Trump vs. Republican Ideals

Post Reply New Topic

I've noticed that some of the things that Trump is doing seem to be completely counter to traditional Republican values or policy, and yet it seems like the Republican party, and Republicans in general, are still fully supporting them. Is this just me, or has anyone else noticed this? What do you think is the cause? I'm not an expert in some of this stuff, but these are my understandings based on everything I've seen. I have two examples below, but these are definitely not the only ones that come to mind:

1.) The Wall. The vast majority of illegal immigrants come here through legal means, and then overstay their welcome. Very few are sneaking across the border in the middle of the night, so the wall will pretty much be making a statement rather than actually doing anything. The party touts fiscal responsibility, reducing taxes, and balancing the budget, and reducing entitlement programs, how can they justify spending 20-30 billion on a wall that will have next to no impact on illegal immigration?

2.) Keeping jobs in the USA. Businesses are going to follow market trends and do whatever makes the best business sense and allows them to grow. Imposing huge tariffs and whathaveyou on imports/exports will add additional "cost to doing business", but the business still has to make that money up somewhere. If it's 20% more expensive to manufacture in the US than China, and there's a 30% tariff on imports from China, then that just means they would have to either raise the cost of goods by 20%-30% regardless, or cut spending (which typically means layoffs) to make up the difference. The party typically wants free market principles to control everything, but this is basically trying to control and limit the free market.

Trump is indeed very much at odds with GOP tradition, and very much at odds with the present day GOP, and very much at odds with Trumps own White House (Pence has to constantly reassure the GOP, and NATO, and the world, that Trump didnt really mean what Trump just tweeted).


The GOP is indeed supposed to be about the free market.

So on your second point especially -using the state to manipulate the economy- he is very much at odds with GOP free market tradition.

I suppose that the Wall could be viewed as a form of "defense spending" if your definition of "foreign invaders" includes civilian migrants as well as armies on the march. And the GOP tends to be for military spending.

Though Trumpism has outer layers of crazy:xenophobia, racism,etc. At its core Trumpism is spawned by pain felt by the sane: the pain from the dislocations to American society caused by the long term de-industrialization of America. Factory jobs going over seas. So at its core Trumpism is about bucking, and reverseing that trend, and reindustrializing America.

IS Reindustrializing really doable, or even desireable? Hard to say. I suppose that combining tariffs with a wall would in theory be a necessary combination. If you dont want Mexicans to take jobs from Americans by them moving here to America to work here, AND you dont want Mexicans to take jobs from Americans by them staying at home in Mexico and attracting American investment because those same Mexicans are willing to work for low wages- then you would have to do both: (a) tax imports coming from Mexico (so Mexicans wont get jobs in Mexico) AND (b) build a wall to keep them from coming here to escape the new unemployment that you are exporting to Mexico, and to compete for these new jobs that you will supposedly be creating here in the US by this new investment channeled into the US. And thats assuming that a wall would even work (in the short run a wall would increase the number of illegals in the US).

The Wall would most likely just be an expensive boondogle that wouldnt work. Ironically its only likely effect would be a temporary upspike in jobs for...migrants from Central America and Mexico (who else are you gonna hire to build it?).

"1,447 attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference participated in the straw poll. Today CPAC released the results:

86 percent of those polled approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president.
80 percent believe President Trump is realigning the conservative movement.
90 percent approve of President Trump’s policies and agenda.
94 percent said they approved of Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
91 percent support Trump policy cutting off federal funds to “sanctuary” cities.
67 percent say republicans in congress should be doing more to support Trump.
75 percent want Mitch McConnell to end filibuster rule to nominate Gorsuch.
81 percent approve of President Trump immigration executive order (travel ban).
70 percent want Trump to continue using Twitter to fight back against MSM

"The Vichy Republican ConPAC Bastille has been defeated.

"The flags of the old guard GOPe have been removed, the liberty flag of the Trump movement now waves atop of the spire. The Republican Party is now officially the party of Donald Trump."

