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Conservative Is As Conservative Does
President Trump is the most conservative president of my lifetime, including President Reagan. This is true, as a matter of fact, across all three of the legs of the old conservative coalition stool: economy, national defense, and social conservatism. With an impressive record of promises kept, despite the worst efforts of Democrats and Conservatism Inc., American voters have a real choice in 2020.
President Trump has done more to strengthen NATO, as opposed to papering over other nations’ hiding under our nuclear umbrella and so shifting the burden onto our taxpayers and our cities under ICBM target designations. He has, without a massive military build-up (despite his hyping of our latest purchases), imposed more economic pain on bad actors (Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran) than any president since at least Reagan, and done so to the advantage of American working families. President Trump’s policies have paid off in growing NATO member states spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on their own defense, from two to eight members, outside the United States. This satisfies Americans’ basic sense of fairness, building a reasonable basis for continued commitment to an alliance that is finally showing signs of taking itself seriously. Such a substantial demonstration of commitment also serves notice to Russia and China that NATO is not a paper tiger.
President Trump has similarly pushed the United Nations to really live up to its fine phrases, its written aspirations. Far from abandoning the world or merely patronizing other nations, he has treated them as adults, as sovereign states who are entitled to pursue their interests while we pursue ours. He made that point again in hosting an on-camera meeting of the U.N. Security Council members. Read or watch the remarks and you will see even China engaging in a mutually respectful manner.
President Trump is the first president since the New Deal to actually attack the onerous burden and unconstitutional arrogation of authority in the regulatory state, resulting in a massive effective tax cut entirely outside of the budget process. The latest jobs report smashed “experts” expectations and provided the occasion for the Office of Management and Budget to trumpet the massive transfer of wealth from the permanent bureaucracy back into the hands of the American people. This is wealth that was being destroyed by regulation, not even having a chance to pass through the taxable economy. These actions, pushed hard by President Trump, unlike any other modern Republican president, are especially advantageous to small businesses, and so to women, minorities, and lower-income whites with a dream of business success.
President Trump has done more for racial harmony and more for minority economic empowerment than any other modern president, as he has ruthlessly pushed for real job creation and real wage growth for those in the lower-income quintiles. This has been cutting the legs out from under the racial resentment industry, including the white racial grifters. TruCons like Ben Shapiro conveniently flip their arguments from claiming, with evidence, that Latin American immigrants vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, to claiming, without evidence, that patterns of immigration have no predictable effect on our electoral and then constitutional system. Yet, it is President Trump, who they find so personally offensive, who is actually, consciously, carrying out a program of programs to shift voting patterns, by listening and responding to needs rather than talking down to people without the right graduate school diplomas. If Latino, African American, and Asian voters really change their voting patterns, it will be thanks to President Trump, and not at all thanks to the Paul Ryan, Chamber of Commerce, AEI, National Review crews.
In the same manner, President Trump, a man whose faith has seemed mostly of the civic religion, basic respect for country, version, has done more to actually fulfill promises to “social conservatives” made by Reagan and every Republican presidential and Congressional leader since. See his very careful selection of judges at every level. See his administrative defunding of Planned Parenthood. See his aggressive promotion of religious liberty in every agency, led by Attorney General Barr’s eloquent defense of our history and liberty. See his relocation of our embassy to the actual capital of the state of Israel. See his personal promotion of protection for religious minorities around the world.
Closely connected with the defense of the first clause of the First Amendment, President Trump’s appointees in the Departments of Justice and Education have also pushed back hard against leftists suppressing conservative speech and assembly in public educational institutions. The Department of Justice revoked all the lawless “dear colleague” letters and ordered all agencies to refrain from any more avoidance of the formal, public, rulemaking process. Just this week, Justice intervened in a court case involving outrageous prior restraint on speech at Jones County Junior College. The statement of interest is devastating, as is the 9 December DOJ press statement:
“The United States of America is not a police state,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division. “Repressive speech codes are the indecent hallmark of despotic, totalitarian regimes. They have absolutely no place in our country, and the First Amendment outlaws all tyrannical policies, practices, and acts that abridge the freedom of speech.”
“Unconstitutional restrictions on our first freedoms to speak and assemble directly threaten our liberty as Americans,” said U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst for the Southern District of Mississippi. “While some may disagree with the content of one’s speech, we should all be fighting for everyone’s Constitutional right to speak. I pray JCJC will do the right thing, change its policies to comply with the U.S. Constitution, and encourage its students to speak and assemble throughout our free state.”
President Trump is aggressively selling the product of promises made, promises kept, most recently at the Israeli-American Council’s national summit, in Florida, while Vice President Pence drove the points home hard to faith leaders in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We have a real choice, so what will you do about 2020?
Published in Politics— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) November 13, 2019
It frosts Conservative, Inc. that Trump actually implements conservative policies rather than simply giving great speeches about it and then coming up for excuses to not implement them.
I wholeheartedly agree that President Trump is the most conservative president in my lifetime.
And you didn’t even get to the part that might be the most significant of all, his pulling the proverbial curtain on the globalist cabal and their press enablers.
The single biggest obstacle preventing conservative policies was the media. Without taking this elephant-in-the-room on, as previous Republicans were too afraid to do, any and all efforts at implementing policies, or winning elections for that matter, was DOA.
Almost to a man and woman, Conservative Inc. were adamantly against using direct attacks on the propagandists. Remember? It was just something we had to live with and take like (virtuous) men! We had to ‘win’ anyway because….we’re better (?) or something.
