Ask a Conservative

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I'm genuinely trying to understand conservative support for Trump's executive power - it seems to contradict the states' rights and checks-and-balances principles I've always heard emphasized. Conservatives strongly criticized Obama for using executive power to bypass Congress, with Republicans calling it “unprecedented executive overreach” when he used agency guidance to defer deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants after Congress rejected the legislation. Biden faced similar criticism when he withheld Title X family planning funds from Oklahoma and Tennessee over abortion counseling requirements.

But now Trump is using the same mechanisms - declaring national emergencies to impose tariffs Congress rejected, directing the DOJ to challenge state climate laws, and threatening to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities. These are the same legal authorities, the same federal override of state decisions. It seems some Republicans are willing to call this overreach, but the vast majority quietly support or allow it.

‍The Republican Party - and thus “conservatism” in America - has changed significantly during the Trump era. GOP gains among the working class have translated into increasing support for unions and hostility to big business. Republicans are starting to embrace paid family leave and toning down their anti-abortion rhetoric. It’s hard to imagine Mitt Romney or John McCain appointing a Secretary of Labor strongly backed by unions. While there are certainly still advocates for limited government on the right, they are increasingly marginalized.

There has long been a tension within the conservative movement between social conservatives and small-government conservatives, which has only grown as elite culture has become more liberal. National Review, a prominent conservative magazine, brags that it “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” That might be fine when conservatism is the status quo; it’s no longer sufficient when progressive activists are running the mainstream media, most major corporations, and even writing school curricula.

The federal government is one of the few remaining institutions with the power to push back against progressivism. You can’t rely on the First Amendment when private actors such as social media companies routinely censor conservative views, or people are fired for statements that everyone considered fact less than a decade ago. You can’t rely on the Second Amendment when banks target pro-gun groups. You can’t insist that education is a local issue when young children are being taught to question their gender identities, or socially transitioned without notifying their parents. If progressives aren’t willing to respect things like states’ rights, then asking conservatives to do the same when in power is asking them to fight the culture war with one hand tied behind their backs.

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‍Do you think the increase in openly misogynistic rhetoric on the right since Trump (repeal the 19th Amendment, the feminization of institutions, childless cat ladies, your body my choice, grab 'em by the pussy, etc.) is a problem? Is the right even interested in winning a majority of female voters?

‍Some of the rhetoric that we see about women is absolutely a problem. But it’s important not to overstate the issue. No actual Republican politician has called for repealing the 19th Amendment. The “excessive feminization” thesis has received pushback. Trump apologized for his ‘grab 'em by the pussy’ comments, which were never meant for public consumption. Moreover, the gender gap in 2024 (10 points) was in line with historical norms; it was slightly higher in the late 1990s. Republicans aren’t perfect, but neither are Democrats.

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‍Reading The Flip Side and having conservatives in my life, I've seen moderate Republicans criticize the president over many issues relatively consistently—tariffs, Venezuela, Russia and Ukraine, Epstein, cryptocurrency, etc. All of this begs the question for me: Why do center-right conservatives continue to support the president, whom they are so openly critical of for many of his major policies and controversies?

‍It depends what you mean when you say that moderate Republicans “support” the president. Just over 10 percent of Republicans disapprove of Trump; just under 20 percent of Republicans identify as moderate, so a significant chunk of moderate Republicans do in fact disapprove of the job he is doing. It’s also worth noting that given Trump’s domination of the GOP, many moderate Republicans who dislike Trump have switched parties.

That said, while many right-leaning voters will criticize particular Trump policies, this does not mean they prefer the Democrats. Trump’s job approval may be low, but it’s still higher than that of the Democratic Party. Similarly, many Democrats criticized Obama - largely because he was insufficiently progressive - but still supported him over the Republican alternative.

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‍Do you regret voting for Trump? If not, how do you make sense of his broken campaign promises and his desire for what seems like a dictatorship?

‍I do not regret my vote, as Trump has in fact fulfilled a lot of his campaign promises. He promised to close the border and deport illegal immigrants; not only is the border closed (and asylum paused), but he convinced Congress to massively increase funding for ICE. He promised to crack down on DEI. He promised to extend the tax cuts from his first term. He promised to stop biological males from competing in women’s sports and to oppose sex changes for minors. All of these promises have been kept. Even policies I don’t necessarily support - massive tariffs, pardoning every Jan. 6 rioter, closing the education department - were campaign promises, so they were not unexpected.

