In Search of Natural Conservatives
In the conservative movement, several bromides regularly go unchallenged. Some of these are harmless clichés, such as “family values” and “hard-working Americans.” Others are deeply subversive ideas that hobble the movement and prevent serious opposition to the ascendant woke left.
Among this latter category, few concepts have done more harm to the nation, and by extension, the American right, than that of the “natural conservative,” or “natural Republican.” The idea behind those phrases is that culturally conservative immigrant groups will inevitably become staunch voting blocks for the GOP, assuming the party offers them platitudes and preferential treatment. Over the last 40 years, countless hours and mountains of treasure have been squandered in pursuit of this pipe dream. Additionally, cynical actors within the party often accuse right-wing thinkers of alienating these voters and use this canard as a justification for internal purges.
Originally, conservative luminaries such as Ronald Reagan made overtures towards Hispanic immigrants by suggesting an alliance between these new arrivals and social conservatives. In an appearance on a Spanish-language broadcast, Reagan even quipped, “Latinos are Republicans, they just don’t know it yet.” Echoing these comments, George W. Bush and his supporters in 2007 used a similar line of reasoning to argue for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and an increase in temporary foreign workers.
More recently, this argument has resurfaced in the wake of an artificial moral panic over Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and the so-called Woke Right. In What I Saw and Heard in Washington, the conservative commentator Rod Dreher, currently living in Hungary, quoted an anonymous “MAGA Zoomer, a policy wonk who is a person of color,” who described his problem with Fuentes’ followers:
They’re delusional. There are a lot of immigrants and native-born members of ethnic groups who are natural Republicans, and whom Donald Trump won in 2024. Take Indians, for example.
Just as Reagan and Bush did before him, this MAGA Zoomer is claiming that socially conservative immigrant groups are a voter-base-in-waiting for the GOP, and would send their candidates coasting into office without the influence of the pernicious Woke Right. Conservatism Inc. assumes that socially conservative minority groups will join a broader conservative movement defined ultimately by colorblind meritocracy.
However, the central premise of the so-called natural conservative is fallacious. Voting-pattern studies consistently show that Hispanics, blacks, and other immigrant groups continually vote for progressive candidates, even though their opinions on a bevy of social issues are conservative, even reactionary. Ask a Somali about women or homosexuality, and his answer will be more reactionary than every other group, save perhaps for the most committed right-wing partisans. Nevertheless, these immigrant groups overwhelmingly vote for Democrats because they are clients of the cultural left, and they rightly see a gulf between the conservation of their culture and ours.
The effects of the Democratic Party’s patronage system are readily apparent. In the case of black Americans, who have voted for the Democrats by a wide margin since the Great Depression, the federal government has set aside an entire month of the year to celebrate black ethno-narcissism. Similarly, the disparate impact doctrine derived from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the presumption that, in any case where blacks are underrepresented, the state will intervene to ensure proportional representation.
Aside from positive rights, which guarantee them entitlements to free services or resources, the left’s clients are also granted sweeping negative rights, in the form of exemptions from state power. Take the case of Gary O. Edwards, a black man who stabbed a white man in Portland’s Old Town district in July 2025. Despite video footage documenting Edwards’ savage attack, jurors acquitted him after evidence revealed that his victim uttered an anti-black racial slur after the assault. Apparently, the Portland jury was less concerned with the stabbing than the rude language directed towards a member of a protected race. This special treatment resembles the legal system of ancient Japan, where it was within a nobleman’s rights to cut down a peasant who gave offense.
What do Republicans offer Democratic clients in exchange for switching sides? Fair treatment, meritocracy, and some rhetoric about bootstraps and the rewards of hard work. As our opponents on the left are quick to remind us, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Despite constant political overtures, conservatives are unpersuasive because they are unwilling to offer the same quality of patronage; we will not let our supporters get away with murder. Conservatives are wrong to assume that the left’s client groups want fair treatment or equality of opportunity. Undoubtedly, some are offended by the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” but many more are happy to receive preferential treatment.
