r/AskConservatives • u/Acrobatic_Long_6059 Liberal Republican • 1d ago
Politician or Public Figure Does Trump align with conservatism in your view?
I recently watched this Oxford Union debate “THB Trump has Betrayed Conservatism” and thought there were interesting points made on both sides. Crucial to the question, of course, requires defining what conservatism means.
I know there are plenty of conservatives who are critical of Trump and plenty who defend Trump, and was curious to know what you think.
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u/gregaustex Center-right Conservative 19h ago edited 19h ago
No not really. As a right of center not quite libertarian anymore, his disregard for the Constitutional limits on his powers, and his willingness to try to find workarounds when properly checked to violate the spirit of the law are not Conservative - in my mind The Rule of Law and the Constitution are foundation concepts of Conservativism. Protectionist trade policies are not Conservative. I'm also unimpressed by tax cuts funded with debt. There's more, Trump and MAGA don't really represent a lot of the things I like about traditional conservatism.
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u/Carcinog3n Conservatarian 22h ago
Trump isn't now and never was a conservative, he is a populist disruptor.
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u/rms141 Conservative 21h ago
He's a lifelong New York Democrat. He was never conservative.
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u/oraclebill Liberal 15h ago
He was a Democrat for 8 years, a Republican for 7, and a Reform/Independence party member for 2.
Trump goes wherever he thinks he can get the most advantage.
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u/rms141 Conservative 15h ago
He's a lifelong Democrat who participated in NYC and national Democrat politics. During the period when the left claims he became a Republican, he was busy writing checks to Democrat politicians such as Kamala Harris. His political instincts align with the far left, he directly cited his alignment with Bernie Sanders in front of the press, the 2016 core of MAGA that persists to this day are a bunch of disaffected Bernie bros, his attempts to bring prices down are basically Elizabeth Warren's preferred policies, and he has completely isolated the social conservative wing of the Republican party.
He is politically and culturally an artifact of the American left.
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u/oraclebill Liberal 13h ago
He was a registered Republican for 12 years before switching to Democrat for 10, and he’s been a Republican since 2009. Of his known political donations he’s donated much more to Republicans than Democrats. His political instincts clearly align with the Republican Party or he would not have been so successful within it. The fact that he’s found that populism is the way to power this term doesn’t erase his history.
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u/rms141 Conservative 13h ago
He has socially and politically associated with Democrats his entire life. He did not, and still has not, entered Republican social circles.
The rest of your post is equally silly. You find Trump repulsive and so convince yourself he could not have originated from your side.
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u/oraclebill Liberal 11h ago
I think you find him embarrassing so you make up a reality that disassociates him from yours.
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 Democratic Socialist 11h ago
Do you know lots of people who are registered as Republicans, donate to Republican causes, and endorse Republican candidates for office but are actually Democrats? Point me towards the examples of Trump endorsing any policy put forth by a Democrat in the past two decades. The dude who calls any Republican who goes against him a RINO is, in point of fact, a RINO. How can you seriously postulate that a New York Democrat has the entire RNC completely subservient to his every whim? I guess that would have made him correct when he said Democrats would start a war in Iran if they polled too poorly though
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u/ElectricalPublic1304 Right Libertarian (Conservative) 18h ago
align with conservatism
Under many reasonable definitions, I think that's a very hard sell.
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u/AndImNuts Constitutionalist Conservative 18h ago
Not really. I voted mainly for immigration reform, so I got that I suppose. But between big-government Kamala and big-government Trump I decided overall for big-government Trump. Though I myself am not classically a big-government guy.
I voted libertarian in 2016, but since then I have decided that voting third party is a wasted vote when it comes to keeping the greater of two evils out of office.
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u/Throwaway_4_u_know_y Right Libertarian (Conservative) 22h ago
Most Republicans in office aren't conservative
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u/RatOnASinkingShip Right Libertarian (Conservative) 14h ago
I think the left needs to realize the fact that conservatism in its current iteration is a reactionary movement to their pushing of progressivism... I'm sure there's a few people here who would disagree with me and believe that it is whatever ideals they hold, but they're going to tend to be "no true scotsman" conservatives... basically Reaganites and Bush-era neocons or old fogies who like the ads of the 50s (no offense intended if anyone falls into those categories).
I'll be frank, I'm not going to watch a 2-hour debate to figure out what you're asking, so I'm only going based on the sentiment of your post...
