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...Indeed, many Republicans insist that they support the Trump agenda and policies, rather than the man. Tax cuts, they reasoned, were worth ignoring a few tweets, even the ugly ones. They convinced themselves that their cynicism was savvy realism. There was uneasiness about his chaotic style, his management by humiliation, and his penchant for surrounding himself with a remarkable menagerie of misfit toys. But many conservatives rallied around Trump in reaction to media bias and the hostility of his critics and opponents. Anti-anti-Trumpism has proven a powerful glue among conservatives seeking a reason to stick with the president; the more he is besieged, the tighter his supporters cling to him and the deeper they dig in.Other Republicans told themselves that if you squint hard enough, Trump can look like a somewhat normal Republican president who has delivered a series of conservative wins. Under Trump, they point out, the GOP has been able to pass sweeping tax reform, eliminate the individual mandate for health insurance, roll back the regulatory state, toughen immigration enforcement, fund the military, and install conservative judges throughout the federal judiciary, including, most notably, the Supreme Court. The stock market has gone up, unemployment down. In any case, the choice remains binary; whatever his flaws might be, Trump is still preferable to the ghastly alternative of Hillary Clinton or the progressive left.In this telling, Trump’s lack of any fixed principles and invincible ignorance on policy means that he is an empty vessel that the establishment GOP can fill with many of its dearest objectives. “Trump has governed so far as more of a Republican and conservative than I expected,†National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote in 2017.
In conservative circles, the failure to go full #MAGA carries the risk of irrelevance and exile. Shortly before my book How the Right Lost Its Mind was published in the fall of 2017, I was fired by a conservative Wisconsin think tank for which I had edited a magazine for 27 years.
At the same time, Republicans are embracing hardline immigration policies (travel bans, deportations, a wall) and nativist rhetoric that alienate moderates and drive minority voters away from the party, perhaps for a generation or more.
FTA:If there is one passage that provides conclusive evidence the author hasn't left his mother's basement in two years, this is it.
Just remember that Wisconsin is the birthplace to modern day Progressivism..
