Republicans still think they're the 'party of ideas.' That's laughable in the age of Trump.
Rank-and-file GOP voters have no use for what "pointy headed" intellectuals — on the left or right — have to say. Experts and elites be damned!
In the run-up to the U.K. vote to leave the European Union, pro-Brexit politician Michael Gove said "people in this country have had enough of experts." In other words, voters would be right to ignore all the economists and business executives warning that Brexit would do serious long-term harm to the British economy. And so they did.
Surely, many Republicans are taking the same dismissive attitude to a letter released this week from a group of nearly 400 economists, including eight Nobel laureates. These experts called Donald Trump a "dangerous, destructive choice" for president and chastised him for promoting "magical thinking and conspiracy theories over sober assessments of feasible economic policy options."
The letter is unlikely to sway many Trump voters, or nudge any swing states toward Hillary Clinton. Nor would it change the minds of Trump's most ardent fans to learn that a Wall Street Journal survey was unable to find a single Trump backer among the former top economic advisers to Republican presidents. After all, in the age of Trump, the Republican Party has embraced a sort of visceral, nativist populism. Rank-and-file GOP voters have no use for what "pointy headed" intellectuals — on the left or right — have to say. Experts and elites be damned!
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
And yet, amazingly, many GOP leaders still consider theirs the "party of ideas." It's a term first applied to the GOP by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, in response to the Ronald Reagan-era party's growing reputation for intellectual heft. And it's a particularly favorite phrase of House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Or as he said at the Republican National Convention, "It still comes down to a contest of ideas, which is really good news, ladies and gentlemen, because when it's about ideas that advantage goes to us."
But does the ideas advantage clearly go to the Republican Party when its presidential nominee rejects the broad economic consensus, across the political spectrum, on a whole host of fundamental economic issues, including taxes, trade, immigration, and monetary policy?
Now, Ryan and other thoughtful Republicans will surely counter that Trumponomics is not the same as mainstream, pro-market GOP economics. And that might be true of some Washington pols and thinkers at center-right think tanks and magazines. But a recent Bloomberg poll found that when asked who better represents their view of the party, Republican voters prefer Trump over Ryan — 51 percent to 33 percent. What's more, a majority of GOP voters, unlike Democrats, think free trade has been bad for the United States.
Recall that it was the Reagan-era GOP that first earned the "party of ideas" tag. Yet Trump's nomination is a de facto repudiation of Reagan's achievements and legacy. Trump's "Make America Great Again" vision hearkens back not to the 1980s and 1990s but to the 1950s and 1960s. In Trump's bizarro version of economic history, the Reagan years are when the U.S. economy began to veer wildly off course by letting Asia — first Japan and now China — steal U.S. manufacturing jobs. And Trump called Reagan's sweeping 1986 tax reform an "absolute catastrophe for the country." (Translation: an absolute catastrophe for highly leveraged New York real estate developers.)
But the problem isn't just Trump. Even before his presidential run, the GOP had become been susceptible to sketchy, fringe economic theories that led politicians to declare that deep tax cuts pay for themselves, U.S. debt default would be no big deal, in a deep recession you should "cut to grow" the economy, and that it's time to take another look at linking the dollar to the gold standard. There is a direct line from the acceptance of those ideas to the embrace of the loony Trumpian notion that America would be better off by reversing globalization and mass immigration, and building a mega-wall on its southern border.
So even if Trump loses next week and his white nationalist populism is exorcized from the party, the GOP will remain in a precarious position, at least as a vehicle able to engage in serious policy debate and push forward a fact-based policy agenda. What Reagan once said of Democrats now seems true of far too many Republicans: It isn't so much "that they are ignorant, "it's just that they know so many things that aren't so."
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.
-
'Make legal immigration a more plausible option'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
LA-to-Las Vegas high-speed rail line breaks ground
Speed Read The railway will be ready as soon as 2028
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Israel's military intelligence chief resigns
Speed Read Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva is the first leader to quit for failing to prevent the Hamas attack in October
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Arizona court reinstates 1864 abortion ban
Speed Read The law makes all abortions illegal in the state except to save the mother's life
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Trump, billions richer, is selling Bibles
Speed Read The former president is hawking a $60 "God Bless the USA Bible"
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The debate about Biden's age and mental fitness
In Depth Some critics argue Biden is too old to run again. Does the argument have merit?
By Grayson Quay Published
-
How would a second Trump presidency affect Britain?
Today's Big Question Re-election of Republican frontrunner could threaten UK security, warns former head of secret service
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Rwanda plan is less a deterrent and more a bluff'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By The Week UK Published
-
Henry Kissinger dies aged 100: a complicated legacy?
Talking Point Top US diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner remembered as both foreign policy genius and war criminal
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Last updated
-
Trump’s rhetoric: a shift to 'straight-up Nazi talk'
Why everyone's talking about Would-be president's sinister language is backed by an incendiary policy agenda, say commentators
By The Week UK Published
-
More covfefe: is the world ready for a second Donald Trump presidency?
Today's Big Question Republican's re-election would be a 'nightmare' scenario for Europe, Ukraine and the West
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published