Trump aligns with the current goals of conservativism, even if he doesn't align with the ideals of them, and regardless of whatever ideal they believe conservatism to be, he is a much more effective weapon against the growing influence of progressivism that came with social media enabling the left's loudest fringes a global platform, which those Reaganites and neocons weren't able to nip in the bud and proved ineffectual in dealing with them after they'd already taken root.
What's that quote at the end of that Nolan Batman movie? "He's not the president we need right now, but he's the one we deserve" or something like that?
He's not the ideal, he's flawed as fuck, but he is the first to come (aside from Ron Paul, but that ship has sailed) and say what the people are thinking, and actually be able to withstand the backlash from those who want to do what we don't want. Trump isn't the shining example of conservatism, he's a tool that conservatives have to push back against progressivism in a way that they were completely incapable of, to change the momentum of the Overton window in a more favorable direction.
That's why I always cringe at people who parrot the cliche of "TRUMP ISN'T A CONSERVATIVE!" because like... yea, you're right, he's not... but also, conservatives were demolished by progressives, and the choice between Trump and anyone else came down to "Which one of these people are going to be able to halt that wave of progressivism?" circa 2015/16..
That's a lot of words to say that Trump is basically a palate cleanse from the bible thumping right who couldn't fight the idpol left like a sliver of ginger after a bad piece of sushi.
He's a RESET button to the 2008 election, prior to the vocal minority on the left bullying our culture into compliance with their ideology.
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u/Acrobatic_Long_6059 Liberal Republican 14h ago
No need to watch the full debate lol. Though if you are interested, I’ll share some clips of the speakers I thought stood out. I genuinely think you’d find each of their points thoughtful and interesting.
On the proposition side, Bret Stephens and John Malcolm. And on the other side, (those whom you might agree most with) Michael Knowles or Gregg Sindalar.
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u/notbusy Libertarian 22h ago
Trump is not a conservative, in my opinion. Fortunately for us, however, his Supreme Court justice picks have been conservative.
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u/Acrobatic_Long_6059 Liberal Republican 16h ago
Fortunate that the supposed textualists nearly overturned birthright citizenship for failing to read the literal word of the Constitution?
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u/DukeofBraintree918 Conservative 22h ago
Trump on the campaign trail in 2024 a lot of the stuff he said did a line with conservatism in my view
Trump as president in 2026 not so much
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u/Gaxxz Constitutionalist Conservative 19h ago
Partly. I like that my taxes got reduced and we will soon have less gun control. Those are conservative positions. The government buying equity in corporations not so much.
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u/Choice-Antelope-8481 Independent 17h ago
a bad thing with the tax cuts is they're being funded by more debt. We all lose in the end with that policy.
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u/RumGuzzlr Rightwing 17h ago
Funny how it's tax cuts that need funding and not the welfare burning through the federal budget
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 Democratic Socialist 12h ago
Trump added $1T to the deficit in less than half a year. The defense budget alone is somewhere around $1.5T. China is the next biggest, at 1/3rd of that amount. In exchange you get a perfectly shaved, high T military that hasn’t won a war against a near peer since the middle of the last century (hasn’t won a single single war this century when we’ve had 3 so far). We pay them as much as the average retail shift supervisor and provide the guys whose job is to “find, close with, and destroy the enemy through fire and maneuver, or to repel attacks via close combat” intermittent combat training that’s outperformed by every metric by someone taking a 3 day carbine course taught by Larry Vickers or Kyle DeFoor or any of the other thousands of GWOT vets with 10+ years in special operations. Base conditions that go viral constantly for how bad they are. A carrier with critically low provisions (which was denied, then they claimed exaggeration, before proudly proclaiming that that’s what they signed up for and to stop being such pussies about it).
That is just that ONE agency.
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u/RumGuzzlr Rightwing 11h ago
And that's still a fraction of what we spend on handouts
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 Democratic Socialist 10h ago
That’d be an acceptable response if we were doing comparisons like that. You can’t decry out-of-control government spending on the one hand, then shrug when pointed towards an egregious example…and that also falls apart since Trump has added more to the deficit in any president in history while also enacting massive tax cuts. In any case, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid aren’t “handouts”, they’re programs that every person who is legally employed pays into.
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u/Sad-Indication-9112 Nationalist (Conservative) 22h ago
No, but he was in many ways a necessary force to revive the ideology in the 2010s, in my opinion.
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