One fact of the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency is that the policy results have been pretty conservative. For some conservatives, this is enough to sustain a great enthusiasm for Trump and his presidency. For others, like me, the concerns about Trump’s erratic behavior, his casual dishonesty, and his potential for catastrophic decision-making remain paramount. Few in either camp would mistake this moment for the dawning of a new era of conservatism. But with narrow Republican majorities in Congress and a president utterly unfamiliar with the principles that shape modern American conservatism, it’s not nothing either.
The sources of that success date back to May 12, 2016, when Trump met with House speaker Paul Ryan at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee. Trump was the presumptive GOP nominee and Ryan a Trump skeptic. They met twice that day. During the second meeting, which included several advisers from Trump’s retinue and a few of Ryan’s colleagues and congressional aides, the Wisconsin Republican attempted to give Trump an adumbrated version of the 25-minute PowerPoint presentation on debt and entitlements that he’s been giving for years. Ryan was just a couple of minutes into the presentation when Trump, not terribly interested in the details of Medicare premium-support proposals, cut him off. Trump told Ryan that he was happy he was so passionate about policy and that, if elected, he’d let the speaker drive it from the Hill.
And so it came to pass. Ryan managed to wrangle the House into passing something that loosely resembled Obamacare reform before it died in the Senate, and he then drove Trump’s tax reform success. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell failed to deliver on health care, but forced tax reform through his chamber. Thanks to them, Trump’s largest legislative accomplishment was there for the signing.
Conventional wisdom holds that Trump and Trumpism have dramatically reshaped the Republican party and even movement conservatism. That’s true, if regrettable. But it’s equally true that conservatives and Republicans have used Trump to achieve conservative ends in his first year.
Yet on January 10, Politico published a report that suggests Trump is headed in a dramatically different direction in his second year: “Republican leaders are considering skipping passage of a GOP budget this year—a blow to the party’s weakened fiscal hawks that would squash all 2018 efforts to revamp entitlements or repeal Obamacare. . . . Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has argued that he cannot pass controversial deficit-reduction legislation using powerful budget procedures with his new 51-vote majority.”
The news wasn’t entirely surprising. In late December, McConnell sketched out a 2018 agenda light on attempts to limit government and heavy on bipartisanship. Ryan, by contrast, told The Weekly Standard that he hoped to persuade his congressional colleagues and the president to be ambitious—eyeing health care and welfare reform, as well as the entitlement reforms that have been his focus for the past decade.
McConnell is cautious and focuses on obtaining and holding power. In December 2014, after Republicans had taken back the Senate in the second conservative wave of the Obama presidency, McConnell shared with the Washington Post his modest goal: Don’t mess up.
It’s political prevent defense. It’s uninspiring and ineffective. And there are massive problems facing the country, debt among the most urgent, that require something more than muddling through. But the momentum and the president are clearly with McConnell’s modest agenda and against Ryan’s bolder plans.
Budget negotiations to get the Pentagon out from under spending caps that have hurt readiness will likely lead to the lifting of similar caps on domestic spending. Some congressional Republicans are pushing to bring back earmarks, the mechanism for pork-barrel spending, and Trump supports their Swampy call. The president is encouraging an infrastructure plan—maybe as large as $1 trillion—that he sells in Keynesian language similar to that used by Barack Obama about the 2009 stimulus.
When we look back in January 2019, we should expect that the results of Trump’s second year will more closely resemble those we might expect of a centrist Democrat than a Republican. Conservatives liked 2017. They could be pretty disappointed in 2018. To say nothing of a Democratic House in 2019.
