Can Donald Trump’s presidential campaign be about issues and ideas or must it always be about the man himself? Is Trumpism a real thing independent of Trump?
The Trump campaign’s latest shakeup may give us some answers.
Paul Manafort was originally brought aboard to steer Trump through a contested Republican convention. When the New York businessman clinched a majority of delegates too soon for that scenario to unfold, Manafort’s role grew into professionalizing the campaign.
It didn’t work, partly because it was always perceived as an attempt to turn Trump into something he is not. Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway are at least well qualified to help the Republican nominee more effectively communicate the message he claims is driving his run for the White House.
If Bannon’s Breitbart is what you would get if the angriest commenters on conservative websites got to create a site of their own, Trump is what you would see if one of the more flame war-prone commenters became a presidential candidate.
More seriously, under Bannon’s direction Breitbart became an outlet committed to the nationalist populism and rejection of mass immigration now commonly associated with Trump (not least by Breitbart’s own writers).
Not many other right-leaning outlets so clearly regard Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., as a bigger conservative hero than Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. While most of the conservative press has been enthusiastically supportive of House Speaker Paul Ryan, Breitbart under Bannon went all in on his unsuccessful primary challenger and regularly lampooned Ryan as a globalist sellout.
Conventionally conservative in many other ways, Bannon deviates from recent Republican orthodoxy on issues like trade and immigration. So does Trump. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” he declared in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination.
Conway is different. She was with Cruz during the primaries and wasn’t afraid of criticizing Trump. She is a longtime Republican and consistent pro-life social conservative. She confidently and naturally speaks the language of the kind of conservative Republican Trump now needs.
The reasons many of Conway’s conservative comrades regard Trump with suspicion are well known. He has a slim to nonexistent record on most conservative issues and hasn’t shown much interest in learning.
Going from Trump skeptic to Trump campaign manager, Conway is better equipped than most to make the case that the businessman can be trusted on the fights to which she has devoted her life. Even if one distrusts Trump, there is no doubt that Hillary Clinton means long-term and perhaps even permanent setbacks for a variety of conservative causes.
Instead of unraveling as insurers bail from the exchanges, Obamacare would be further entrenched and perhaps even pushed leftward. The Supreme Court could be delivered to liberals for a generation, imperiling recent precedents on religious liberty, political speech and, yes, Second Amendment people’s gun rights. Democratically elected branches of government may see their ability to influence abortion policy reduced.
Both Bannon and Conway can be helpful to Trump is blasting Clinton, something he promised to do during the primaries but has been inconsistent about since winning the nomination. At his rallies, even when he does tear into Clinton he tends to wander off-topic and generate headlines that step on his critique of the Democrats.
Would verbal conflict with Clintons plus the kind of tight, focused stump speech Trump delivered on his issues Tuesday night count as “letting Trump be Trump?” Would it keep the candidate interested in a way that Manafort-influenced big teleprompter speeches clearly never did?
For all Trump’s flaws and foibles, to say nothing of his near-daily gaffes, he still has a potentially popular message as a change candidate pitting Washington, D.C., and the special interests against the rest of us.
Getting him to stay focused on that message or pursue opportunities to spread it without media filter has proven more difficult.
Even if Trump’s new campaign team helps him achieve a level of message discipline Manafort never did, which is a big if, it is no substitute for a good ground game. Leading Republicans have gone from losing patience to losing hope. There is even speculation that Trump is more interested in teaming with Bannon on some kind of alt-right news network than in becoming president.
Nevertheless, this new set-up could help explain whether the campaign is more about an anti-globalist populist movement on the right or about Trump the celebrity. The candidate’s own actions will tell us.
