Trump’s twist on compassionate conservatism

“We’re die-hard supporters,” Shawn said as he waited, along with thousands of others, for Trump to take the stage at the Verizon Wireless Arena here. “We’d go everywhere he would if I had the money.”

If you’re wondering how Trump, a businessman turned reality star with a history of taking liberal positions could be on the verge of winning the first Republican primary and quite possibly the GOP nomination, speaking with Shawn and Virginia would be a good place to start.

Shawn changes motor oil for a living at Valvoline Instant Motor Oil and complained that the lack of well-paying jobs in the South has made it difficult to keep up with the cost of living. His wife Virginia, who used to work as a hotel maid, said she’s been collecting Social Security disability since 2008, due to the effects of exposure to cleaning chemicals. “Social Security Administration is trying to take my [money] from me, because they’re trying to say I’m able to work, but I’m not able,” she said.

Both of them attributed the lack of job opportunities despite having college education to a flood of immigrants entering the country. Asked if they wanted to stop just illegal immigration or prevent all immigrants from entering the country, they both responded, “All of them.”

Shawn elaborated: “Get them the hell out of this country. This is our country. This ain’t theirs. If they can’t make a democracy in their own country, oh well. Don’t come over here and try to destroy ours. That’s the way I feel about it. The way I look at it, build a fence, and fry them all.”

When asked why she thought Trump would be more likely to crack down on immigration than other candidates, Virginia said, “Because he’s more for the people from United States.”

Neither of them would be defined as typical conservatives. On the one hand, Shawn said Obamacare was “the worst thing that they’ve ever done to the country” because of the fines imposed on people who don’t have insurance. Yet he said he voted for President Obama in 2008 and also insisted there needed to be a $20 federal minimum wage.

“To me, it should be 20 bucks an hour across the whole country, because that way everybody can live a lot more comfortable instead of struggling,” he said.

Asked if he had looked at Bernie Sanders, who has proposed a $15 per hour minimum wage, he said, “I don’t know really to much about Bernie Sanders, we’ve been following Trump. But I believe if Trump gets in there, he’ll probably steal Bernie Sanders’ idea and do it anyway.”

During the 2000 campaign, then-Gov. George W. Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” based on the conclusion that limited government conservatism, which fueled the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, was too harsh to be a winning message in a national election. Bush embraced issues such as expanding the federal role in education and adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

Now Trump is putting his twist on compassionate conservatism. He may not sound compassionate when he talks in terms of excluding immigrants, but to those Americans who have struggled to pay the bills as they watch others get rich and bankroll politicians, Trump is the first candidate who makes them believe he’ll fight for them. The solutions don’t matter, the deviations from conservative orthodoxy don’t matter. What matters is he feels their pain and makes them believe that he’ll be able to do something to fix their problems — as Americans.

In an extended rant during his primary eve rally, Trump managed to mix in calls for preventing cuts to Social Security and for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, with cultural complaints about government going after people’s guns and religion.

“You know, that the United States, which is the largest purchaser of drugs — massive, massive amounts — for Medicare, which we’re going to save, for Social Security and everything, but mostly Medicare — we’re going to save Social Security too by the way, we’re going to seriously — I mean you’ve been paying in for years, and now they wanna start chopping away,” he said. “They wanna chop away at Social Security, by the way. Like they want to chop away at the Second Amendment, which is not gonna happen, okay? Like honestly, like they’re doing with religion. They are chopping away at Christianity and believe me, they are doing that. And this may or may not be a somewhat religious audience, but I will tell you one thing, very soon, we will start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again when it’s Christmas.”

At the rally, Trump said all the other politicians were in the pocket of the drug companies.

“The drug companies have an unbelievable lobby,” he said. “And these guys that run for office, that are on my left and right an plenty of others, they’re all taken care of by drug companies.”

In contrast, he said, “We’re going to save so much money and those drug companies are going to hate me so much.”

He claimed he could save $300 billion a year negotiating drug prices. In 2014, the last year for which official data are available, the U.S. spent a total of $297.7 billion on prescription drugs — and that includes both the public and the private sector.

Though Trump has recently denied supporting single-payer healthcare, he’s explicitly supported it in the past, and during this campaign he’s praised the single-payer systems of Britain and Canada, argued that government should be providing universal health coverage, and that it should be negotiating with drugmakers, hospitals, and doctors. In recent weeks, he’s been employing a popular argument among liberals that were it not for government intervention, people would be dying from lack of care. Only he makes the point in an even more bombastic way than most liberal politicians.

“We’re not going to have people dying on the streets,” he said. “We’re going to get them in the hospital and take care of them, because we’re not going to have people dying in streets.”

He said, “The Republican way is, people can’t take care of themselves, we have to help them.” This echoed President Bush’s statement, that became infamous in libertarian and conservative circles, that, “We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.”

Without offering specifics, Trump said that he would make sure to do something about high rates and deductibles and create more choices.

“We’re going to take care of it, folks, and we’re going to have so many great things,” he said.

The details are less important to Trump supporters, though, than the feeling that somebody is actually listening to them.

Following the speech, I spoke with Russell Kelcourse of Quincy, Mass. who said he came to the rally “to see our next president.”

He said he was “sold” on Trump after the candidate said he would tax Chinese goods 45 percent (which Trump later said was misunderstood).

So I asked him whether he was concerned that the prices of goods would become more expensive to Americans.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “But I’m also concerned that I can’t buy my child, he’s two and a half years old, something made in America. So I’ll pay an extra 10 percent, 15 percent.”