By Andrew Boyd

The question at hand, is Trump a conservative, is an interesting one for sure. Stephen argues first and foremost that it’s family values and fiscal conservatism. It’s certainly arguable that the conservative movement put a lot of its eggs in these two baskets over the past several decades and has largely failed to deliver on either. But I think there are greater fundamental issues at play. More on that later. Let’s first unpack the stuff in Stephen’s argument.

In character, I'd agree that Trump is not a conservative. In his deeds, he most certainly is.

On the fiscal front, Trump is a mixed bag. He’s not taken on the systemic issues of government bloat and out-of-control federal spending (yes, it’s a spending issue), but he has installed pro-growth tax and regulatory policies that led to a booming post-Obama, pre-COVID economy the likes we’ve never seen. Sadly, I’m not sure there’s a serious political player on the national stage who’s willing to go to bat for a balanced federal budget or the reeling in of the welfare state. These are cans virtually everyone seems happy just to kick down the road. I’d say that, systemically, our body politic is in something akin to a persistent vegetative state on the debt and deficit thingy, which is certainly not ideal from this conservative’s point of view, but not something particularly attributable to Trump.

But what about free and fair trade? asks Stephen. Yes, it could be argued that Trump stepped over the line on the Canadian aluminum tariffs, but I don’t think there’s anything inconsistent in a conservative’s appreciation for the free exchange of goods at home and nationalistic international economic policy. Trump was elected to represent the people of Peoria, nor Paris, after all, and I’m mostly down with that. Tariffs are lousy, long-term structural tools, but they can come in handy at the negotiating table, which is by and large how the administration has used them, in my estimation. 

But what about family values? Seriously, in Washington, Stephen?  Surely you jest.  Personal peccadillos of the Trumpian sort have been baked into the swamp cake since the dawn of the republic. Do I wish he was less like JFK and more like Obama in the category of marital fidelity? For sure. But you work with what you’ve got. And in the new age of a leftist, socialist-slouching Democratic party, I think an increasing number of conservatives are inclined to take a more macro view.  

At the macro level, Trump, I would argue, is the most conservative president in my lifetime.  Drawing down the 15-year Afghanistan fiasco, taking the hard line with China, appointing textualist Supreme Court justices, delivering American energy independence and leveraging the same in foreign policy, supporting Israel, the Middle East’s only functioning Democracy, putting Hezbollah and the Iran mullahs on their heels and calling out the leftist media establishment for their gross journalistic malfeasance. 

The only blind obedience I’m aware of within my Republican circles is to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights and the ideals these documents embody. Trump isn’t perfect by a long shot, but he’s drawn the party back toward its genuine center of gravity, motivating its base and drawing a stark contrast with the socialist, globalist, identity politics dogma of the unhinged left.  

If time and space weren’t issues, I’d take another thousand words to explain how Obama was, by contrast, the least traditionally liberal, least inclusive president in my lifetime, by a long shot, but that’s a column for another day.

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