Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday took exception to part of my most recent column, raising some trenchant points in the process.
Setting aside several big ways Limbaugh created a straw-man image of me and other so-called Never Trumpers (for instance, I am certainly not “actually in favor of amnesty and ongoing illegal immigration”) let me answer what seems to be his central argument.
Limbaugh’s thesis is that lifelong conservatives like me — I’m grateful he acknowledged my “life’s work” — should be delighted with President Trump because, supposedly thanks to this president, “more conservatism is finding its way into our culture and our politics than at any time since Ronald Reagan.”
Other than his mention of immigration and tax cuts, Limbaugh didn’t specify these allegedly great gains for conservatism — but his claims on “culture” are absurd. A president who manifestly treats facts and truth as utterly dispensable commodities, who daily coarsens the public square, who repeatedly gives cover for overt racists, who refuses to assert that the United States’ standing in the world owes much to moral authority apart from brute force (e.g., we’re no better morally than Russia), who repeatedly encouraged violence at his campaign rallies, and whose own philandering has been frequent and unrepentant is decidedly not advancing conservative culture.
As for politics, both in terms of actual policy achievements and of long-term conservative electoral viability, the Trump Effect is either thin gruel or, worse, counterproductive.
Yes, conservatives can be glad Trump selected a good Supreme Court justice from a plethora of excellent choices presented to him (not a heavy lift on Trump’s part), glad he stands by Israel, glad he puts executive weight behind religious liberty, and glad his administration works to undo former President Barack Obama’s regulatory excesses. But, other than the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, those gains can prove evanescent, easily counteracted by future presidents, unless Trump actually secures legislation (rather than executive orders or directives) toward those ends.
When it comes to using his office to secure legislation, Trump is extravagantly inept. The only significant legislative achievement of his tenure, the tax cut package, should have been almost child’s play, considering that his party has majorities in both the House and Senate and could avoid a filibuster via the budget “reconciliation” process. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had spent years carefully laying the groundwork for it, and a tax cut should be an easy sell anyway (especially with so many “red state” Democrats in the Senate facing re-election this cycle and thus more apt to move rightward).
But on the most important legislative initiative, the replacement of Obamacare, Trump face-planted. First, he insisted it be done too quickly, then utterly failed to understand the topic well enough to bring Republicans’ large House majority behind it. Then, he completely undercut the effort by verbally trashing the bill finally passed by the House at his vociferous urging — a knife in the back that made senators worry he might similarly give them a shiv rather than kudos if they actually passed something.
The failure of healthcare reform was more Trump’s fault than anybody else’s.
While failing there, Trump unfortunately succeeded in pushing through and signing the single worst spending package approved by any Republican president since President Richard Nixon, one that could create a debt crisis as early as this fall. Trump now pretends to object to the massive spending hikes just enacted, but they passed only after his own Cabinet, directly following Trump’s lead, strenuously lobbied wavering congressmen in support.
This was the biggest Republican betrayal of fiscal conservatism since … well, since before nearly 60 percent of all living Americans were yet born.
Meanwhile, Trump has no major diplomatic achievements to tout and none in the works (unless this dangerous North Korea initiative somehow succeeds). He gives verbal aid to the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and other authoritarians around the world, angers our closest allies, and threatens self-defeating trade wars.
On top of all that, many of us think, with ample evidence, that Trump is crooked and unstable.
Finally, Democrats are on a nationwide roll in special elections, while young voters turn ever more strongly against all things Republican and conservative. Any short-term conservative gains from Trumpism may come at the expense of a subsequent decade or more of conservative collapse.
Limbaugh has carried the conservative banner long and well, but solid conservatives can respectfully disagree with him. I think, based not on some esoteric Washington intellectualism but at a very practical level from our vantage points in the hinterlands, that Trump is doing lasting damage to conservatism and country. I’ll give Trump credit where due (as I did in the column Limbaugh cited), but we think that credit account is slim.
Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner, and is the author of “Mad Jones, Heretic,” a satirical literary novel published in the fall of 2017.
