The Conservative Case for Voting Out Donald Trump
In his performance on the issues, his character, and his fidelity to the Constitution, he has failed by your own standards
It’s no secret that liberals can’t stand Donald Trump, and if you ask them why they will give you any number of reasons why: his negative effect on progressive issues, his intolerance, and other larger values. But it has always struck me that there is a remarkably strong conservative case against Trump as well. On issue after issue, Trump has failed on conservatives’ own performance metrics. In his personal values and perception of the Presidency, Donald Trump is no conservative. And if any conservatives are going to be persuaded to vote out President Trump, that is the case that needs to be made for them: by your own standards, he has failed. This article makes that case, in three parts.
I. TRUMP’S PERFORMANCE ON CONSERVATIVE ISSUE PRIORITIES
- The Economy: Past, Present, and Future Performance
In polling, Trump tends to poll fairly well on the economy in comparison with Joe Biden. There is a long running assumption Republicans are better at delivering on the economy because of their pro-business bent, despite a consistent reflection in the data that Democrat presidencies actually tend to produce more growth. This was, after all, a core point of Donald Trump’s appeal: He was a no BS businessman who would produce jobs. Nonetheless, there are a number of metrics for assessing Trump’s economic performance and few of them are encouraging — especially after COVID-19. On overall economic performance, and key metrics that have always been important to conservatives such as government debt and trade imbalances, Trump has been no success.
A) Overall Economic Growth:
The Obama administration saw a high of 5.5% growth in 2014, and the average of the administration’s growth in the last three years was 2.3%.
The Trump administration saw an almost identical level of growth initially (2.5%), building on the foundation set by the Obama administration. And the average monthly job gains for the Trump administration were actually lower than the prior years in the Obama administration, as reflected below. This wasn’t exactly the dramatic sea change of 4, 5, or 6% growth Mr. Trump had been promising with his signature tax bill.
In the first quarter of 2020, however, the economy contracted by 30% — wiping out a full decade of jobs gains. 20 million Americans lost their jobs. Although a bit under half of these jobs have returned as our country has started to adjust to COVID-19, the overall losses mean the Trump administration is only averaging economic growth slightly above zero. BBC’s graph of historical economic growth gives a sense of how historic the staggering job losses of the last several months have been.
As a result, we now have historically high levels of unemployment (peaking at 15% before going down 8.4%). And labor force participation is only 56%, meaning nearly half the country is out of work.
So when conservatives say they are voting for Trump based on the economy, the numbers just aren’t there. Even before the pandemic, growth was essentially a continuation of the Obama administration’s numbers and average monthly job growth was actually lower. And since the pandemic, the economy has absolutely cratered.
B) Trump has failed on conservative economic metrics
In addition, Trump’s economic performance has been abysmal on other key metrics that conservatives have traditionally prioritized: government debt, trade deficits, manufacturing output, and business investment.
Government Debt: Government debt under Trump broke 20 trillion for the first time in American history, ballooning to 23 trillion, which is the fastest increase in debt of any President. It’s also worth noting that Trump’s personal expenses have been anything but fiscally conservative: there are estimates Trump’s golf trips alone have cost taxpayers $102 million. For context, the Obama family only spent 12 million more than that for all of their travel expenses over the course of eight years.
Trump campaigned on being tough on trade and lowering our country’s trade deficits. Instead, the trade deficit was the highest in a decade in 2018, and has only gone down since because of poor economic performance associated with Coronavirus.
Manufacturing, something Trump frequently touts as a success under his “America First” platform against outsourcing, has also been hit brutally.
Similarly, business investment has plummeted.
So even beyond overall growth metrics, Trump has been a failure in decreasing government debt, cutting our trade deficit, or increasing manufacturing and business investment.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprise that Moody’s, one of the top names in international financial research with zero political affiliation, has determined that a Biden administration would produce 7.4 million more jobs than if Trump is re-elected. Their core conclusion was as follows: “Even allowing for some variability in the accuracy of the economic modeling and underlying assumptions that drive our analysis, we conclude that Biden’s economic proposals would result in a stronger U.S. economy than Trump’s.”
2) Performance on Homeland Security
Another traditional metric focused on by conservatives has been homeland security: violent crime, terrorism, and undocumented immigration.
Violent crime has been increasing on Trump’s watch. Murders are up nationally by 26%, which has been the case in cities with both Democratic mayors and Republican mayors. VP Biden recently contrasted this state of affairs with his record in the Obama Administration, which saw a 15% overall decrease in violent crime.
