President Trump is officially running for reelection. As he declared in his campaign launch rally, “we are going to keep on winning, winning, winning.”
Well, not so fast. The coalition that elected him in 2016 is far from a lock heading into 2020. Then, Trump ran as the anti-establishment outsider appealing to restless conservatives, suburbanites, and working-class voters — the latter relative newcomers to the GOP and essential to the party’s future. Not only did they elect Trump, they sent Republican majorities to Congress too.
But two and a half years later, the coalition is hungry for more. While most are pleased with the progress of the past two years, a growing number doubt the Republican Party can help Trump deliver on his biggest promises. In the eyes of too many Trump voters, the Democrats are offering a sweeping vision for America’s future, while the GOP is stuck in the past.
In 2016, Trump showed the Republican Party the way forward. He put his finger on the issues that mobilized a movement. He promised to defend the culture from coastal elites, fix a broken immigration system, and restore the nation’s wealth and workforce. This message of American workers, American heritage, and America’s middle class clearly resonated with voters.
Yet once Trump was elected, the Republican Congress was caught flat-footed. Lawmakers had spent too little time developing and selling innovative policies, as had the Trump campaign. And so the GOP defaulted to its traditional issues: cutting taxes, slashing regulations, rebuilding the military, and confirming judges.
To be clear, these policies were and remain essential to restoring American confidence and strength. But they largely failed to address the Trump coalition’s biggest concerns. With the campaign entering full swing, Trump and the Republican Party need to show their coalition, and the country, that they have innovative solutions to America’s toughest problems.
While Democrats are rushing as far left as possible, Trump and the Republican Party can offer commonsense proposals that meet the needs of the moment.
The Left wants “Medicare for all,” a one-size-fits-all government system that would eliminate private health insurance and upend the entire healthcare market. The right policies would give Americans greater freedom with their healthcare dollars and force providers to be transparent on prices.
The Left wants an immigration system built on amnesty and no assimilation. The right immigration policies, in addition to protecting Americans’ safety and securing the border, would promote patriotism for new immigrants while preserving social services for U.S. citizens.
The Left wants a top-down, D.C.-driven, multitrillion-dollar infrastructure bill. The right infrastructure package would empower communities from the bottom up, giving them fiscally sound ways to rebuild their roads and bridges while reinvigorating local workers.
The Left increasingly wants government job guarantees — a federal gig for anyone who wants it. The right workforce policy involves more vocational training and apprenticeships, giving more people a better shot at finding meaningful work.
The Left wants bailouts for higher education, rewarding colleges for raising prices, offering dead-end majors, and staffing up with diversity officers. The right higher-education reforms would actually prepare students for the workforce while putting those who pursue non-college career tracks on par with those who choose college.
And the Left, more than ever before, wants to fundamentally transform American culture, guaranteeing abortion-on-demand, eliminating women’s sports in the name of equality, and shutting down any speech they find offensive. The right response is to champion the intrinsic value of every life and resist attempts to carve up our body politic for the benefit of interest groups and identity politics.
These are the issues that swept Trump into office, and these are the issues his coalition still wants addressed. The GOP is starting to realize this, but too much of the party is still stuck in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Republicans and conservatives can criticize the Democrats’ ideas all we want (and we should), but at least they’re proposing new solutions to new problems.
The Trump administration, Republicans in Congress, and conservative groups need to get moving, fast. If voters don’t believe the GOP can make real, lasting progress on their most important issues, they’re going to pull the lever for someone else — not just in 2020, but every two years after that.
Trump already showed Republicans how to win, and on what issues. It’s time for them to prove they learned their lesson and give the Trump coalition, and America, the progress it deserves and demands.
Tim Chapman is the executive director of Heritage Action for America.
