Donald Trump’s legacy: Will Republicans embrace his political vision, or has he left conservatism in the dust?
We call it "Trumpism" for short, the collection of positions, policies and preferences embraced by the president of the United States.
But does all this amount to a coherent philosophy that can be carried out by future Republicans once Donald Trump is no longer in office?
And where does that leave conservatism? Trump never pretended to be a classic conservative, which deeply divided the movement.
There are those who quietly abandoned their previous views and have backed virtually everything Trump does, from tariffs to deportations to the war in Iran.
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And there are those who renounced Trump from the start, who believe he betrayed conservatives – and who tend to have prime spots in cable commentary, so shows can boast they have Republican pundits (who happen to hate Trump).
Some on the right bring a fierceness that eclipses the attacks by liberal critics. Former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerard Baker, a Fox News contributor, said yesterday after the Iranians denied having talks with the White House that the "unsettling reality" is Americans have to "suspect that the enemy’s version of events is more likely to be true than our own. We have become Baghdad Bob."
Talking to reporters before leaving Palm Beach yesterday, Trump said: "My life is a deal. That’s all I do is deals."
The context was what he insisted were the negotiations with Iran, but the declaration certainly applies to his business pursuits and political career.
I’ve known Trump since 1987, and I can tell you that he basically does whatever works in the moment. If that is inconsistent with his position the previous day or week or month, so be it. Let the pontificators argue about that.
Trump is immune to corrosive criticism about flip-flops because he views every day as a clean slate, in which his allies may be those he once furiously criticized and his enemies may be former loyalists.
For instance, the president’s first-term position, backed by Congress, was that TikTok was a threat to national security because of its Chinese ownership, and should be banned unless it was sold to an American company.
When I asked him about this before the election, Trump, whose campaign greatly benefited from its use of TikTok, said he was no longer in favor of a ban. This, he said, was because removing TikTok would help Facebook, and he deemed Mark Zuckerberg’s empire more of a threat.
Not a terribly convincing explanation, but with the president, that was then, this is now.
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For what it’s worth, a deal was finally reached this year to sell the hugely popular app to a joint venture in which American investors have majority control.
The hot media debate right now is what comes after Trump, and whether future Republicans – JD Vance, Marco Rubio, whoever – must follow his blueprint. This is especially resonant because the America First candidate who crusaded against foreign wars radically changed his approach by attacking Iran.
Atlantic contributor Pete Wehner, whose specialty is Christian ethics, says that in 2016 he was a lifelong Republican who had served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
He said in a New York Times op-ed that Trump "would threaten the future of the Republican Party," that he "sought to cultivate and encourage the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene."
Among Republicans, including evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, the president "rewired their moral circuitry… And in the process, he killed American conservatism. MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism; it is at war with it."
But look at Trump’s record. He sealed the southern border which was utterly porous under Joe Biden. He launched a mass deportation program aimed at illegal immigrants, a major target on the right. He cut taxes, and if most benefits went to the affluent, that’s what Republicans have always done. He slashed regulations at such places as the EPA. He reduced the size of the federal government by at least 300,000 jobs, or 10 percent, despite the mixed record of DOGE. And he was responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade.
Aren’t all these things, from easing tax burdens to restricting abortion to shrinking government, in line with conservative principles?
That’s not to say all these initiatives were handled well – look at the excesses of ICE and the killing of two Americans – or that they were wise decisions. But they’re not exactly at war with the conservative agenda of yore.
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And then there’s all the other stuff, some of it breaking with fiscal orthodoxy, including the vow to protect Social Security and Medicare.
Wehner concedes that many Republicans voted for Trump because they were struggling economically (and, I would add, felt marginalized by the mainstream culture). He twists the knife by saying "at the core of the MAGA project and Trumpism is disruption and destruction, the delegitimization and razing of institutions, and the brutalization of opponents… The MAGA movement represents the betrayal of the temperamental tradition of conservatism" and "the disfigurement of the Republican Party."
Jonah Goldberg, co-founder of the Dispatch, which has had success as a conservative, anti-Trump site, scoffs at such pointy-headed analysis.
"Trump has no ‘ideology,’" Goldberg writes. "He does have a few ideas. Off the top of my head: take the oil, tariffs are economic Viagra, strength good, never apologize, women won’t resist celebrities when they grab them by their privates, ‘good genes’ matter a lot, allies are whiny b----es, a bunch of romantic convictions about the supremacy of his instincts…"
He says these "gut impulses" and "sentiments" could be turned into an ideology. "But constructing an actual ideology requires thinking about how your various commitments might conflict, where the trade-offs are, what the edge cases might be, etc."
To Jonah, it’s a matter of psychology. "But Trumpism is not just about Trump’s psychology, it’s the psychology of many of his supporters. If Trump is for it, it must be right."
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I’d just note that our politics is so polarized that many liberals engage in similar behavior, demonizing opponents, spouting the party line and never giving the other side a scintilla of credit.
Iran has been the world’s leading terror state since 1979, but while raising questions about congressional approval, nearly all Democrats won’t say anything positive about the attack on Iran.
Chuck Schumer, on "Morning Joe" yesterday, repeatedly refused to acknowledge to Joe Scarborough that the U.S. decimating Iran’s military was a good thing. He just kept deflecting.
One notable dissenter, John Fetterman, told CBS that what the president has accomplished in Iran is "remarkable." And the senator said on a podcast that "our party is governed by TDS," Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Of course, Democrats don’t seem as wedded to one ideology because of undeniable splits over Israel, over pronouns, over transgender issues, over the old defund-the-police rhetoric, running the gamut from more moderate lawmakers to the Squad. What’s more, they don’t have a leader ready to denounce them and endorse primary opponents, so there’s little penalty for going off the reservation.
Gavin Newsom, a man of the left, has problems with progressives in his party because he has fought labor initiatives, backed housing deregulation, vetoed a bill allowing colleges to favor descendants of slaves, and opposes trans women playing in men’s sports.
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There’s no single answer to the future legacy of Trumpism. That depends on the president’s popularity, and the economic picture, and how Iran is viewed, in 2028. Trump the dealmaker is a singular figure, impossible to imitate.
But one thing is certain: the Republican Party will never return to the green-eyeshade stinginess of Paul Ryan, the compassionate conservatism of Bush 43, the NATO embrace of Bush 41, or the bipartisan chumminess of Ronald Reagan with Tip O’Neill.
The next era may be unclear, but Donald Trump has transformed the GOP forever.