The GOP was moving right on
immigration well before Trump—when, for example, it killed George W. Bush’s
immigration bill in 2007 as right-wing media cheered it on. The culture war and
the battle against universities are old hat too. The real innovator here was
the late Irving Kristol, whose columns in the 1970s introduced Wall Street
Journal readers to the dangers posed to business interests by “the new
class” of Hollywood, media, and university types, along with activist lawyers. True,
Trump is taking this fight to extreme places Kristol would never have gone. But,
again, there’s no new thinking here.
And the attack on trans rights is just
the latest front in the LGBTQ+ debates, now that the right has had to abandon
its opposition to same-sex marriage because Americans have come to support it
overwhelmingly.
Even the contradictions aren’t new.
Since the Reagan years, Republicans have always talked about the dangers of
deficits when Democrats were in power but cast those worries aside when they
had the power to cut taxes. “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” is the
canonical Dick Cheney quote from 2002
when he was pushing for more tax cuts in W.’s administration. The exception proves
the rule: George H.W. Bush made a deal with Democrats in 1991 that included tax
increases because he really did care about deficits—and conservatives never
forgave him for it.