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/02/25/cpac-straw-poll-the-common-sense-insurgency-crosses-another-threshold/

...

This "border tax" is akin to the "national sales tax" that Republicans have long proposed.

Republicans like the idea of making the poor pay their fair share.

Interesting reciprocal question: If Trump is the most non-typical republican we've seen in a while, why are the democrats so deranged by him? I suspect that both of our questions have a similar answer.

Making the poor pay their fair share? That says more about Republican vindictiveness in squeezing money out of people who can scarcely afford it, especially in the light of cutting taxes for the super rich who hardly need it.

Trump ran as a republican, but I've always seen him as an independent. I think if he hadn't gotten the republican nomination, he would have run as an independent.

Whole there are other issues of disagreement the big one between the party and Trump is Russia. They are in basic agreement on issues of the Supreme Court,
deregulation, charch and state, liberal media. Most of the "disagreements" are matters of style.

Because people don't care very much which political party you're in or what exactly it is you think, they care whether you agree with them. Democrats aren't defined by their opposition to "typical Republican values and policy", they're defined by their support for values which fall under the broad coalition of the Democratic Party.

Trump's policies include increased military spending, clamping down on illegal immigrants and cannabis, preventing schoolchildren from going to the toilet, reducing taxes, banning immigration from certain countries and describing it as a Muslim ban, banning refugees, supporting school choice, supporting gun rights, removing environmental protections, increased internet censorship, and restricting access to abortion. While opinions on all those issues are going to vary within the Democratic Party, I'd guess that over half of Democrats would be against each of those and a large minority would be against all of them. They'd be against them whether they were proposed by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or the ghost of FDR.

So, if we were having this conversation in 2008, you'd be telling me how US liberals would oppose a president who started undeclared wars and ordered the assassinations of US citizens regardless of party affiliation, right?

Trump said something back during the campaign caught my attention and caused me to start paying attention to him. Someone was accusing him of not being a real conservative, and his answer was, "You know, it's called the Republican Party, not the Conservative Party." I liked that.

(I don't remember the exact context for the statement now. Maybe someone can dig up the actual wording.)

Yeah, that's a big part of why about 43% of them decided to back someone who wasn't even a member of the party for the Presidential nomination in 2016, and why Hillary was so unpopular even amongst her notional "supporters".

I do see your point that people get less outraged when "their side" does things. You're completely right. But for people who strongly identify as Democrats, the enemy isn't traditional Republicans, but rather anyone who disagrees with them.

Most people, if they're honest, don't care whether the president authorises the assassination of a terrorist with the "right" passport (or the "wrong" one I guess). It's distant and far away and doesn't affect them. We may see more outrage about it from Dem-leaning types over the next four years, but that's largely because they want to bash their enemy, not because they actually care.

The better example is probably the ACA. We've already seen one reversal on it, and it seems like the next few years will see another one. Ten years ago, Republicans were for it, but Democrats didn't think it went far enough. Five years ago, Democrats were for it, and Republicans thought it went too far. Now, it seems, Democrats are still for it, but Republicans think it doesn't go far enough. I don't think you can explain that without looking at tribalism.

I still don't think it's best explained as blanket opposition to the big letter R. Democrats will quite readily claim Lincoln as one of their own, after all. If Trump had stood as a Democrat on the same platform then he wouldn't have won the nomination. If he had somehow become president as a Democrat (let's say he narrowly lost a three-way split in pledged delegates after some serious entryism, and then bribed all the superdelegates, and then a week before the election the DEA announced that Ted Cruz was smuggling heroin into Alaska via North Korea), then he would be looking at a major grassroots revolt right now.

Republicans like to pretend that the only tax is the federal income tax. The also like to pretend that renters don't pay property taxes, as though the half of the money which they earn and send to the landlord didn't get sent straight to the tax collector.

This comment confirms what I've long suspected. LoveNotHate advocates for corporations over natural persons. The evidence is conclusive.