Get the Ricochet app

Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Become a member.

Tired of the toxicity of social media? Why not join Ricochet for just $5/month? Think of it as an online bar. Come in, have a drink, hang out, say whatever you want. But don’t badger, bully, or berate the other drinkers. That's our only rule.

What the Republican Party Lost with MAGA

Roderic
@rhfabian
Join to bookmark15likesJoin to like209comments

Prior to Trump, Republicans held to certain ideas such as free trade, free markets, fiscal restraint, institutional conservatism, and globalism. Those principles have receded with the arrival of the MAGA coalition.

MAGA has embraced trade protectionism with tariffs and industrial policy being means to national strengths. This has brought many new jobs and industries to, or back to, America, but it has strained international relations.

Fiscal conservatism is all but dead now. Tax cuts are no longer paired with spending restraint. The national debt has topped $40 trillion and is expected to reach $50 trillion in 2 years at this rate. This will either be brought under control by austerity or a disaster; there is no telling which at this point.

Trump's impatience with voices of moderation and gradual change has led to those voices being silenced or removed. The renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America is a recent example of the startling, charging bull instincts typical of this administration.

Among the electorate, gains among the working class have been paired with losses of educated suburbanites and independents.

The Republican Party is no longer the natural home of foreign policy hawks and institutionalists, although the hawks seem to be happy with the war in Iran.

Things change, and I'm more on the side of calling these changes necessary adaptations to a new political climate rather than a net loss.

This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.

Discussion (209)

  • Bob Thompson@BobThompson

    The Republicans prior to Trump held to certain ideas such as free trade, free markets, fiscal restraint, institutional conservatism, and globalism.

    Maybe this was accurate 30 years ago, but not after that, although there is pretense. You should look a little deeper into the actions leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. And the globalism part only came about under George HW Bush after the collapse of the USSR, and that was a bad idea.

    EDIT: I should temper my remarks by pointing out that I'm referring specifically to what we see as Republican Party policy where your bolded post language referred to Republicans, many of whom still hold and value what you described. There is clearly a difference and this is how we got such dramatic change.

  • Bob Thompson@BobThompson
    Roderic (View Post):

    Those principles have receded with the arrival of Trump and the MAGA coalition.

    I guess this is really where the inaccuracy is in your opening. These principles receded in the elected Republicans in Congress long before Trump entered politics full-time with MAGA.

  • Fritz@Fritz
    Reducing illegal immigration and deporting illegal aliens are still the major improvements under the Trump administration, IMO. I believe it was Milton Friedman who said one cannot have both open borders and a welfare state, but that is what we have suffered from under both parties. MAGA was and is the response of the normies.
Scroll for later comments
+204 more comments
Join the conversation

You're seeing five of 209 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.