Does he want to be a dictator? Sure, but so does every president. Biden tried to spend over a trillion dollars through an executive order. Obama justified the killing of US citizens via drones without due process. Every president claims broad authority, and then the courts push back, as they have against Trump.

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‍One of our libertarian-leaning contributors adds: I voted for Trump in 2016. That remains the only time I have ever voted for a Republican or a Democrat. All of my other votes have been for third parties. I voted for Trump in 2016 because I thought there was a chance that a “wild card” and political outsider would do things differently and disrupt the business-as-usual politics that have wrecked our country for so long. I thought there was a chance that he would “drain the swamp” and make decisions based on pragmatism instead of politics. There was a chance, but it did not happen. He turned out to be just another lying, self-interested politician and shill for his party. I wouldn’t say I regret my vote, because I believe I was correct to take a chance on throwing a wrench into the gears of our broken political system. I am just disappointed that the wrench ended up becoming a part of that system.

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Ask a Liberal

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In the age of Trump, progressives have framed themselves as the true advocates of the Constitution and the First Amendment. How do you square this with their actual record? Obama expanding the surveillance state in violation of the Fourth Amendment, Biden unilaterally implementing OSHA vaccine mandates and student loan forgiveness instead of going through Congress, Harris’s atrocious criminal justice record, Tim Walz denying that misinformation and hate speech are protected by the First Amendment, etc.

‍There is undoubtedly some hypocrisy in the Democrats’ positions in the Trump era, just as there is hypocrisy in Republicans wailing about fiscal responsibility whenever a Democrat is in office but supporting Republican presidents in ballooning the national debt. The party out of power will always decry the powers of the executive branch.

That said, the expansion of the surveillance state happened under George W. Bush; Obama merely continued the policies. At the time, progressives criticized Obama for his embrace of surveillance as well as for increased drone strikes. Vaccine mandates have a long history in the US: the first was implemented by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. After the founding, numerous local vaccine mandates existed, and the Supreme Court upheld vaccine mandates in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). Objections to Biden’s vaccine mandates appear largely to be based on the idea that Covid isn’t as serious as other diseases (for which vaccines have long been required); whether that is true or not is a question for health authorities, not Congress. The student loan forgiveness was a bit more dubious legally, but wouldn’t have violated anyone’s rights, and in any case was blocked by the courts.

Harris has been criticized by progressives for being too hard on criminals when she was a prosecutor. District Attorneys have long had discretion about which crimes to focus on; that doesn’t pose any constitutional concerns. Walz’s comments about misinformation and hate speech were in fact concerning, but his views have been criticized by progressives.

It’s also important to note that the Constitution is more than the First and Second Amendments. Just as important is the due process clause, which Trump has trampled. “If you take the seventeen amendments added to the Constitution after the original 10 in the Bill of Rights and you exclude Prohibition and its repeal, the vast majority are suffrage-expanding, democracy-deepening popular empowerment amendments produced by the great social and political movements of our history.” Progressives defend the entire Constitution.

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‍How will history view the Joe Biden presidency?

‍I think history will judge Biden to be a well-meaning president who 1) overlearned the lessons from the Obama era, and 2) was too swayed by progressive activists at times, but overall successfully guided the nation out of the pandemic era.

Politico wrote in September 2020, “President Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009 during a brutal recession, quickly pushed through a sizable stimulus package and then spent the next several years realizing it wasn’t nearly big enough. Joe Biden is determined not to have the same regrets if he wins.”

In April 2021, NBC wrote, “Both presidents inherited a crisis-ravaged economy, but their signature 100-day achievements look markedly different: Biden's stimulus plan was about 2½ times the size of President Barack Obama's. It was easy for voters to understand, centered on popular $1,400 cash payments for most people, while Obama's stimulus program was criticized as being too small and complicated, delivering small-dollar benefits in paychecks that polls showed many people didn't even notice.”

While in hindsight it appears that the Biden administration went overboard with the stimulus package (which exacerbated inflation), this was understandable given the history. Biden did what he felt was necessary to protect the public in the face of a one-in-a-century pandemic while keeping the economy afloat. It’s worth noting that most economists predicted a recession during his tenure but he successfully navigated a soft landing.

That said, Biden was too cautious when Putin first invaded Ukraine. Even worse, he decided far too late not to run for a second term. History will judge him harshly for those decisions.

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‍Do you think Democrats essentially forming an anti-Trump alliance with Bush-era neoconservatives like David Frum, Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Bill Kristol and the Cheneys (the first three even being considered "on the left" by The Flip Side) is wise since these people are arguably even worse than Trump? Besides their promotion of the unitary theory of the executive and rampant Islamophobia (both of which Trump has copied), a 2023 Brown University study found that the War on Terror (which these same people started and supported) has killed over 4.5 million people, which frankly makes Trump’s disdain for norms look like small potatoes.

