The political evolution
A recent piece reminds me of where I came from, and where I could go.
The other day I saw an article from Shipwreckedcrew’s Port-O-Call that reminded me of the tumultuous 2016 campaign and ascension of Donald Trump.
As he notes:
The GOP majority in the Senate is about the last vestige of the GOP Establishment that originated with the election of Pres. Reagan in 1980 and continued on through the second term of Pres. Bush 43 in 2008.
Donald Trump came down the escalator at the Trump Tower in June 2015 as an almost “apolitical” outsider with no base of support in the Republican party. He then proceeded to lay waste to 16 candidates for the GOP nomination in 2016, all of whom represented some point on the spectrum of GOP politics from "conservative" to "moderate/liberal."
I suppose I would have qualified as that “establishment” since I began my formal political involvement with the GOP back in the mid-1990s, this a decade after I first registered to vote with the Republicans in time to vote for Ronaldus Maximus in 1984. (Thus I was a Reagan Republican, given I was 16 when he was first elected.) Back in that era of Bill Clinton I was the one who joined my local Young Republican chapter and served as precinct committeeman despite living in a heavily Democrat area, working at the polls each November in my precinct and carrying the GOP banner.
Fast forward a decade and a pair of moves, one to a more heavily Republican county in Ohio and then on to Maryland, and I decided to resume my involvement with local Republicans. However, there was also a state component since those who serve at the county level in Maryland also represent the party at the state level. (In Ohio these were separate entities. If you think your state’s GOP sucks, it has nothing on the wasted potential of Ohio’s.) In Maryland I found out that what passed for a conservative Republican on the Eastern Shore was different than the pale pastel Republicans along the I-95 corridor. Some, like me, were “principle over party” while others were “party over everything.”
Enter the TEA Party, and sign me up - Taxed Enough Already? A limited, Constitutional government? Music to my ears. Yet as I discovered in writing about the TEA Party a few years after I left the GOP fold, the TEA Party’s libertarian roots were co-opted by a group of Republicans who saw this as a grift and an opportunity to get back into the Beltway game. Once they got back into power, things like the promise of repealing Obamacare they uttered on the campaign trail became “repeal and replace” and spending only slowed down a bit, accelerating even more rapidly when the GOP squandered the advantages of a Trump presidency.
And speaking of Trump, I’ll bet you didn’t know (or maybe forgot) that he ran for President twice before: once as a member of the Reform Party in 2000 - where he won a couple state primaries - and an abortive GOP run in 2012 when he began trying to attract a TEA Party element with his questioning of Barack Obama’s birth certificate and hardline immigration stance, the latter plank of his platform staying in place for the 2016 campaign.
What I didn’t understand about Donald Trump back then was the evolution of his populism, perhaps based on his experience in the business world. What I knew about Trump at the time was his centrist to left-of-center positions on several items, such as gun control and abortion. What I didn’t know and found out after he managed to beat Hillary Clinton is that I agreed with him on two major items: the need for tax cuts and the gutting of the regulatory state, which were the two main achievements of his first term. And while I was more of a neo-con as a younger man (because I saw the need to fight a Long War against Islamic terrorism) I saw the value in Trump not starting any wars as President, and in fact seeking peace through the Abraham Accords. If we need to fight back like we did after 9/11, we would, but we wouldn’t necessarily employ our military to do so such as we did for the nation-building of Operation Enduring Freedom and its successors.
Trump has also shifted my perspective on trade: while I would prefer free trade, it seems to me that it should not be a suicide pact to allow others to walk all over us. Indeed, we do need to make things in America (which has been an interest of mine for over a decade - eleven years ago yesterday as a matter of fact) but first our trade policies needed to shift to tilt the playing field back our way.
Unfortunately, it seems that the “establishment” GOP, which I began diverting from with the TEA Party movement, has made the thwarting of Trump its life’s work. Notice how they were all for reporting what Elon Musk and DOGE were finding, but when it comes to actually making the cuts to those programs they are getting cold feet? A united front would have a “big, beautiful bill” already on Trump’s desk and a slimmed-down FY2026 budget well on its way to passing, Democrat objections be laughed at and damned. (Sort of like the Democrats did to us in the first few months of both Obama and President Autopen.) Instead, we can’t even begin to herd the cats in the Republican Party. Get stuff done first and sweat the disagreements later.
Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m a complete MAGA loyalist, since they sometimes get the idea that big government is okay because they’re in charge of it. That’s why I’m still in the Constitution Party, despite its many faults (particularly with their Presidential candidates and their lack of attention to my state.) But there’s a significant part of me that feels like the GOP muck needs to be raked and I can’t do it from the outside.
To that end, I’m seriously considering changing my party registration back to the GOP because they need some common sense and my party is pretty much moribund in Delaware. It’s definitely something for me to pray about since I’ve enjoyed my nine years out of the direct political limelight but someone needs to fight for limited government.
Guess I don’t qualify as “establishment” then, do I?
In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.
Common sense. Bring it on, Michael.
Paraphrasing Dan Bongino, there are Republicans who are actually Democrats, but no Democrats who are actually Republicans. Great post Michael.