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But In America, the ideological free-for-all to fill the void that will be left whenever Trump’s time in the White House ends is already unfolding at full speed. There are Republicans who think that everything will go back to normal the minute Trump leaves office; there are populists who are trying to build an economic and political framework around Trump’s success; and there are social conservatives tired of losing the culture wars who are questioning the very idea of liberal democracy.

Photo by Dave Abel/Postmedia News/File

It’s not unheard for someone to rocket onto America’s national stage, shake up the establishment and force an ideological reset, like Republican presidential candidate and firebrand conservative Barry Goldwater did in 1964. With Trump, it’s a little different.

“The candidate that sort of emerges and blows up the alignment and forces everything into flux is supposed to lose badly,” Cass said in an interview with the National Post on the pub’s patio before he spoke. This time, he said, the dog has caught the car.

Like Harper, Cass isn’t arguing for revolution, and both men think there are modest lessons to be learned from Trump and have clear ideas for what his win means for economy policy.

“There’s a very long list of things I don’t like about Trump but there are certain things he was right about,” Cass said told the Post. “We need to come out of this moment to the other side with this new way of talking.”

For one thing, he said, conservatives need to learn to speak the language of workers. Politicians talk about jobs all the time, of course, but Cass points out that it’s usually by way of selling some other type of policy; conservatives sell their tax cuts by talking about job gains and liberals sell climate policy by calling it a jobs plan.