By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, March
24, 2018
‘The heart and soul of the Republican Party belongs to
Donald Trump,” writes Lloyd Green. If so, the GOP has an odd way of showing
affection. Green cites a lack of Republican criticism of Trump, the president’s
continued popularity within the party, and Trump’s rescue of incumbent Nevada
senator Dean Heller from a primary challenge. All true. But when it comes to
the president’s priorities and the nationalist-populist style of politics he
represents, Trump and the Republican Congress could not be farther apart.
Trump won the nomination and the presidency after
distinguishing himself from the party in four ways. Since Ronald Reagan,
Republicans have tended to support global economic integration, immigration, democratic
internationalism, and entitlement reform. And yet Trump opposed the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, called to renegotiate NAFTA, and wanted tariffs on
China. His 2015 immigration plan championed a wall across the southern border,
workplace enforcement, an end to birthright citizenship, and a tripling of
border and customs agents. He repudiated the Iraq war and questioned the future
of NATO. He swore that Social Security and Medicare would be off-limits. His
brashness, colorfulness, insults, willingness to transgress norms, humor,
novelty, and lack of political experience separated him from the GOP pack.
This program and its avatar won three Great Lakes states
that had been missing from the Republican column for a generation. Trump also
came within striking distance in Minnesota and New Hampshire. Obviously, we do
not know the exact relation between Trump’s nationalism and populism and the
roughly 78,000 votes in three states that gave him an Electoral College
victory. But the unexpected shape of his upset suggests that the trademark
Trump issues of immigration, trade, nonintervention, and retirement security
played some role both in attracting support for him and depressing turnout for
Hillary Clinton.
Yet the 16 months since the election have seen the gradual,
fitful, and partial regularization of Trump into the GOP that predated and
opposed him. Until recently, the president and congressional leadership were
aligned: They seated a justice and lower-court judges, rolled back Obama-era
regulations, failed to repeal and replace Obamacare, and passed a large tax
cut. Trump’s foreign policy also became more conventionally Republican. He
bombed Syria, turned down his criticism of NATO, maintained a troop presence in
Afghanistan despite his instincts to withdraw, and increased defense spending.
The signature Trump policies — including the travel ban, exit from the TPP and
the Paris Climate Accord, and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem —
were greeted with friendly skepticism from party elites. By the end of 2017,
one would have thought the party would change Trump more than he would change
it.
That hasn’t happened. Instead, both Trump and the GOP
seem to be reverting to form: Trump has pressed for changes to legal
immigration, visited prototypes for the border wall, called for the death
penalty for opioid dealers, and imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum as well
as against China, amid anxiety and dissent and resistance from congressmen of
his own party. Trump’s instincts and impulsiveness have driven him to
re-embrace the portfolio that delivered his electoral coalition at the very
moment Republicans in Congress want nothing so much as to return to their
districts, publicize the tax cut, and vainly attempt to divorce their campaigns
from national politics. And so we are faced with the oddity that Trump’s
approval rating is creeping upward even as Democrats press their midterm
advantage.
Trump and the Republicans operate according to different
hierarchies of values. To the degree that his behavior can be categorized by a
single idea, Trump’s most singular policies address the question of
sovereignty: Who rules? Here, in America, the people rule, or are supposed to.
Trump’s rhetoric defines the people as American citizens, regardless of racial
or ethnic identity. The domestic objective of his presidency is to reassert
popular control over judges, bureaucracies, and elected officials. The extent
of sovereignty must be defined, which is why we have borders and require a wall
to protect a porous one. And national sovereignty is important, too. That is
why America must reestablish its privileges and ability to maneuver vis-à-vis
multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, international agreements,
and the World Trade Organization.
If I had to choose a guiding principle of congressional
Republicans, it would be freedom. The freedom of the individual to live the
life he chooses, the freedom of people and goods and services to move across
borders, the freedom to work, spend, and invest as one sees fit, the freedom of
people around the world to govern themselves.
Now, sovereignty and freedom are not necessarily in
conflict. They overlap, and they can move in tandem. They often have done so in
American history. But one must also balance the other. A sovereign without
regard for freedom would be unjust, and increasing social and economic freedom
can lead to the loss of sovereignty. The thrust of populist politics since 2016
indicates that voters believe that the mix of sovereignty and freedom is out of
whack, that national and democratic sovereignty must be upheld even if it means
tighter regulation of the global economy and especially of global migration.
At its most politically successful, the party of Trump
pits miners, hard hats, farmers, soldiers, veterans, and public-safety officers
against CEOs, bankers, lawyers, doctors, bureaucrats, professors, and
educators. Yet none of Trump’s personal or policy decisions occasioned as much
intra-party pushback, including a high-profile resignation, as the imposition
of tariffs. Not only do Republicans seem largely ignorant of the fact that
Donald Trump’s political instincts are better than their own, they also refuse
to learn.
This divergence between Trump and the Republicans is
apparent in the $1.3 trillion government-funding bill. If there is one thing
every American knows about Donald Trump, it is that he wants to build a wall
along the Mexican border. Yet Republican congressmen, most of whom adhere to
pre-Trump views of immigration, secured only $1.6 billion for the project.
Democrats are crowing. “Democrats won explicit language restricting border
construction to the same see-through fencing that was already authorized under
current law,” Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “The bill does not allow any
increase in deportation officers or detention beds.” Part of the responsibility
for this setback goes to Trump, who seems to have been disengaged from the
negotiations until the last minute. But the main reason the money isn’t there
is the fact that congressional leadership had neither the desire nor the
stomach to fight for it.
Something similar has happened with trade. Whatever the
economic consequences of Trump’s protectionism — and they could be bad — it
cannot be denied that this is the issue on which he has been most consistent
over 30 years in the public eye. Nor can the political appeal of siding with
domestic manufacturers over multinational corporations be ignored by anyone who
has seen Democrats rhetorically position themselves on the side of the American
worker since 1992. By dividing trades and construction-union membership against
leadership in 2016, Trump called forth the Reagan Democrats who had vanished
from the scene, and convinced millions of white working-class voters to defect
from the Obama coalition.
They can just as easily switch back, of course. When I
visited the websites of the two candidates in the recent Pennsylvania special
election, I was struck that it was the Democrat, rather than the Republican,
who highlighted infrastructure, opioids, and protecting entitlements, three
topics of keen interest to Trump voters. By neutralizing the hot-button
cultural issues of guns and abortion, and highlighting Rick Saccone’s support
for right-to-work and other pro-business measures, Conor Lamb reappropriated
the economic program that Donald Trump used to win PA-18 by 20 points. He won’t
be the last Democrat to do so.
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