How Trump has changed the Republicans
In the summer of 2018, for example, Mr. Trump came far closer than is publicly known to simply withdrawing the US from the crown jewel of its military alliances, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. At a summit meeting in Brussels, Mr. Trump was so critical of what he considered the alliance’s unfair reliance on the American military, and even of the amount of money NATO had spent on a new headquarters building, that his fellow leaders convened a special, closed session to discuss his grievances.
National security Adviser John Bolton accompanied Mr. Trump to the meeting, which turned tense and testy. At one point, Mr. Bolton called White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, who had intended to skip the meeting to tend to other business, and told him: You’d better get over here. We’re about to withdraw from NATO.
Mr. Kelly hustled to Mr. Trump’s side and found that the president was, in fact, considering simply declaring that the US was out of the alliance. Mr. Kelly talked the president off that ledge, in part, by convincing him that he would be crucified by the political establishment and the press if he wrecked NATO. But some Trump aides remained worried that he still might pull the plug on NATO at some point.
Those attitudes seem to represent instinct more than a governing philosophy, so some conservatives are trying to construct a philosophy around them.
Mr. Cass of American Compass is one of them. “I see myself as engaged in the project of post-Trumpism,” he says. In that post-Trump era, he argues, conservatives must move beyond their instinct that market forces and a light government hand automatically offer the best answers. “What we call conservative economic policy isn’t actually small-c conservative in its orientation,” he says. “It’s libertarian economic policy.” Mr. Cass argues that free markets don’t allocate resources well across all sectors of an economy. Specifically, markets leave some important sectors -- including manufacturing -- without sufficient investment. “Manufacturing provides particularly well-paying, stable employment -- especially for men with less formal education,” he said in remarks last year. “Manufacturing also tends to deliver faster productivity growth, because its processes are susceptible to technological advances that complement labour and increase output.” Thus, Mr. Cass argues, government should have policies that actively favour the expansion of manufacturing, including funding more research that can help manufacturing companies; giving engineering majors in colleges more government aid than, say, English majors; putting a “bias” in the tax code to help manufacturers; reducing -- to nearly zero if necessary -- the number of visas given to Chinese citizens until China changes policies that harm American companies; and requiring US-made components in key products. “In the real world as we find it, America has no choice but to adopt an industrial policy, and we will be better for it,” Mr. Cass said.
Similarly, Mr. Rubio has decried what he calls a misplaced conservative “obsession” with economic efficiency. Economics and culture “are strongly intertwined,” the Florida senator argued recently in a speech at Catholic University. What’s needed, he said, is a system that creates greater incentives for businesses to create “dignified work” that strengthens the families and the kind of culture so important to conservatives. “Our current government policies get this wrong,” he said. “We reward and incentivise certain business practices that promote economic growth -- but it’s growth that often solely benefits shareholders at the expense of new jobs and better pay.” For his part, Mr. Hawley has proposed having the government subsidise employers’ entire payrolls during the coronavirus crisis, paying 80% of workers’ wages up to the national median wage, on the theory that conservatives’ goal right now should be keeping workers above water during a crisis not of their own making.
Mr. Hazony makes a similar argument when it comes to foreign policy. He contends that cultural and religious values should be as important as globalisation, which means that clear borders and a nation’s cultural identity must be seen as core values of a new conservative philosophy. He convened a conference in Washington last year to explore such ideas. “What we’re trying to do is unite the broad public and the elites as much as possible,” he says. “The broad conservative public is ready for nationalism. That’s the reason they voted for Donald Trump. That’s the reason they voted for Brexit.”
Ms. Haley, a likely 2024 presidential candidate, is also striking a nationalist tone, stressing the need for strong borders. But she appears to be betting on a return to a more traditional Reagan-esque posture, railing regularly against the Chinese Communist Party, arguing for an activist policy to counter Venezuela’s socialist government and lamenting Congress’ “irresponsible spending” on the coronavirus Some religious conservatives are doing a different kind of rethinking, considering how to best preserve the culture they value -- and whether they have been looking in the wrong place for answers. Author Rod Dreher, who writes for American Conservative magazine, says that he and other religious conservatives were “shocked” and “demoralised” when the Supreme Court, in a decision written by a Trump appointee, ruled recently that civil rights law protects gay people from workplace discrimination. “We on the religious right have wrongly prioritised law and politics as what are important to us,” he concludes. “What is important to us is the culture.” Mr. Rubio tried to address the dissatisfaction with traditional conservative prescriptions in his own 2016 campaign -- and, as the son of Cuban immigrants, did so without all of the Trumpian nativist overtones. But he found his message drowned out by Mr. Trump’s megaphone and maelstrom. Now he thinks that the anger at the economic status quo and the political establishment is a sign that America -- not just the conservative movement -- has reached a crossroads.
“If you look at human history, when these sentiments are not addressed, people throughout history always tend to go in one of two directions,” Mr. Rubio says. “Socialism -- let the government take over everything and make things right -- or ethnic nationalism, which is, ‘Bad things are happening to me, and it’s someone else’s fault. And they happen to be from another country or another skin colour.’ “Neither one of those ends up in a good place. And both are actually a fundamental challenge to the very concept of America, what makes us unique and special.”
Mr. Seib is The Wall Street Journal’s executive Washington editor. This essay is adapted from his new book, “We Should Have Seen It Coming: From Reagan to Trump -- A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution,” which will be published Aug. 25 by Random House.
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