Did Republicans abandon their principles for President Trump?
Transforming the Republican Party into message board trolls ought to shame us, but sadly it has not.
One of the common themes at The Bulwark is that Republicans have abandoned their principles for President Donald Trump. Before getting into specifics, a basic problem here the lack of humility. If tens of millions of conservatives who voted for Mitt Romney and George W. Bush now support Trump, when a (let's be honest) very small minority of traditional conservatives have not, maybe it is not the vast majority who have walked away from conservative principles. Maybe instead of condemning 77 million people who voted for Trump in 2024, you should consider maybe they have legitimate, principled conservative reasons for supporting him. Maybe you are not actually the ultimate arbiter of conservative principles.
Now, let's get into some specific examples.
Charlie Sykes harped on de-funding National Public Radio on his podcast, but the reality is that Republicans have wanted to de-fund NPR for decades. Direct taxpayer funding makes up a very small portion of NPR's revenue. Despite concern for how these funding cuts would impact "the poor," NPR listeners are statistically at the higher end of the income spectrum. President Trump, a lifelong New York City liberal, has been implementing what conservatives have wanted to do for a long time, and have tried (and failed) to do in the past. This is hardly a "betrayal."
Conservatives have wanted to reduce federal spending on Medicaid and add work requirements for a long time. This was a big part of the agenda of the Republican Congress elected in 1994. Republicans have been pointing at wasteful government programs since when Donald Trump was a Democrat giving truckloads of cash to Hillary Clinton, and DOGE (while only affecting overall government spending at the margins) has been accomplishing that goal. Similarly, Republicans have been advocating for reducing the federal workforce for decades before Trump descended the escalator in 2015.
Furthermore, a large part of the GOP wanted to crack down on immigration for decades, and millions of Republican voters have been frustrated with the party leadership's weakness on the issue for a while. It is certainly possible to criticize the implementation of Trump's efforts to combat illegal immigration, but this policy is hardly unique to Trump. Remember, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama promised to increase border security.
Overall fiscal restraint has been a particular weakness of President Trump. Demanding more COVID-19 relief in December 2020, after pandemic relief had already blown out the budget deficit, was particularly galling to fiscal conservatives. Trump, unlike previous generations of Republicans, has foolishly taken entitlement reform off the table. But we should not pretend that Trump is unique in his lack of commitment to cutting overall spending. It has been the case for generations that Republicans are better on spending when out of power than when in power. The Republican Congress that gave us a balanced budget and a budget surplus in the 1990's abandoned that once we got a Republican President in 2001.
The worst failure of Republicans in the age of President Trump has been in personal character and public decorum. Far too many Republicans (some of whom personally excoriated me for my tone) have defended and even embraced Donald Trump's filthy mouth and total lack of restraint and discipline. They have claimed we need to "fight." Transforming the Republican Party into message board trolls ought to shame us, but sadly it has not.
(See more here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.)
As I have said many times, I did not vote for Trump. I do not regret, repent or apologize for that. I also do not condemn (and have never condemned) the 77 million and 62 million voters who elected him in 2024 and 2016, respectively. There are some Trump supporters who are part of a cult, and while I condemn that wicked idolatry, I have never said that all 62 million / 77 million Trump voters (or even more than a very small minority) are part of a cult. In fact, while I refused to vote for Trump in either of his victories, I have always maintained that people who voted for him can and did have principled conservative reasons to vote for him. The Bulwark would do well to follow my example and have some humility in analyzing the Republican Party's support for Trump.