How would Trump spend his political capital?
Tiana Lowe
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As he did in 2016, Donald Trump is proudly campaigning for his old office by blasting conservative attempts to reform Social Security and Medicare, and on his very active Truth Social account, the former president has only insults to aim at the Republicans who warn about the $32 trillion federal budget, a full quarter of which was accrued under the Trump administration.
While Trump has touted some “parental rights” matters, abortion is all but absent from his public messaging. If a Rolling Stone report that Trump thinks conservatives are “getting killed on abortion” is any clue, it’s that, as with the federal spending topic, Trump is terrified of politically precarious subjects.
DEFUNDING PLAN B FOR RAPE VICTIMS IS NOT PRO-LIFE
It’s highly unlikely that in 2024, a Republican president could succeed in getting Congress to send him a bill to balance the budget or ban abortion at the federal level, but at some point, conservatives do deserve to know exactly how Trump would fight for something that is hard.
Consider Trump’s least favorite competitor. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) used his 20-point reelection victory as a mandate to pass a six-week abortion ban. Although the ban is more moderate than those in Arkansas and South Dakota, it is politically risky, as a six-week ban is slightly more restrictive than the second-trimester bans favored by the majority of people, per abortion polling.
But if you are in the base of the GOP, preventing two-thirds of all abortions (only one-third happen in the first six weeks of pregnancy, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is a major victory, delivered at a cost to the Florida governor, who might face more pushback from the state’s Democrats. Yet that is the central mandate of a political and party leader: to deliver on the goods promised.
So what does Trump want to do that’s any more ambitious or conservative than focus on abortion or the federal budget? Pretend to build the wall for another four years?
It’s not that the future of the pro-life movement even depends on the federal level, as conservatives have accepted that states have the right to arbitrate the matter for themselves. But Trump’s panic about two central components of the American conservative ideology belies his overt confidence in sealing the deal, politically speaking. While politicians, by definition, cannot let the perfect become the enemy of the good, every successful politician understands that political capital is gained specifically to be spent.
Consider a consummate example: when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) lost 63 House Democrats after passing Obamacare. Yes, Obamacare resulted in a bloodbath, but in the long run, Pelosi and her caucus permanently transformed not just the health insurance industry, which has consolidated as an obvious consequence of the law, but also the entire student loan apparatus, which was federalized by the bill.
Ideally, a small-r republican representative is supposed to do what is in the best interest of voters, not just what the voters think they want. Federal spending presents the paragon of the republican paradox, in which politicians think they have to win a popularity contest by continuing to max out Uncle Sam’s Amex Black, but actually, they’re supposed to save voters from a cataclysmic credit crunch, the collapse of the U.S. dollar, and the value of their paychecks and savings. That means selling voters on hard choices and then following through and executing those choices.