Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 15 2017 12:40pm)
Its not just Trump vaguely channeling the Kingfish like Sanders on trade and globalism and foreign policy, its the social moderate pandering to evangelicals is far left of an evangelical moderating his tone. The republicans considered him a RINO for being too far left, and heck, he's been aligned with the democrats and reform party before the right wing. Populism, embracing workers, supporting gay marriage- and no matter how much he postures he's been pro-life his whole life and the evengelicals knew it- these are further left than the positions of a fairly moderate right candidate of the past decades like Bush, let alone one of the classical rightwingers like Rick Perry. Or even Mike Pence for that matter
It followed Reagan that the evangelicals pulled the country- both parties- right. Lets remember that the entire third way democratic movement like Clinton was a rightwing lunge to fill the moderate gap, and now the pendulum is just swinging back
I think for evangelicals it's one group of naive people who think Trump changed his mind and another more politically savvy group who know that whether or not he's against abortion or gay marriage in his heart, he'll appoint supreme court justices much more conservative than Hillary would. Plus you've got Mike Pence as VP, who appeals to social conservatives.
The party was already moving away from the Bush foreign policy, and I don't consider that to be a move to the left. Neo-conservatism is a wing of the Republican party, it doesn't define it.
Trump seems to have moved Republican voters further towards protectionism, but I view it as more of a populist position, not a leftist position. Hillary supported TPP, Obama supported TPP, really only populist people like Trump, Buchanan, and Sanders support protectionist policies.
All in all, Trump isn't an ideological person. He's always willing to make a deal, he's easily persuaded to change his position on something, and I think his personality is the main reason he won the Republican primary.
The election of Trump is the pendulum swinging to the left? Never heard that one before, lol.
This post was edited by IceMage on Aug 15 2017 04:30pm