Conservatives are getting everything they want from Trump. They may regret it.

It's not always a good thing when your wildest dreams come true

Don't get to cocky.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

President-elect Donald Trump is assembling what looks to be the most conservative presidential Cabinet in memory. And all of a sudden, after much hand-wringing fear that Trump would completely remake the Republican Party in his own populist nationalist image, conservatives now face a threat that the fates often inflict as a punishment: getting almost everything they want.

Strangely, Trump has been freed to pursue such a conservative Cabinet because of his other scandals. Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio may have felt constricted by the media's Eye of Sauron focusing intently on their Cabinet choices. But with the media devoting so much attention to stories about Russian hacking, or the anticipation of Trump's personal financial corruption, or whatever the president-elect just tweeted, Trump has mostly gotten a pass on assembling a truly hard-right Cabinet.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.