Learning to love Trumpism

Conservatives are working hard to reconcile their beliefs with the next president's agenda    

A true politician is someone who, upon spying a torch-wielding mob marching on his legislature, declares: "Oh good, a parade - I must lead it." A striking number of conservatives are taking that approach ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20th. The president-elect's followers include many who distrust both main parties and, if handed a pitchfork, might skewer half the Republicans in Congress. Undaunted, party bigwigs and intellectuals have begun making the case that, for all its rough edges, "Trumpism" is a recognizably conservative way of viewing the world, with the potential to rescue swathes of America from feelings of abandonment and despair, securing majorities for Republicans for years to come.

Republican leaders who clashed with Mr Trump during the election campaign now urge colleagues to see his victory as a lesson in humility. After the new Congress was sworn in on January 3rd Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, told members that for too long leaders in Washington had treated complaints about closed factories with "condescension". Now Americans had let out a "great roar", Mr Ryan continued: they have given Republicans control of Congress and the White House not as an act of generosity but as a demand for "results".

Embracing the results sought by Trumpism will not be easy for convinced free-marketeers such as Mr Ryan. On the day that Congress returned to work, Ford announced that it is cancelling plans for a $1.6bn plant in Mexico and will create 700 jobs in Michigan building electric vehicles. This follows months of public browbeating by Mr Trump, including threats of punitive tariffs on firms making things abroad - though Ford's chief executive cast the decision to invest in America as a vote of confidence in "pro-growth" policies outlined by the president-elect. Ford joins Carrier, Lockheed Martin and Boeing as companies that have changed investment or pricing decisions after Trumpian arm-twisting (hailing Carrier's climb-down, eased by tax breaks from the state of Indiana, Mr Trump declared that the free market had failed American workers "every time"). As Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running-mate in 2012, Mr Ryan scorned the idea of governments picking "winners and losers". Today the Speaker talks up the prospects of tax reforms and deregulation giving all companies good cause to stay in America.

Other conservative grandees wonder if a dose of economic nationalism is the price of solidifying the coalition that carried Mr Trump to power, including blue-collar voters in the Midwest who abandoned the Democrats in droves. They praise Mr Trump as a patriot-pragmatist in the spirit of Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt. They are slower to note more recent models for Trumpism, starting with populist-nationalist movements sweeping Europe. Parallels with Nicolas Sarkozy, France's center-right president from 2007-12 and a hyperactive corporatist, are startling. Mr Sarkozy denounced French carmakers for producing cars in eastern Europe ("not justifiable", he growled), and rushed to a steelworks to promise workers he would save their jobs (a pledge he could not keep).

Hugh Hewitt, a conservative talk-radio host, this month will publish "The Fourth Way", a book-length guide to how Trumpism might advance bits of the Reagan agenda, by promoting conservative judges, stronger armed forces (Mr Hewitt likes Mr Trump's talk of a 350-ship navy) and free enterprise (above all rolling back "the vast and growing regulatory state"). To that he would add a "repatriation window" for corporate profits held abroad, and a new, voter-pleasing wave of infrastructure projects, including reopened shipyards, modernized airports, local sports facilities and other visible signs of Trumpian largesse. Billions would be disbursed by temporary, county-level commissions appointed by Congress and the White House ("the patronage!" sighs Mr Hewitt) and as classic pork-barrel spending by members of Congress. To break the partisan stalemate over immigration Mr Hewitt would have Mr Trump lay out detailed plans for a double-row border fence along the southern border, which when half- or three-quarters built would trigger a legalization program for most of the 11m immigrants in America without the right papers. Get all this right, Mr Hewitt says, and Mr Trump can realign national politics. Get it wrong and Mr Trump could face "catastrophic" midterm elections in 2018, a primary challenger in 2020 or, if embroiled in scandals, impeachment. 

Seeking Mr Trump's inner Reagan 

In the spring Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker and adviser to Mr Trump, will publish "Understanding Trump." He calls the president-elect the third attempt, after Reagan's election in 1980 and his own Contract with America in 1994, to break free from the big-government mindset of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. To square that claim with Mr Trump's free-spending, distinctly statist campaign promises, Mr Gingrich portrays the businessman as a disruptive innovator, using social media and a genius for publicity to win a presidential election on the cheap. That thriftiness. also displayed in Mr Trump's business life, tells Mr Gingrich that President Trump will run a lean federal bureaucracy, root out waste and generally "kick over the table". Pondering Mr Trump's desire for better relations with Russia, Mr Gingrich has called its president, Vladimir Putin, "a thug" but at the same time scolded Republicans who treat Russia as if it were still the Soviet Union, rather than a competitor that needs dealing with "as it is".

Some conservative enthusiasm for Trumpism reflects a sincere desire to grapple with voter angst. Some is born of opportunism and fear that the next president will set his voters on Republicans who defy him. Yet Mr Trump will need allies in Congress, too, if he is to rack up achievements to impress supporters. Trumpism, born as a populist revolt, must become a program for government. That's harder than leading a parade.