During the 2016 election, conservative critics of Donald Trump were confronted by his supporters with the following question: Why can’t they just get over their concerns about the Republican nominee given that he was much more likely than Hillary Clinton to enact their preferred policies?
Ultimately, NeverTrump conservatives found an easy out. Over his years in the private sector, Trump had provided many reasons to be skeptical he’d govern as a conservative if elected. He had a long history of donating to Democrats, he had been chummy with the Clintons, he had spoken approvingly of socialized medicine, he had been radically pro-choice, he argued in favor of gun control, and he had talked about hiking taxes.
Looking toward a theoretical presidency, it was easy to imagine a scenario in which Trump surrounded himself with liberal New Yorkers, abandoned conservatives, and started cutting deals with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to build massive infrastructure projects. There were fears he’d appoint lousy judges — maybe even his pro-choice sister.
Given that most NeverTrumpers assumed Clinton would win anyway, they figured that in a few months time this would be confined to a counterfactual — with those who supported and opposed Trump in 2016 forever arguing over what type of president he would have been.
In short, there was no reason for critics to compromise their moral principles to support somebody like Trump, given that they believed he wasn’t even a conservative in the first place.
Nearly a year and a half into his first term, it’s looking like conservative critics were only half-right in their assessment of Trump. Their concerns about his character issues, temperament, and immaturity have all contributed to a chaotic presidency. But fears that he was some sort of Trojan horse to advance the liberal agenda have been proven wrong.
As president, Trump has supported many conservative policies and has opposed liberal ones. And though he certainly doesn’t have an unblemished record of conservative policy success, his deviations from conservatism have been within the realm of normal for Republicans.
Specifically, Trump has effectively outsourced judicial selections to the Federalist Society, picking judges from Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on down the line who have been widely praised by conservatives; he has a largely conservative cabinet; he’s pushed deregulation; he signed a large tax cut; he’s defended gun rights even as they’ve come under emotional attack following high-profile mass shootings; he’s pursued pro-life policies; and he’s defended religious liberty.
While many of these policies could have arguably been pursued by a number of potential Republican presidents, on some other issues, it’s debatable. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal and move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem were cases in which Trump made gutsy calls that any ordinary Republican may have shied away from.
Of course, there is still much for conservatives to criticize from a policy perspective. Obamacare lives, the tax law lacked real reform, he’s ignored entitlements, much of his promised deregulation hasn’t been formalized, and his trade protectionism is a disaster.
All of that having been said, in most of these cases, the problems are much deeper than Trump, and speak to the intellectual rot within the Republican Party. Trump would sign any Obamacare repeal bill that Republicans put in front of him, but in more than eight years, the GOP has failed to unify around an alternative. The tax law was a product of Congress. Historically, Republicans have only shown a willingness to cut spending and tackle entitlements when a Democrat is president.
Meanwhile, every Republican president has pursued policies that have rankled conservatives. Trump’s deviations from conservative ideology are no more egregious than President Bush’s imposition of steel tariffs and massive expansion of Medicare. Yet most conservatives voted to reelect him.
This isn’t to say that everybody who had reservations in 2016 should hop aboard the Trump train. To be sure, his casual lies, erratic behavior, bombastic morning tweets, stories surrounding the hush payment to a porn star, and whatever else may emerge in the next two and a half years, could provide many reasons for some conservatives to remain in the Never Trump camp in 2020.
Yet, there will be no hacking of the Kobayashi Maru next time around. Or put another way, NeverTrumpers won’t be able to make the argument that Trump is a liberal anyway and thus there’s not much cost in refusing to support him. He’ll have a record with a number of conservative accomplishments, and it’s quite likely that any Democratic nominee will be to the left of Clinton, making the contrast even more severe. For conservative Trump critics, 2020 will make for a much more direct choice between their moral sense and their ideological beliefs.
