Vice President Kamala Harris is the conservative choice. Trump is the far more radical one. I know that sounds nuts. Trump has taken to calling Harris “Comrade Kamala” and she did have a liberal voting record in the Senate. Trump, on the other hand, is a mainstay of right-wing television outlets and likes to talk about bringing America back to an earlier era; he likes to talk about President William McKinley and recently referenced the Alien Enemies Act, which Congress passed in 1798.  

Yet, when making an essential decision, it is best to return to first principles. What, at his core, does a conservative stand for? Conservatives believe that slow societal change is better than massive, rapid ones (the very name comes from the verb “to conserve.”) Conservatives believe a free market leads to the greatest economic growth, and that decisions are best made through billions of everyday interactions between individuals rather than by leaders on high. Conservatives believe a government’s foremost function is to provide law and order. Conservatives believe in character and the sanctity of the family.

These principles–not passing controversies of who said who was garbage, or who went on which podcast, or who said who had mommy issues, or whatever other vacuous drivel is trending on X right now–are what are timeless. These principles define conservatism. And, on each count, Harris is the more conservative option.

Before getting into the comparison, it’s important to note that, on these principles, conservatives are, for the most part, right. Massive, government-forced realignments rarely work out well, as the victims of The Cultural Revolution, The Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, or the French Revolution could attest. The more free market American economy has outperformed the more government-controlled European one for decades. In the aggregate, children raised in two-parent households have far better life outcomes. 

That is why electing the more conservative option is so important. And Trump simply fails each test of true conservatism. He promises massive, rapid shifts in American society. He wants to replace our entire income tax system with tariffs. He wants to end birthright citizenship. He wants to deport up to 11 million people, all at once. 

And, in a move that should give heart palpitations to both conservatives and libertarians, he wants to massively expand the power of the executive branch. 

No society or economy can absorb that much change that quickly. Even if a conservative agrees with the ends he is trying to achieve–and I have trouble believing there are any true conservatives aching for an expansion of Executive Branch power–the speed and magnitude of what he wants to do would tear American society apart and create economic chaos. Even his supporters, like Elon Musk, admit as much.

Which brings us to Trump’s next conservative failing: he believes in a command and control economy, not a free market one. In his first administration, he would overtly favor companies, as when he gave big incentives in an ill-fated deal with Foxconn. He would also target companies, as when he picked a fight with Nordstrom, the NFL, Amazon, and too many others to mention. Further, his infatuation with tariffs–including tariffs as high as 2000%--are a massive government intervention into the free market. They will distort incentives on a scale not seen since the Smoot-Hawley tariffs (which didn’t work out great, either).   

Conservatives believe in law and order, of course, but here, Harris is a far better choice no matter how much Trump protests. While Trump talked a big game about crime, it is difficult to point to anything he actually did to reduce it during his administration. He continued existing programs that provided excess military equipment to police departments, but other than moral encouragement, there wasn’t much else. 

The same cannot be said for the Biden-Harris administration, or for Harris herself. Crime is now lower than it was at any point under the Trump administration, and while the strong economy is no doubt the primary driver of that drop, the Biden Administration has provided local police departments with immense resources to both hire more police officers and for more training in modern, proven policing techniques like deescalation.

If anything, Harris’ own track record is even more aggressive, particularly as a prosecutor and as an attorney general. As a district attorney, the number of cases prosecuted, the number of convictions secured, and the conviction percentages all skyrocketed. It’s telling that the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called her time as a prosecutor “just slightly less awful.” 

Finally, Trump falls short of all conservative standards when it comes to family devotion and character. Trump has bragged about his numerous affairs. He is twice divorced, and each of his divorces ended with accusations of infidelity. He is a distant father, and can go “months” without speaking to his daughter Tiffany. Trump’s failures of character are too many to mention, but, over the last nine years, we have seen his impulsive anger, his mockery of the disabled and less fortunate, his pathological lying, his complaining, and his inability to accept responsibility for any failing at all. He is the furthest thing from the Gary Cooper conservative archetype. 

Harris, then, is almost the more conservative choice just by default. I’m not going to argue that Harris is William F. Buckley, or even Ronald Reagan. She believes the government has a role in the economy. She believes in universal healthcare (though not single-payer healthcare), she believes that taxes on the wealthy should be higher, and yes, she even believes in subsidies. But the idea that she is a communist is ludicrous. It’s telling, for instance, that her plan to build more housing is mostly about cutting red tape and building supply. She favors a healthcare system with intense competition. She calls herself a capitalist. She is nothing resembling a “seize the means of production” Marxist-type. If anything, calling her a Communist cheapens the phrase and insults Communism’s real victims (like those of the aforementioned Great Leap Forward). 

And on character and family? She’s only been married once. She’s an attentive stepmother. There have been no accusations that she has been unfaithful. The accusations that she somehow slept her way to the top have not an iota of evidence behind them; her relationship with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown ended long before her entry into politics. The attacks smack of desperation to add anything salacious to the story of someone whose personal life is, well, not very interesting. 

When it comes to politics, an entire screaming-head, hot-take ecosystem exists to make us forget our fundamental principles. MSNBC, Fox, and “influencers” on X and TikTok make money and gain fulfillment when they bloviate about topics they know nothing about (somehow, everyone is now a Constitutional scholar, a border enforcement official, an economist, and so on). But big decisions, like who should be our next president, should not be left to petty matters. They should be decided by the boulders of core beliefs, not the pebbles of the last thing we read that made us angry or sad. 

When it comes to those boulders, to those principles that truly make a conservative, then, there is no comparison. Harris is the better fit for a true conservative voter. Vote accordingly. 

About the Author: 

Neal Urwitz is a public relations executive in Washington, D.C.