Ian Fletcher says Donald’s ‘protectionism is a form of economic nationalism’
I’m neither endorsing nor condemning Donald Trump, but I do think he’s trying to save the Republican Party from itself in a very rational way. The last thing he is is a clown or dilettante.
Why? Because the Republican Party has essentially exhausted the two ideological themes it has ridden on since about 1980 – free markets and social conservatism – and needs new ones to survive.
Any ideologues out there, I’m sorry: American history makes quite clear that partisan ideological themes don’t last forever, in either party. They’re good for a few decades, then they evolve or get dumped.
(Permanent matters of national principle may last forever, but they’re a different issue, and they’re not the ideological possessions of either party, so no party can win competitive leverage in elections by appealing to them.)
First, consider the exhaustion of free-market ideology. This doesn’t mean that free markets per se, which obviously have enormous validity, are dead as an idea. But it does mean that pushing even further in the direction of free markets is dead as an idea.
Why? Most obviously, the 2008 financial crisis, whose effects we’re still dealing with, was an effect of markets allowed to run amok, not of markets being insufficiently free. (Yes, I know you can blame it all on the government, but that’s a tendentious “reality is the opposite of what you see” argument.)
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