Preface: Now that impeachment may be entering that proverbial dustbin of history, one’s attention can return to more mundane matters like, “Where does Trump fit in our normal political categories?” The answer might be that he doesn’t. The following is my latest ruminations on the subject.
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Is Trump a Reaganite? The answer to the question: “No”, not exactly … and “Yes”, not exactly. Mostly, he is conservative on the social issues: abortion, and has made utterances critical of secularism’s assault on traditional faith (references to “almighty God” and “war on Christmas”, etc.). All well and good.
But his foreign policy has the strong flavor of isolationism. This goes well beyond more prudence in our interventionism. Taking cues from Trump, many conservative celebrity hosts and pundits have adopted some of the left’s old pejoratives such as “neocon” and “the world policeman” to castigate military actions like Reagan’s.
Economically, he’s all over the map. Domestically, he favors tax cuts – hurray! – and deregulation – also hurray! However, his free market stops at the water’s edge. He wants government to pick winners and losers in international trade with subsidies and tariffs. His speechified bombast is littered with demonstrable falsehoods such as “China is paying us billions in tariffs”. No, American consumers are; those “smelly Walmart shoppers”, in the memorable language of the FBI’s Strzok and Page, are!
Oh, by the way, Trump says “Don’t touch Social Security”. Sorry, Trump, that ain’t feasible. Since Trump is a big spender – something oddly reminiscent of LBJ – I can understand his reluctance on the matter of sensible reforms to prevent its ultimate collapse. Reagan and those around him expressed the need to do something. No Reaganite here.
A “never-Trumper” – of which I am not – like Jonah Goldberg at the American Enterprise Institute lays out the case. You can read about it here.
Like I said at the beginning, Trump is all over the map. But then again, beyond the sparse forays into liberal country, he mostly stays within the broad and imprecise borders of Conservativeland. So, I guess, at the end of the day, he’s a kinda-Reaganite.
RogerG