Nor do socially conservative minority groups see any contradiction in aligning with the socially radical left. They apply their conservative attitudes to their own cultures and don’t care about the effects of the left’s policies on American culture. They are blood-and-soil nationalists, but for their own nation, not ours.
Examples abound. Mexican flags and separatist “La Raza” chants marked the violent anti-ICE riots in California during early 2025. Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, a first-generation immigrant from Somalia, brazenly advocates for the interests of her ethnic group above those of the nation she allegedly represents in government. Cynically and strategically, Omar has made her most inflammatory remarks in her native tongue, assuming the press will not understand her remarks. The ability to speak to her real ethnic base in Somali allows her to avoid offending the Democrats’ wider audience of social progressives.
Republicans wrongly assume they can mirror the identity politics of the left to split so-called natural Republicans from the Democratic Party. Take the recent Virginia gubernatorial race; even though Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears is a woman of color, she lost women and racial minorities by a wide margin. The winning Democratic candidate, Abigail Spanberger, won 93 percent of the black vote, 80 percent of the Asian vote, and 67 percent of the Latino vote. A slim majority of whites voted for Earle-Sears.
Surely, if the path towards electoral success was representation of minorities or naked appeals to ethnic grievance, the former Lieutenant Governor should have sailed into office. Yet she failed, to an impressive degree, to convert her demographics into votes.
Often, when discussing this issue, well-meaning conservatives will pivot to denunciations of the Democrats as “the real racists,” bringing up Civil War history, John C. Calhoun, or any number of similarly unfashionable figures from the past. This argument can only be found in conservative circles and is widely mocked by both the political left and minority groups. The historical racism of the Democratic Party is completely irrelevant to modern-day patronage networks and clearly has no rhetorical value.
Given the failure of this strategy, where are conservatives to direct their efforts? The GOP’s winning coalition, as it has been since the landslide victories of Reagan and Nixon before him, lies in the white majority, or “heritage Americans.” There are large parts of the white demographic that feel disenfranchised by both parties and fail to vote at all. Surely, convincing a first-time voter to cast a ballot is easier than convincing a Democrat client to cross party lines against his financial and racial interests.
Additionally, when it comes to college-educated white professionals, a demographic Trump has struggled to carry, there is ground to be gained. In recent months, the GOP’s slavish devotion to the Indian diaspora, who voted for Harris by a ratio of 2–to–1, has flooded the nation with H-1B workers, who have placed white-collar Americans in the poorhouse. A reversal on H-1Bs could benefit another voting bloc ripe for the taking. Instead, the GOP seems devoted to serving the interests of a group that votes against them.
One partial explanation for this failure to appropriately mobilize is that, deep down, conservatives view their cause as unjust. Rightly or wrongly, many Americans, most notably Baby Boomers traumatized by the Civil Rights era and brainwashed by TV, believe that a political project is only legitimate if minorities, particularly black Americans, approve. The assumption is that any deliberate move to appeal to whites or serve their interests is racist and ultimately fascist in some way.
Not only is this false, it is also embarrassing, which matters more when it comes to enticing political converts. Why would anyone join a faction that ultimately believes it does not deserve to rule?
The bigoted zero-sum thinking of the left, which holds that any benefit to white Americans comes at the expense of other groups, is plainly false. Racial minorities would ultimately benefit, along with everyone else, from the dissolution of the left-wing patronage network. But it is entirely irrational for these client groups to support that change.
Put simply, there is nothing wrong with white people or a party that courts their support. Politics is transactional, and the left, which has dominated America for the last century, has internalized this lesson and enjoyed decades of unopposed power.
Unless the American right overcomes its suicidal white guilt, it is doomed to failure. New arrivals will not magically become Republican voters, because it is neither in their financial nor ethnic interest to do so. We can find more voters and new coalitions, but first, the phantom of the “natural conservative” must be abandoned.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/view/in-search-of-natural-conservatives