The last month has been the most successful stretch of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, but it has been a rough spell for the JD Vance and Steve Bannon wing of the Republican Party.
Projecting American force against the country’s traditional adversaries in concert with U.S. allies and signing a tax bill that nearly could have been written by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Trump demonstrated that the GOP still defaults to a muscular abroad and business-friendly at home posture.
Yes, the party’s coalition is changing, but its DNA hasn’t — at least not yet.
Trump’s bold attack on Iran, support of Israel, newfound backing for arming Ukraine against Russia and rejection of raising corporate or top-earner tax rates should be both humbling and instructive for the party’s populists and isolationists.
“Most Republicans know voters support them to cut taxes and keep you safe,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime GOP strategist. “We may have gotten muddy on a lot else, but this is the most consistent dividing line between the two parties: Taxes and security offer a pretty clear choice, and it's the fundamental advantage Republicans have with the center of the electorate.”
No, the president didn’t overnight become some orange-hued love child of Paul Wolfowitz and Arthur Laffer. Is there anything more Peak Trump than signing a massive tax bill locking in individual and corporate rates while most Americans are celebrating the Fourth of July and then spending the following week, as voters re-engage, dashing off capital letter-laden missives threatening tariffs around the world?
Trumpism, it can’t be said enough, is not an ideological project but rather Donald Trump garnering big, beautiful wins as he defines them.
The president last month memorably said that he defines what’s America First, and the last few weeks have been a vivid demonstration of that, on domestic and foreign policy.
Yet I’d go one step further. It’s Trump himself — and the enemies he’s made — that mainly animates his coalition, not any set of policy issues. In fact, Trump’s cult of personality is so strong it distorts more than defines the party’s platform, a reckoning that will only come in full once he’s gone.
Yet this is why so much of the commentary and curiosity about why he didn’t use the bill to better cater to his working-class voters misses the point. The appeal of Trump for so many is not what he'll deliver but what he’s opposing, namely the real and perceived excesses of the left (see Harris, Kamala, and trans ad).
Much of this is based on vibes — we don’t have to walk on eggshells in the workplace any longer! — but his substantive allure is based far more on backlash and identity than the promise of material gain.
Look no further than how Vance pitched the so-called big, beautiful bill to working-class voters in the final days before it cleared Congress. He couldn’t trumpet higher rates, a massively expanded child tax credit or protecting Medicaid recipients, so he focused on the money included for immigration enforcement.
Again, it’s not that Trump suddenly became a traditional Republican — it’s that he follows the direction of success and is ever up for grabs. And there are still more people in his ear pushing party orthodoxy.
That starts with Congress, where both chambers are led by traditional, pre-Trump Republicans. Yes, they made sure the bill included the president’s campaign trail promises, such as limiting taxes on tips and overtime. But they sunset those provisions while making permanent business rates, reducing estate tax exposure and expensing the depreciation of business property.
Further, every time Trump mused about a wealth surtax, or there were leaks about said musings, a number of GOP lawmakers would push back. When he first floated the prospect, I’m told, Senate Republicans told him the voters weren’t there for higher rates. When Trump pushed again, the lawmakers told him any increase would have to be adopted as an amendment on the Senate floor — and it would be done with a majority of Democrats.
It wasn’t just congressional Republicans, though.
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax evangelist, told me that he and his allies were quick to get in touch with the White House in response to every tax-hike hint.
“Three times people pushed the president to be for higher rates and each time it got knocked down,” Norquist said, faulting “munchkins inside the White House” and, more directly, the populist thinker, Oren Cass, who’s close to Vance
Norquist and former Speaker Newt Gingrich, speaking to Trump separately, appealed to him on political grounds.
They recalled the long history of Republican campaigns and the delicacy of the tax issue — Trump was most moved by George H.W. Bush’s 1992 defeat after reneging on his no-new-taxes promise — but were also blunt about a more recent election.
"In my experience, he always listens," Gingrich said of Trump. "He doesn't always obey, but he always listens — and then he talks to 25 other people."
The former speaker said that the roster also included such figures as longtime supply-side believer Larry Kudlow.
"It was all the usual suspects who had been involved since Reagan and understand the true faith and thought [George H. W. Bush] committed suicide politically," said Gingrich.
Norquist also sent Trump and top White House aides a barrage of video and clips, detailing how many times Trump promised on the campaign trail to cut taxes and the many pro-Trump groups that were opposed to higher rates, most notably those representing small businesses that file as individuals rather than corporations, the so-called S Corps.
“These are the people in every small and mid-sized town who run their own businesses, hire the kids in town, and you’re going to whack them or let somebody talk you into whacking them?” said Norquist.
But the anti-tax crusader said he was never nervous about higher rates because there was always a backstop: “The House and Senate were never going to do it.”
This is in part because the bulk of them have signed Norquist’s no-tax-hike pledge, which remains one of the first steps many Republican candidates for any office take upon filing their paperwork.
And that gets to the heart of the issue: For all the attention Bannon draws, how many divisions has The War Room? Or, in current terms, how many congressional votes does he control?
The center of gravity in the congressional GOP is still with party regulars who are no more going to raise taxes than they’re going to go vegan.
If you can’t pick Jerry Moran and John Boozman out of a lineup, you’re not grasping who still shapes the party, certainly in the Senate.
Do the regulars support tariffs? No, they despise them and hope to back-channel and leverage Trump enough to mitigate their impact. Do they support Stephen Miller’s immigration policy of deporting otherwise non-criminal illegal immigrants? They’re uneasy about it but recognize the politics of migration has shifted in their party.
Yes, Trump has changed the party. But there are still some red lines the old guard won’t cross, and taxes are one of them.
The president’s recent tilt on national security is just as instructive.
In less than two months, Trump went from pointedly skipping an Israel stop on his Mideast tour, snubbing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to threatening the country with retaliation if they dare prosecute his friend Bibi.
What changed? Well, the Israelis had great success bombing Iran, Trump witnessed the performance on television for days, decided to deploy American B-2s as well, and then was able to keep the two Mideast countries from continuing to attack one another. A tidy Trump win — he even called it the “12-Day War” — that involved only aerial assets and no ground troops.
As with the tax bill, the bulk of those in his ear — and certainly the Fox News commentary he was taking in — were in favor of striking Iran. And once he did, these same actors were wise enough to let Trump claim credit and rushed to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, ladling on the positive reinforcement.
Voila, a hawk is made — never mind how quickly Trump would have run from Netanyahu if the initial Israeli strikes on Iran had been repulsed.
Just as Bibi has learned to massage Trump, other foreign leaders are realizing how to go around the isolationists in his midst and sway the president directly.
That Pentagon review of AUKUS, the U.S.-UK-Australia nuclear submarine accord? Once British Prime Minister Keir Starmer got Trump in private at the G-7 meeting last month, the two leaders said the program was moving ahead. Gee, I wonder if Starmer will reinforce his message when he and King Charles host the president in Great Britain this fall for Trump’s full-dress state visit.
That Pentagon effort to stymie the flow of defensive weapons to Ukraine? Well, after a few leaks and a one-on-one conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the materiel was moving again. Trump’s appointees at the Department of Defense were reduced to issuing a late-night press release saying as much once the commander-in-chief tuned into the issue.
However, here’s the good news for the populists and isolationists: None of this may endure beyond next week’s installment of The Trump Show.
To paraphrase Henry Kissinger’s paraphrase, Trump craves no permanent friends or enemies, only big, beautiful wins.
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/bpFnxsA
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment