In striving to make America great, Donald Trump has exposed the ideological meekness of his party.
I’VE NOTED a number of times on this blog that I hold conservatism in high esteem. At the same time, I am on board with the notion that the Republican Party is ideologically defunct and politically cynical.
Some erstwhile conservative Republicans like David Brooks or Bret Stephens—both of whom write for the failing, liberal, elitist New York Times, mind you—will tell you that the G.O.P. has, in Mr. Stephens’ words, “prostituted” itself to the likes of Donald Trump. That might be. But I think the Republican sell-out to Mr. Trump is part of something bigger.
Before Mr. Trump descended from that infamous escalator, there was a fierce war for the soul of the Republican Party. It is still being waged today. Certain “reformacons” (“reform” + “conservative”), like National Review’s Reihan Salam, are trying their hardest to drag the Republican Party into the future by moving away from the narrow doctrine of supply-side economics—what Mr. Salam calls “zombie Reaganomics.” Others, like the fine men and women at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, are trying their damnedest to drag the party right back to 1981.
But now with Mr. Trump in office, a new intra-G.O.P. war is afoot. On one side are the nativists, whose raison d’etre is to erect walls and shut doors. On the other, the globalists, who want to fling open America’s doors to the world.
The Republican Party has long declared itself the party of Ronald Reagan. But Mr. Reagan was a tried-and-true globalist. He pushed for an immigration amnesty bill that would legalize America’s (at the time) 3 million unauthorized immigrants. He was a bold advocate of free trade. He had no qualms with an interventionist foreign policy.
You might imagine in a four-cell matrix with left-right on one side and open-closed on the other. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. Here you go:
This is obviously a loose and imperfect framing device, but it’ll do for my purposes. (I also realize that the foundational idea of this blog is that there’s room between left and right, which the diagram doesn’t acknowledge. Nuanced diagrams are hard. Sue me.)
Under Mr. Reagan, Republicans and Democrats broadly agreed that America should be open, but they differed on whether it ought to lean left or right. Under Mr. Trump, the Republicans—and in fairness, the Democrats as well—aren’t so sure about that whole openness thing. Nativists like Senator Tom Cotton and radical immigration restrictionist bozo (and, sadly, senior advisor to the president) Stephen Miller hold significant sway both on Capitol Hill and in the White House.
Like Mr. Reagan, many long-time, mainstream Republicans fall into the “open + right” category. But Mr. Trump does not, falling instead into the “closed + right” category. So for the open + right conservatives to curry favor with the closed + right conservatives—who are largely the ones in power—the open + right people have to capitulate to the Trump agenda on certain issues. Otherwise, the open + right conservatives risk becoming irrelevant.
And this gets to the “something bigger” I mentioned at the outset. The reformacons have a real, forward-looking agenda for America. The supply-siders don’t. Income inequality, climate change, and technological shifts are the seminal challenges of our time. And to that end, the reformacons propose smart, market-friendly solutions. Tax credits to alleviate poverty, a price on carbon to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, job retraining programs to assist workers displaced by machines. And the supply-siders propose, in my estimation, an uninspired copy-and-paste of Reaganism: marginal tax cuts for the rich, and little else.
Reaganism made some form of sense in the 1980s. Stagflation (i.e., inflation without economic growth) was dragging down the economy. To boost growth without hyper-charging inflation, many thought policy needed to target the supply side of the economy, not the demand side. Today, with inflation at a mere 1.5%, why again do we need more tax cuts for the richest Americans?
“New capital investment will lead to explosive growth!” is the common supply-sider rebuttal. But their premise is flawed. Economists look at three outcomes when it comes to economic policy: welfare, efficiency, and distribution. Supply-side economics ignores distributional questions in a time of inequality and polarization. Supply-siders therefore misdiagnose what plagues the country.
It bears repeating. Reformacons have a workable agenda for the 21st century. Supply-siders don’t. Maybe that explains why many open + right Republicans of the supply-side persuasion, like Paul Ryan or the Journal’s editorial board, sell their political souls to Mr. Trump. It is less an act of devious calculation than a meek cry for help.
