Asked to choose between conservative principle and nastiness, Trump voters pick the latter

IN AT least one sense, Donald Trump’s rise is terrific news for principled conservatives. Right-wingers have long endured allegations that many of their cherished ideas—promoting free markets or seeking to devolve power away from Washington—are cover for a cruder, nastier agenda. However unfairly, when American conservatives promote individual liberty and limited government, they are charged by critics with appealing to the worst, I-got-mine instincts of their supporters. When Republicans suggest that government safety-nets will have to be trimmed back before they grow unaffordable, Democrats and their allies do not see hard-headed prudence. Instead conservatives are accused of having, or pandering to, hard hearts.

Here is the good news for conservatives. Mr Trump shows that their principles and heartlessness are not the same thing. The presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign fairly drips with nastiness, but is strikingly uninterested in limiting the powers or costs of government. Short of designing himself a uniform involving ermine and red velvet, he could hardly make it clearer that he dreams of reigning over, rather than governing, America.

He has promised not to devolve power from Washington but to concentrate it in the Oval Office, where a President Trump would bully and browbeat global friends, foes and corporate bosses alike. At rallies he asks roaring crowds to imagine him lifting the telephone to impose punitive taxes on businesses or trading partners who defy him. Individual liberty would look rather different in his promised America, as police and federal agents began door-to-door raids to round up and deport 11m undocumented migrants. Nor does balancing the public finances hold any terrors for Mr Trump. He opposes raising the retirement age, promising to “save Social Security and Medicare without cuts.” At the same time, he promises to slash taxes and to raise spending on defence. Eliminating waste, and a booming economy, will make America rich enough to eliminate budget deficits, he promises vaguely, and, anyway, he understands how to manage debt “better than probably anybody.”


The bad news for Republicans is that, when millions of primary voters were invited to choose between candidates representing most major strains of conservative thought, and Mr Trump’s mix of nonsense and nastiness, they chose the latter.

http://www.economist.com/news/unite...ive-principle-and-nastiness-trump-voters-pick