‍This is a great point! Many progressives agree with you. The idea was that former Republicans might have more credibility to “signal to conservatives that they could split with Donald Trump” but in practice seems to have flopped. It’s also important to note that Democrats have not moderated their views to appease the neoconservatives; instead, neoconservatives have in many cases changed their views on domestic issues to align with Democrats.

Regarding the second part of your question, norms and process do matter. While the Iraq war turned out to be a disaster, at the time it had widespread support. The US government made their case to the UN and the public, got backing from our allies, and Congress voted. Contrast this to the Trump administration casually musing about invading Venezuela while insisting that Congress does not have to approve of any military action. Democratic norms don’t always lead to the right decisions, but without them, we’d lose the ability to even try. Significant decisions such as military deployments and global trade rules should not be left to the whims of one person absent extraordinary circumstances.

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‍Should the Supreme Court be expanded?  Should the pardon power of the President be amended?

‍The Supreme Court should not be expanded. Most obviously, this would be bad for democracy; the courts would no longer be a check on the party in power, and precedent would be good only for the current term. While the current Court has pushed back too little, they have stopped the Trump administration’s most egregious behavior.

Furthermore, while the current Court is dominated by conservatives and will be so for the foreseeable future, there are still many valuable precedents that remain in place. The Court recently declined to revisit same-sex marriage, for example. Capital punishment remains limited to murderers; minors and the mentally disabled may not be executed. The Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act. A packed Court might restore abortion rights, but those would be removed as soon as Republicans took over and re-packed the Court in their favor, along with other rights (e.g., same-sex marriage) disliked by conservatives.

A far better solution than packing the Court would be term limits: each justice would serve for 18 years, so that a vacancy would open up every two years on schedule. This would reduce the stakes of Supreme Court confirmations, while also ensuring that each administration makes the same number of selections. Obama, for example, nominated only two justices in eight years; Trump nominated three in just four, all of whom are expected to serve for decades.

The pardon power should be limited; it has been abused far too often, by presidents from both parties. It should be made clear that presidents may not pardon themselves or their family, and prevent pardons from being issued for a corrupt purpose.

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‍Have Democrats learned anything from Trump’s victory? Or are they still going to keep pushing far-left social policies that most of the country opposes?“

Voters didn’t reject Harris because of leftist rhetoric or activist slogans. They rejected her because she and her party failed to address the economic pain of working-class voters, who chose change over more of the same.” The real problem is not progressive activists, but “corporate interests, lobbyists, and consultants” who have hijacked the party.“

The Harris campaign’s messaging failed because, while populist economic appeals resonated with voters, the public face of the campaign was discouraged from embracing them. Instead, the focus was on issues like democracy and abortion, which, while important, couldn’t by themselves capture the priorities of working-class voters.”

Democrats should certainly focus more on economic policies moving forward but that needn’t come at the expense of the party’s positions on social issues. “The working-class has become both more progressive on economic issues and less conservative on social issues in recent decades. From abortion and gun control to gay rights and views on racial inequality, the working-class today is, if anything, more progressive than the working-class that helped elect Barack Obama in 2008.”

‍One of our left-leaning contributors adds: GOP politicians support, vote, and fight for plenty of policies the majority of voters dislike (lowering corporate tax rates, getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, making abortion illegal in nearly all cases and even restricting access to birth control), but they still win elections because they don’t focus on their unpopular positions during the campaign. Actual policy positions are only half the battle; the other half is winning the media and messaging war.

‍Another left-leaning contributor adds: The Democratic Party has alienated voters by moving too far left on social issues. “You can draw a direct line from the party’s leftward shift to the Biden administration’s handling of immigration to voter disapproval of Biden to Trump gaining votes.” There’s evidence that more moderate candidates win more votes, yet “[the influence of] increasingly out-of-touch Democratic elites has pulled the party away from the views and priorities of regular voters.”“Democrats have allowed those on the far left to exert much too much influence over their policy agenda in recent years. Most elected Democrats are not, themselves, actually that far left, and when faced with acute electoral peril, they swiftly ditch ideas like defund the police or openness to unlimited asylum claims. But what they haven’t generally done is publicly disavow the kind of simplistic disparate impact analysis that leads to conclusions like policing is bad… The Democratic Party should embrace commonsense moral values and move away from academic fads and deliberate tent-shrinking.”

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