Question

In 2016 Donald J. Trump ran as a Republican but was considered by many Republicans to be liberal. (He had been a Democrat as late as 2007.) He portrayed himself in the campaign to conservatives as a conservative and won most of their votes. Given what you've learned about conservatism, based on what he has done so far, is President Trump conservative or not? Please provide specific examples from current events and stick to facts and reasoning without hyperbole or acrimony.

Answer 1

Republican Party belief is conservatism and they favor lower taxes, a strong national defense, gun rights, deregulation and restrictions on labor unions and free-market capitalism and Donald Trump once said, I have these very stupid highly conservative people saying oh it's a mandate that's a mandate that's a minute
look it's very simple and they can call whatever they want I don't care if they could call it to mandate they can call you know because I do things a
a little bit different it's not a mandate what it is is we can't have people dying in the street Chuck we can't have our people dying because they don't have
money. Conservatives would say oh he's not a free-trader I'm a great free trader it has to be smart trade and fair trade you say to them enjoy your stay in Mexico
but every air-conditioner you make that comes into this country you're going to pay a 35% tax.

The impeachment process began before Trump has won reelection. And, make no mistake, Trump’s offense here was all about the 2020 election.
It is about what is proper for the President to do when running for reelection. It is about whether he can use his office, the most powerful office we gift upon someone, that we entrust him with, to enlist foreign governments as allies in shaping American elections
This one- THIS one, was about us. What we would see, what we would know. What we would be made to believe. So maybe we, the voters, are the right jury here.
Trump wanted to run for reelection atop a booming economy: "Make America great again!" and the Ukrainian President, it didn't quite rise to the level of quid pro quo.I'm not a political consultant, but, “I’m not quite a crook” isn’t a great bumper sticker. In his farewell address, In 2016, Russia reached deep into the US presidential election to help elect Donald Trump and their investment paid off in spades.
Trump has defended and praised Putin, he's undermined NATO, he's made American politics more fractious and polarized and chaotic than ever.
But it paid off for Trump. He’s President, and the Mueller report, it carried no direct consequence for him. That’s the context in which he asked Ukraine
to help him in 2020. After all, it worked the first time. Partisanship, opening the country to this kind of foreign influence and then protecting the foreigners who influenced it after they do, that is exactly what Washington and Hamilton feared the system they designed couldn’t handle.
The question for a foreign country, facing an opportunity or potentially a presidential request to intervene in America’s election,
is what they may gain and what they may lose. For Ukraine, the possible gains were clear: military aid they desperately needed and anything else that might flow from nurturing Trump’s goodwill. But the spotlight of impeachment makes the costs clearer, too. A foreign country asked to intervene in an American election may see its activities exposed, much to the fury of the other political party. Much to the fury even of the public. Ukraine may have wanted Trump’s goodwill, but it doesn’t want the Democrats’ ill will. It doesn't want the distraction or infamy of this investigation. Impeachment, in this case, acts as a message to other countries too:
You don’t want to be part of our circus. Even so, we do live now in the world Washington feared. Republicans are falling in line behind Trump, they are placing their loyalty to him, to each other, above any sense of public accountability. And in doing, they have opened American politics to foreign influence
To foreign corruption. Partisanship like this, it creates eras in which corruption of all kinds flourishes. Because so long as that corruption is to the benefit of the party in power, that American politics has no true answer for official wrongdoing in periods of unified party government, it's chilling.
It's not that the impeachment process itself isn't working because I do think it has some benefits even without a conviction.
that it can't be used if there isn't a divided government. Look, Hamilton wasn’t, in the end, just the author of Federalist 65.
Sadly, it’s his pessimism about what would happen to an America is driven by party, rather than his optimism about the Senate, that rings true today. And yet, even a broken impeachment process has its uses. The House can focus the public’s attention. It can send a message to the world. It can create a record for the future. Maybe that’s not sufficient. Maybe it's not as much as impeachment was initially designed to do. But it’s something. And it's going to have to be enough.