Conventional wisdom holds that after the perceived failure of Bush, the Global Financial Crisis, the bailouts, the Great Recession, the prolonged wars in the Middle East, the rise of China as a serious competitor, and in the wake of trade-related economic dislocations and greater inequality, Donald Trump single-handedly managed to assemble a new populist movement within the GOP and thus conquered the American political right.
There‘s certainly some truth to that, but it’s not the whole story. In fact, Trump’s true base has never been the relatively new, formerly marginalized, populist wing of the GOP but the White Christian Nationalists. Needless to say, one can surely debate the proper terminology to describe this group. Pew Research, for instance, affectionately named the group “Faith and Flag Conservatives“.
They are the red, beating heart of today‘s Republican Party and they are best understood as the group that felt the country was slipping away from them due to cultural liberalization or cultural shifts to the left.
The Populist Right, the other component of the MAGA base, on the other hand, felt that the country was economically slipping away from them.
To illustrate this point:
The patter that emerges is incontrovertible. Faith & Flag Conservatives aka arch-conservatives are the largest, the most politically active, and the most loyalist voting bloc on the right. And while their share is equal to the share of the Populist Right, the Populist Right is generally less aligned with the Committed Conservatives and the Ambivalent Conservatives who all, more or less, concur with the Faith & Flag Conservatives’ outlook on economic and foreign policy. Hence, the Populist Right is still rather awkwardly isolated in policy terms on the right.
What that means is that no one should be surprised that Josh Hawley‘s not in charge of crafting this administration‘s economic agenda nor should anyone be surprised that Tucker Carlson and Majorie Taylor Greene aren’t determining Trump’s foreign policy. There are, of course, exceptions where Trump happens to be personally more aligned with the populist views (at least for now) and these particular issues include military aid to Ukraine, antitrust policy and global trade.
That said, these numbers help explain why the OBBB‘s cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, SNAP and industrial policy subsidies paired with extensive tax curs are not as politically toxic for Trump as one might expect. Sure, so far the median voter is still skeptical but the collective and vigorous support among Committed Conservatives (aka Reaganite conservatives) and Faith & Flag conservatives simply outweighs the dissenters among the Populist Right faction of the party. A similar dynamic is at play as far as Trump’s Middle East policy is concerned.
That said, these numbers help explain why the OBBB‘s cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, SNAP and industrial policy subsidies paired with extensive tax curs are not as politically toxic for Trump as one might expect
Yet...
There are still some Republicans (like Sens. Tillis and Hawley) who see the danger in how badly those cuts will effect voters in states Trump won (and therefore THEIR political careers, since Trump won't be on the ballot in 2026).
But many Republicans in the House are Trumpets (i.e. swept into office by Trump's presidential win in 2016). And when the you know what hits the fan, they perhaps believe they will be able to blame it on Biden, Obama or LBJ and are confident the Trump sheep will believe anything he says anyway.
Democrats will still have the edge in the midterms but I believe James Carville and Paul Begala are too overly optimistic about the number of House seats that will flip. Perhaps if they were active in running the DCCC. But they aren't.
@beckyromero I will. Speaking of presidential speech writers, I can highly recommend The Atlantic‘s relatively new David Frum show if you haven’t already watched/listened to some episodes.