@garyrobbins
Editors-please put this on the main feed.
I think if the democrats hadn’t gone the full Weimar and run not 1 but 2 Reichstag fires and fought trump on literally everything all the time, they would have advanced many of the political priorities. Gotten real traction on some kind of gun control, the infrastructure project they have been harping on since they blew their wad on the “stimulus” in 08, etc and so forth.
At no point have they ever had a less ideologically driven partner in the whitehouse. But Trump is dancing with the partner that brought him and will keep appointing justices and throwing the neocons a bone as long as he gets to settle up some of our trade imbalances.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t take the win, but lets be honest with ourselves. He made a deal… with us. We get judges, and he gets a bunch of leash on foreign policy and trade.
The Greatest President of the Twenty First Century.
Outstanding presentation on the pluses and minuses for electing Trump in 2016 and re-electing him in 2020. You didn’t list any minuses? Here’s one: half the country will continue to be frustrated that he keeps on winning, not for himself, but for the good of the country and world. They can poke fun on SNL, but as you stated in your post, world leaders are paying attention and attempting to change bad habits.
Concur.
No reluctance this time around. I’ll be enthusiastically voting for Trump in primary and general, and have already contributed to his campaign. I encourage all to do so as well, no matter how little one might be able to afford.
My parents and others of the preceding generations used to say that America’s strength vis-a-vis the entire rest of the world was our flexibility. I grew up hearing people state as a fact of life that Germany and Japan’s downfall, for example, was their rigid cultures. I worry about our country today that cannot accept a president who is different from other presidents of the past. Being open-minded was our strength.
He’s also very warm and friendly.
Explains why the Communists, who have adopted new infiltration techniques since losing the ‘Cold War’, are trying to remove him.
I’m fine as long as he doesn’t go ‘globalist’. In case it’s not clear what I mean is that he preserves and sustains American political and economic sovereignty.
I think one reason never-Trumpers can’t get over the man is because he advances conservatism, but does it in an unconventional, non-conservative fashion. To me, conservatism is as conservatism does, not based on style or rhetoric. Reagan was all three, but Trump is getting more done.
And Trump didn’t get fooled by amnesty like Reagan did . . .
We got lucky when he won. From my view, there was no way to know before that happened. I just knew the alternative was totally unpalatable. Let’s keep winning.
Every time I look at Hillary Clinton, I ask myself, “How can any conservative not be happy Trump won – or at least because Hillary lost?“
And now there’s a Hillary buzz starting, and given the quality of the current Dems running, it doesn’t surprise me.
They had a real shot at immigration reform and pissed it away.
I think what we need to be wary of now is Democrat cheating on voting in the 2020 election. Care should be taken in any competitive state.
Exactly. It’s not a question of whether they’ll try to steal the election. It’s a question of how.
I agree strongly with this post, but the highlighted sentence jumped out at me. I may not be taking it the way you meant it, but I don’t think Trump is focused on the voting patterns, he is focused on the “people without the right graduate school diplomas” and the voting patterns might follow.
It is amazing to me that the guy that is a billionaire seems to be more in touch with ‘normal’ people than all the politicians who tout their poor upbringings. Trump seems to really enjoy people both in crowds and individually.
I remember reading that Don jr. started out in the Trump business by working at the literal bottom driving construction equipment and so on. I got the impression that Trump himself may have had the same life experience. I have also heard that he would talk to the construction workers on a site to get a real feel for how things were going.
However he got here, he seems to me to really care for people in a way that is hard to fake.
As Hugh Hewitt wrote 15 years ago: If It Isn’t Close, They Can’t Cheat.
It is all about turnout beyond the margin of cheating.
I must disagree. How’s the deficit doing? Skyrocketing. Economy and trade? How badly is the trade war hurting, and what is the trade deficit like? Hurting a lot and the trade deficit is growing.
And is NATO stronger? I doubt it, with the ever deteriorating relations between Trump and other leaders. The strength in NATO is in the understanding and desire for all members to act together. Nations increasing their defense spending by .4% is not strength. Strength is in the resolve to use the tools of NATO together, and we are not very together right now.
And foreign affairs? Syria, Turkey and the Kurds would disagree that things are fine. How are things in North Korea with Trump’s good buddy? And Iran, who seems to be placing missiles in Iraq. And is Israel going to rely on Trump’s support? Not likely, how could they trust him.
I thank God daily that Hillary Clinton is not president. But is Trump what we conservatives are about? He isn’t a conservative, probably doesn’t know what that means. And most importantly, he cannot make a case for conservative governing.
Different than Reagan. Beating the USSR was very conservative.
He doesn’t need to “make a case for it” when he’s actually doing it.
That’s been the problem with so-called conservatives all along. All talk, no action.
We finally have “action man.”
How so? FDR beat Germany and Japan, and he was … not conservative.
Yeah, Jonah has complained that Trump can’t cite Burke and only has good judges because he’s using someone else’s list. To quote Andrew Breitbart, “So?” Look at the results.
The problem is that Trump is Sui Generis, and is doing nothing* to lay an intellectual foundation for others to carry on in his stead after he goes (either in 2021 or 2025). So this all may end up as a fart in the wind.
*yes, judges. I’m talking about on the political side of things, which judges should not be involved in.
No Action, Talk Only.
Used to say that’s what NATO stands for.
Just how much do you demand from one man? If the intellectual foundation for conservatism requires that DJT build that too, then clearly all is lost when he leaves office in 2025.