Trump’s presidency has shattered this key myth that helped propel him to victory: conservative columnist
16 July 2020
On Thursday, writing for The Bulwark, conservative columnist and former Jeb Bush communications director Tim Miller outlined how President Donald Trump has lost a critical image with voters that helped him get elected in 2016 — the perception of him as a shrewd dealmaker.
That image, argued Miller, may have once let voters believe Trump would break the partisan mold and work with both parties to get things done. Instead, he’s been a cut-and-dried Republican ideologue.
“It is this brand pivot, from a dealmaking anti-establishment businessman to an extremist far-right firebrand that has limited the president’s political aspirations more than anything else, in a way that is underappreciated by most of the political chattering class, for whom the concept of ‘Donald Trump, centrist dealmaker’ never really took,” wrote Miller.
“These liberal elites and Never Trumpers saw him from day one as a demagogic extremist, preying on racial animus, and throwing in with the seedier elements of the far right like Steve Bannon,” wrote Miller. “But many of the (white) voters out in the rest of America who supported him in 2016 didn’t see him quite this way. They knew that he had taken a hard line on some issues like immigration. But they also saw the host of The Apprentice, a businessman outside the political system. They noticed he was willing to buck the Republicans on certain unpopular ideological totems like cutting Social Security or supporting ‘forever wars.’ To many of those who ended up voting for him, it was Trump who was the moderating figure while Cruz (in the primary) and Clinton (in the general) were on the extremes.”
And this image paid off for him, wrote Miller, who pointed out that a Pew poll from 2016 showed Trump cleaning up with self-described “liberal” and “moderate” Republicans.
However, wrote Miller, “Trump trashed that whole persona the second he gave the dark and weird and poorly attended inauguration speech, jammed Conservatism Inc.’s agenda down the Democrats’ throats, and made racist attacks on their congressional delegation. So now he has painted himself into this corner where he’s spent three years doing exactly the things he correctly identified as problematic for Ted Cruz in 2016!” and now, polls show even voters who worry former Vice President Joe Biden is too liberal largely think Trump is even more extreme.
“The result is that he’s removed dealmaking Donald from his political tool box and the only thing he has left is Trashing Trump,” concluded Miller. “And that’s why, with 18 million Americans out of work and 137,000 dead, the president is in the Rose Garden throwing nonsensical haymakers about Biden wanting to abolish the suburbs and screwing up H1N1, hoping something lands, rather than giving his more moderate voters what they signed up for and walking down to Capitol Hill to give the swamp a lesson in the Art of the Deal.”
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