Sorry for the long message but this is about the future of the Republican Party and our nation.

Re­pub­li­can vot­ers face an im­por­tant choice next year. It will de­ter­mine both the fate of our party and the course of our na­tion. Will we be the party of con­ser­vatism, or will we fol­low the siren song of pop­ulism un­moored to con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples?

The di­vide be­tween these two fac­tions is un­bridge­able. Con­ser­v­a­tives like me be­lieve that man’s rights come from God and na­ture, not from the state. Like our founders, we know the im­per­fect na­ture of men and women and that grant­ing them un­lim­ited power im­per­ils lib­erty. That is why we have a bril­liant sys­tem of checks and bal­ances, di­vi­sions of au­thor­ity, co­equal branches of gov­ern­ment and sov­ereign state gov­ern­ments. Con­ser­v­a­tives un­der­stand that to ad­vance an agenda on be­half of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, we must work through this sys­tem.

For decades, con­ser­vatism’s ide­o­log­i­cal ri­val has been lib­er­al­ism. The rad­i­cal left has now taken the De­mo­c­ra­tic Party into the abyss of pro­gres­sive so­cial­ism un­der the guise of the woke cli­mate agenda.

But to­day an­other strain of this ide­ol­ogy chal­lenges con­ser­vatism from within and for con­trol of the Re­pub­li­can Party.

Pop­ulist move­ments have long been part of Amer­i­ca’s pol­i­tics. They have most of­ten been led by De­moc­rats and left­ists, such as William Jen­nings Bryan, Huey Long and Bernie Sanders.

But a pop­ulist move­ment is now ris­ing in the Re­pub­li­can Party. This grow­ing fac­tion would sub­sti­tute our faith in lim­ited gov­ern­ment and tra­di­tional val­ues for an agenda stitched to­gether by per­sonal griev­ances and per­for­ma­tive out­rage.

Re­pub­li­can pop­ulists would aban­don Amer­i­can lead­er­ship on the world stage, em­brac­ing a pos­ture of ap­pease­ment in the face of ris­ing threats to free­dom.

Re­pub­li­can pop­ulists would erode our con­sti­tu­tional norms. A lead­ing can­di­date last year called for the “ter­mi­na­tion” of “all rules, reg­u­la­tions, and ar­ti­cles, even those found in the Con­sti­tu­tion,” while his im­i­ta­tors have demon­strated will­ing­ness to bran­dish gov­ern­ment power to si­lence crit­ics.

Re­pub­li­can pop­ulists would have us trade in our time-hon­ored prin­ci­ples for pass­ing pub­lic opin­ion.

That isn’t a trade I am will­ing to make. I am an un­apolo­getic con­ser­v­a­tive who be­lieves that strong na­tional de­fense, lim­ited gov­ern­ment and tra­di­tional val­ues must guide our na­tion as much to­day as they have guided our party for the past 50 years.

Should the new pop­ulism of the right seize and guide our party, the GOP as we have long known it will cease to ex­ist.

If we are to de­feat Joe Biden and turn Amer­ica around, the GOP must be the party of lim­ited gov­ern­ment, free en­ter­prise, fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­ity and tra­di­tional val­ues.