. The US is a nation of two-to-one support for same-sex marriage. Most people either “seldom” or “never” attend a religious service. At the same time, immigration is the top concern that voters name unprompted, and just one in three strongly objects to the idea that a president should be able to rule without much judicial or congressional restraint.
我們這裏談論的，並不是什麼奇特的生物。美國是一個支援同性婚姻比例爲二比一的國家。大多數人「很少」或「從不」參加宗教儀式。同時，移民問題是選民們自發提到的最重要的問題，只有三分之一的人強烈反對總統在司法和國會的限制下行使統治權的想法。
Put this all together, and something becomes clear. Lots of voters now are what I will call “public authoritarians”. Porous borders, tent cities, woke colleges, perhaps even Chinese imports: these things upset them. But private morals? Affairs of the bedroom and the chapel? You do you.
把這一切放在一起，事情就變得清晰了。現在很多選民都是我所說的「公共權威主義者」。鬆懈的邊境、帳篷城市、覺醒的大學，甚至中國進口商品：這些都讓他們感到不安。但私人道德呢？臥室和教堂裏的事情？你愛怎樣就怎樣。
To win, the devout need the louche. Trump was a vessel in which to smuggle a cultural conservatism that couldn’t prevail on its own terms
爲了取勝，虔誠者需要放蕩者。川普是一個工具，用來偷運本身無法獨立勝出的文化保守主義
Donald Trump’s electoral genius consists of never frightening these people. Even at his demagogic worst, a certain reticence about the private realm, combined with some well-documented peccadillos, assures the conservative-but-not-pious that he isn’t going to go all Cardinal Spellman on them. And so his coalition hangs together. The Republicans, it seems, have lost that balance of late. The Dobbs ruling on abortion was the start. The elevation of JD Vance — conservative Catholic, scourge of the childless, worrier about porn — is a move in the same vein.
唐納•川普(Donald Trump)的選舉天才就在於他從不嚇唬這些人。即使在他蠱惑人心的最糟糕時期，他對私人領域的某種緘默，再加上一些有據可查的劣跡，也能讓那些保守但不虔誠的人確信，他不會對他們採取紅衣主教斯佩爾曼(Cardinal Spellman)的做法。因此，他的聯盟還算穩固。共和黨最近似乎失去了這種平衡。多布斯對墮胎問題的裁決是個開端。JD•萬斯(JD Vance)--保守的天主教徒、對無子女者大肆批評的人、色情問題的擔憂者--的升遷也是一脈相承的舉動。
Vance himself might be the future. He has the time and the brain. He has the most underrated asset in politics and perhaps life: unembarrassability. But Vance-ism? There aren’t enough private authoritarians in the electorate to sustain it. And this assumes no further secularisation. (Church membership in the US under Reagan: 70 per cent. It is now below half.) Either he changes his outlook — he wasn’t too embarrassed to change his old distaste for Trump — or accepts that its natural ceiling is the lower half of a presidential ticket, shoring up the faithful as Mike Pence did.
萬斯本人可能代表未來。他有時間，也有智慧。他擁有政治乃至生活中最被低估的資產：不尷尬。但是萬斯主義呢？選民中沒有足夠的私人獨裁者來支援它。而且這還假設沒有進一步的世俗化。他要麼改變自己的觀點——他並不羞於改變對川普的舊厭惡——要麼接受它的自然上限是總統候選人名單的下半部分，像邁克•潘斯(Mike Pence)那樣支援忠實的選民。
To be clear, there are millions of intense Christians who vote Republican to defend the creed. Just not enough to elect a president. For that, it is an arithmetical must to bolt on the kind of Trump fan that I am likelier to encounter. These characters react as I do upon seeing an ancient and sublime place of worship (“What a darling Sofitel it would make”) and aren’t just liberal so much as outright incurious about people’s domestic doings. Their grievance isn’t with the cultural settlement of the 1960s, but with that of the 2000s, if that means woke-ism, trade and a foreign-born population above 10 per cent of the total.
要明確的是，有數百萬虔誠的基督徒投票給共和黨來捍衛信仰，但這還不足以選出一位總統。因此，從數學上講，必須依靠我更有可能遇到的那種川普粉絲。這些人看到古老而崇高的禮拜場所時會像我一樣反應（「這裏可以改造成一個多麼可愛的索菲特(Sofitel)酒店啊」），他們不僅僅是自由派，而且對人們的家庭生活毫無興趣。他們的不滿不是針對60年代的文化安定，而是針對21世紀初的文化安定，如果這意味著覺醒主義、貿易和外國出生人口超過總人口的10%。
To win, the devout need the louche. Trump was a vessel in which to smuggle a cultural conservatism that couldn’t prevail on its own terms. A clever scheme, this, as Dobbs proved, but not a lasting one. The inherent tensions were going to come out in time.
爲了取勝，虔誠者需要放蕩者。川普是一個工具，用來偷運一種本身無法獨立勝出的文化保守主義。這是一個巧妙的策略，正如多布斯所證明的，但它不是一個長久之計。內在的緊張關係終將顯現。
In France, the hard right has never quite settled a question. If Muslim immigration is a challenge, what is it a challenge to: the secular republic or a Catholic nation? The voter who wants to protect laïcité and the voter who wants to reinforce the church can be kept in the same coalition, just about. But it requires constant and meticulous hedging. Pander to the second voter, and the first recoils. This is why populist winners — Boris Johnson, Silvio Berlusconi — tend to have something of the playboy about them. “Relax,” is the implicit message, “I’m not a prig.”
在法國，極右派從未徹底解決過一個問題：如果穆斯林移民是一個挑戰，那麼這個挑戰是針對世俗共和國還是天主教徒國家？希望保護世俗主義的選民和希望加強教會的選民可以勉強維持在同一個聯盟中，但這需要持續而細緻的平衡。迎合後者，前者就會反感。這也是爲什麼像鮑里斯•強森(Boris Johnson)、西爾維奧•貝盧斯科尼(Silvio Berlusconi)這樣的民粹主義勝利者往往帶有些許花花公子的風格。他們的隱含資訊是：「放輕鬆，我不是個古板的人。」
Trump gets it, or at least got it. He is said to mistrust the clerical zeal of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. He avoids talking about the childless as demographic shirkers. But then what a righteous choice of dauphin. And, lest he scare wavering voters in a secular age, what pressure on the young changeling to mutate once more.
川普明白這一點，或者至少曾經明白。據說他對美國傳統基金會(Heritage Foundation)的2025計劃中的神職人員熱情持懷疑態度。他避免將無子女者描述爲人口問題的逃避者。然而，他選擇了一個多麼正義的王儲啊。此外，爲了不在這個世俗時代嚇到猶豫不決的選民，這位年輕的變革者面臨著再次變化的巨大壓力。
janan.ganesh@ft.com
janan.ganesh@ft.com
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