When 'Trumpism' trumps Trump

If Luther Strange hadn't accepted Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley's appointment to the Senate seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, there's a good chance he or someone else might have beaten Roy Moore in the Republican primary runoff Tuesday night.

The perception, fair or not, that there was some sort of corrupt bargain between Bentley and Strange loomed larger in the race than any grand ideological struggle between nationalists and globalists. So in that sense, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon's victory lap is premature.

But there are signs that "the populist nationalist conservative revolt" Bannon describes is starting to exist independently of President Trump, even if it is too early to determine whether it will ever take hold of a significant section of the Republican Party. Some of them are popping up in unusual places.

One of them came in an immigration speech delivered last week in Washington, D.C. by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. During his 2014 Senate campaign, Cotton was described as the "new neocon darling." Unlike in the 1990s or even the George W. Bush years, the intraconservative immigration debate is no longer neatly split into "paleo" versus "neo," although foreign-policy disputes remain.

Even taking that into account, however, Cotton's was not a neoconservative speech. "Unlike any other country, America is an idea — but it is not only an idea," the senator said. "America is a real, particular place with real borders and real, flesh-and-blood people. And the Declaration [of Independence] tells us it was so from the very beginning."