A fascinating intra-party fracture is developing within the Republican Party. Of course, it concerns President Trump, but what doesn’t in Washington, D.C. these days?
This one is not so much about the GOP establishment versus Trump – although that storyline is legitimate. Suffice to say there are many Republicans in Washington (and elsewhere) who have seriously ruffled feathers concerning the president’s independent ways and accompanying general disregard for their feelings. The rift is not difficult to understand. To repeat: Trump is and remains more movement leader than partisan chieftain; he has shown an unsurprising willingness to throw Republican members of Congress under the bus when it suits his greater purpose. Those who expect an attitudinal adjustment by the commander-in-chief will most likely be disappointed.
A far more important divide is deserving of your attention, however. It concerns the growing dichotomy between what many observers see as a chaotic White House on the one hand, and a Reaganesque flair for gritty policy calls on the other. Peggy Noonan’s most recent Sunday column was devoted to the former as she described how (many) Republican Senators remain at a loss to deal with a free agent president resistant to control – even by senior staff.
The narrative includes criticisms that have grown familiar during Trump’s first year in office. Here, the president is viewed as a shoot-from-the-hip neophyte too undisciplined to govern and quite dangerous in a world populated by despots who wield nuclear weapons.
Sen. Bob Corker’s recent broadsides qualify here. The retiring Republican Senator from Tennessee sees an overmatched executive lacking in “competence” and “stability,” albeit surrounded by a competent senior group daily engaged in the task of keeping the leader of the free world from careening off the rails. (Whatever did happen to keeping family disputes within the family?)
Make no mistake, this is how today’s Washington views the president and his administration. Note that this particular indictment is distinguished from the “all hands on deck” Trump haters who continue to be transfixed by a Trump/Russian collusion conspiracy story that lacks credible supporting evidence after two years of exhaustive investigation and desperate mainstream media attention.
In striking contrast are a series of Trump administration policy initiatives that not only define Trump as the anti-Obama, but also as more Reaganesque than a “Never Trumper” could ever have imagined. How else to describe a president willing to buck the status quo, and a powerful establishment press, in pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords and now refusing to recertify a notoriously deficient nuclear deal with the mullahs in Tehran.
As expected, these decisions have propelled the left (and numerous feckless allies) into yet additional anti-Trump tirades. But this president seems more intent on serving America’s long-term interests than attempting to curry favor with a hostile media or spiking his approval numbers in foreign countries. (That even President Obama never dared submit either agreement to Congress in the form of a treaty provides insight into how viable he viewed the respective agreements, but I digress…)
Trump’s aggressive contrariness is not confined to foreign policy initiatives. Witness his insistence on a return to the rule of law with respect to both DACA (undocumented children brought to the U.S. at a young age) and Obamacare. Here, the layman executive manifests a better understanding of executive restraint than his Constitutional law professor successor. How refreshing, and old school, to find an administration intending to operate within established Constitutional constraints. How stunning to see a president disinclined to unilateral executive action even when the stakes are extraordinarily high.
In this context, Trump has refused to bless an edict rendering millions of undocumented aliens suddenly legal (preferring instead to include relief for DACA children with a comprehensive reform of our broken immigration system), or perpetuate the notion that his Department of Health and Human Services possesses the Constitutional authority to hand out taxpayer subsidies to insurance companies when the money has never been appropriated by Congress (preferring instead to maximize consumer choice within a law that has limited too many consumers to a one-size-fits-all menu).
A couple of takeaways present themselves.
Trump is without question a polarizing political figure. It is not difficult to understand how many Americans have deeply held concerns about a revolving door West Wing and daily policy pronouncements on Twitter. Americans could stand less self-induced drama surrounding the ways and means of the most powerful person in the world.
But there is a seriously refreshing aspect to a leader who understands his job is not to go along to get along, or simply kick the proverbial (policy) cans down the road, but rather to further the economic and national security interests of America first, mainstream media disapproval notwithstanding.
Gov. Robert Ehrlich is a Washington Examiner columnist, partner at King & Spalding, and author of three books, including the recently released Turning Point. He was governor of Maryland from 2003-2007.
