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And this is not just big-city Corpocons whose experience of public transport is taking the LIRR back from the Hamptons when they have an urgent meeting. The American Conservative is the house journal of Buchananite paleoconservativism, and has a New Urbanist blog, and used to have a (pro) public transport column. Peter Hitchens (the UK's most prominent paleoconservative, and brother of the late more US-famous Christopher) is also notoriously pro-train.
FWIW, I think this was always a non-starter with the masses. Urban=black=left-wing=bad seems pretty baked into the id of the older, stupider subset of conservative voters who are the core audience for right-populism.
And it is worth noticing that this is what the European and 1st-world Asian cities where public transport is used by normal people do. (You don't have to remove visibly poor people if everyone knows you have removed visibly dysfunctional people). The faction of the very online left who think that cities are good, but also oppose policing them, is insane. Cities have needed policing since Babylon. Cities have needed policing by a corps of full-time, professional police with powers of arrest since the Industrial Revolution created the urban working class.
Agreed. How ridiculous for American conservatives to cede all their great cities without a fight to live miserable atomized suburban lives. Reclaim the cities first, excise the scum, then you can make arguments about urbanism. There is no reason US cities must be the way they are.
American conservatives lost all the big cities in the Civil Rights struggle, and fled. Now those who won are trying make life outside the cities difficult in various ways. Why shouldn't they argue against that?
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