Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Fiscal conservatives are furious that Trump didn’t veto the budget. Some points to remember:
Trump is not a fiscal conservative. The fiscal conservatives in the Republican primary were soundly defeated.
The party establishment – people like McConnell and Ryan and the Never-Trumpers – wanted Jeb! The party establishment are not fiscal conservatives.
Heritage Foundation lists the ways Trump has accomplished more conservative goals in his first year than Ronaldus Magnus himself. There is more to conservative government than budget.
Maybe that’s the problem? Maybe we got used to the winning? Maybe we were expecting Trump to defeat Democrats, Rockefeller Republicans, the Deep State, Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia; end trade deficits; balance the budget; put a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage and make sure every kid has 98% fewer cavities.
Remember the last near shut-down, six weeks ago? Trump blamed Congress for failing to get its work done. If Trump had vetoed this bill, the media would have blamed him for the government shut-down and Establishment Republicans in Congress would have washed their hands, saying “We sent him a budget, it’s his fault.” If Trump signed the bill, the media would have blamed him for increasing the national debt and his fiscal conservative base would wash their hands of him, saying “He betrayed our principles.”
It’s not a betrayal. He was never one of us. An extra trillion or two of debt isn’t going to matter in the long run because the debt is unpayable and everybody knows it. As long as Congress remains unwilling to embrace fiscal conservatism, it’s pointless for the President to waste political capital trying to save them from themselves.
Joe Doakes
My problem isn’t so much with Trump – well, not this problem – as it is with the horde of fair-weather conservatives who’ve tried to portray Trump as something other than he is. And that’s after allowing for the fact that, as Heritage notes he’s accomplished a lot of conservative goals.
“We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt. — Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why.” ~ Candidate You-Know-Who
JD, your comments are echoed by Schlichter:
Now, the people who hate Trump anyway [snip], but none of them offered a game plan for an alternative.
What was the alternative?
Step One: Veto the Bill
Step Two: ?
Step Three: Congress Passes Conservative Spending Bill We All Love
If anyone can explain Step Two to me, I’d sure appreciate it. After all, that’s kind of the key step, and no one seems to have a good answer for what it might have consisted of. The simple fact is that while the GOP has a majority, conservatives do not. Step Two can’t be “Wishing” or “Wanting” or “Waving the Magic Wand.”
Emery is convinced that Trump is the first politician to break a campaign promise.
Politicians have an incentive to spend and buy votes now and letting future politicians take the heat for their bad decisions. They have negative incentives to save and be responsible stewards, especially after these many years of profligate spending.
Oh, and Emery, even the leftist PolitiFact had to admit that “First off, it should be no secret Obama did, in fact, promise to cut the deficit in half during his first term.” Obama is a politician and believing any politician on spending discipline is a losing proposition.
All the people who voted for Trump because they thought that he was a fiscal conservative are going to be almost as disappointed. as the people who voted for Trump because they thought he was an exemplar of marital fidelity.
Some people think they’re scoring partisan political points by pointing out unfulfilled campaign promises. Those people have short memories. As Steffy Stephanopolous explained: “The President has kept all the promises he intended to keep.”
Kevin D. Williamson will now be writing for liberal trump-hating mag The Atlantic. His credibility with the right is on the line, and I think he will fail the test. He will propose anti-liberal topics, and his editor will “suggest” he writes instead about what a stupid person Trump is — from a conservative POV.
So long, Kevin!