Trump Is Playing To Win, Not To Be Constrained By Unpopular, Stale GOP Positions
Wall Street Journal reporters Andrew Restuccia and Aaron Zitner have been around too long and are too savvy to think Trump gives a damn about the Republican Party, its values or traditions in any way beyond the strictly transactional. He has his own party— MAGA— and it all about him. The closest he comes to anything party-related, as opposed to cult-related, is just populism. Yet, Restuccia and Zitner reported, as though it were news, that Señor Trumpanzee “has increasingly tossed aside the principles of limited government and local control that have defined the Republican Party for decades.”
What Restuccia and Zitner were concerned with was Trump’s plans “to wield his executive authority to influence school curricula, prevent doctors from providing medical interventions for young transgender people and pressure police departments to adopt more severe anticrime policies. All are areas where state or local officials have traditionally taken the lead. It is a governing platform barely recognizable to prior generations of Republican politicians, who campaigned against one-size-fits-all federal dictates and argued that state legislators, mayors and town halls were best positioned to oversee their communities. While many of his proposals would be difficult to achieve, the second-term agenda outlined by Trump could require waves of new federal intervention, even as he calls for firing government workers, neutering the ‘deep state’ and cutting regulations.”
What I’ve been more interested in is that Trump is quite capable of announcing plans for the most popular possible policies that will win him the election. Example: he has announced that he will replace ObamaCare, a very flawed— can I say crappy— program, with something better. The Democrats immediately lit their hair on fire and ran around screaming that he wants to repeal ObamaCare and end coverage for people with preexisting conditions. But that isn’t what Trump said at all. He said he would replace ObamaCare with something better. There could be many ways to do that, although not if you were going to adhere to Republican orthodoxy. Trump has zero interest in Republican orthodoxy… so, presumably, he’s busy looking for the perfect way to garner him the most votes through a replacement. Maybe he’ll come up with something else but the obvious way would be to expand Medicare. Dare I say, “single payer” or “Medicare-For-All?”
Would that win him the election? I think so-- if he can persuade people he means it this time. Yesterday, my old friend from Amsterdam, Toon Janssen, updated us on the recent election in Holland, where a Trump-like character, Geert Wilders, an authoritarian, Islamaphobic populist saw his cult-like party win more seats than any other party. The platform he ran on did not sound like some conservative or right-wing appeal at all. Aside from raising the speed limit on the highways, some of Wilders’ more popular promises included lowering the age for pensions (conservatives having raised it), abolishing the sales tax on food, lower rents and higher rental subsidies, increasing the minimum wage, smaller school classes, including dental care in the basic healthcare package, lower home heating and electricity bills.
How could anyone not vote for him? Well, for those paying attention, there is the authoritarianism, the xenophobia, the racism, you know stuff like that. The Dutch electorate pays way more attention than the American electorate and he got the most votes there. Imagine what will happen when Trump starts running against Biden— after he officially has the nomination— baed on these kinds of populist planks! Biden wouldn’t know what hit him, let along how to respond to it.
Steven Shepard may have been narrowly correct when he wrote that “Republican voters are far less interested than Democrats in hearing the candidates talk about the health care law.” Polling, he pointed out, shows that 70% of Democrats are interested. Shepard concluded that Trump is “crosswise with the overall electorate over his renewed repeal push... [T]rendlines suggest relitigating Obamacare would be a minefield for Republicans.” And he would be… except for the part about replacing it with something better. Biden’s team better get ready for something that boxes them into an unpopular conservative position. Remember, economic populism worked for Trump is 2016. He delivered on none of it but his followers are way too stupid to know that. WHat about the rest of the country?