Domestic terrorism has also been increasing under the Trump administration, particularly terrorism perpetrated by right-wing extremists — which is up 300%.
And despite Trump’s constant refrain of being tough on immigration, the main victims of his “toughness” have been detained families. So despite talking about deporting record numbers of gang members and dangerous immigrants, the increase in apprehension numbers have been almost entirely driven by family unit apprehensions. These are not the drivers of the kind of social problems Trump scapegoats, and his administration’s child separation policy has outraged the country with no public safety impact. And Mexico has definitely not “paid” for the wall.
So despite Trump’s all caps Twitter screams of “law and order,” his administration has not made the homeland more secure. He has made our country less safe. And instead of lowering tensions during periods of social domestic turmoil, he has incited violence and refused to hold those who are politically sympathetic to him accountable when they perpetrate it. And this is to say nothing of cronyism and political weaponization of his Department of Justice, which has threatened one of the oldest conservative values: the rule of law.
In a global national security context, we are now historically isolated and distrusted by our allies. Even though conservatives have traditionally shown deference to our military and intelligence agencies, Trump has denigrated them. He disparaged those who gave their lives for our country as “losers,” and has repeatedly undercut the conclusions of his own intelligence community. He has refused to confront Russia about bounties placed on American troops in Afghanistan, continuing the President’s bizarre, supine Russian relationship with Vladimir Putin. You can call this state of affairs many things, but it certainly doesn’t seem “conservative” in any traditional sense. Which is why it should seem to come as no surprise that an unprecedented 22 retired four star generals and nearly 500 national security leaders have come out in support of his opponent, Joe Biden. And even rank and file military service members are supporting the Democratic candidate over Donald Trump, which is basically historically unprecedented for an institution that has always leaned conservative.
3) Culture Wars
Trump consistently rails against “cancel culture” and left wing extremism, which certainly drives Republican support for him through negative partisanship. I have certainly had my own criticisms of the left’s excesses and counterproductive strategies, but it’s worth engaging Trump’s stance on this in two ways. First, Trump regularly engages in cancel culture himself, personally going after institutions for their political decisions in order to “cancel” them. Second, there is no doubt that Trump has actually served as a kind of accelerant for these dynamics, which is why conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has called him “the most powerful enabler of left extremism has been Trump himself.” And despite his attempts to paint Joe Biden as some kind of radical socialist, the American public unsurprisingly isn’t buying it. So if you want a less polarized and extreme politics, the last thing you want to do is vote for Donald Trump.
This article has obviously been only a snapshot of conservative issues, and there are certain ones where he’s on firmer ground — such as appointing conservative, “pro-life” judges. But on the big-picture issues that have often defined conservatism — pro-growth economic policies and “law and order,” Trump has been a failure. And while we are talking about being “pro life,” it’s probably worth mentioning that the United States is 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its deaths from COVID-19 — making us a global outlier in our government’s failure to protect its own people. Over 200,000 Americans have died from Coronavirus with projections of 400,000 fatalities by the end of the year, making the virus the third leading cause of death in our country. I can’t think of something that shows less regard for the “sanctity of life” than diminishing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of the citizens to whom you owe a duty of protection.
It did not have to be this way. The Trump administration has failed at almost every step of the response. Whether it was disbanding the Pandemic Response Team on the National Security Council, ignoring warnings from his own administration of the risks of a potential pandemic, cutting pandemic prevention CDC funding by 80%, dropping the ball at the get-go on testing when it would have made the biggest difference, pushing misinformation to the public (including that the virus would “miraculously” disappear) when he knew better, undercutting experts and pushing out critical voices, or holding “super-spreader” rallies with no social distancing and little mask-wearing…the scope of Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and failures of leadership on the pandemic are staggering. A stronger response could have mitigated the damage to the economy, and we are now in a position where we have to get the virus under control to truly get our economy and society back on track. So if the economy is your priority, you need a President who has the capacity to get a handle on the virus. President Trump does not.
II. CHARACTER
I won’t belabor that Trump’s personal life is basically anything but conservative. Whether it is having sex with porn-stars months after his third wife gave birth or holding a bible upside down after clearing peaceful protests, the list goes on and on. Historically, it was often the Republican party that asserted the importance of family values or how “character is destiny.” Yet despite the Republican party repeatedly questioning his ethics and fitness, the party is now firmly in his thrall.
I have had conversations with conservative friends where they basically respond to this point by saying they are getting certain things they want from this Presidency, or that bad character doesn’t necessarily make a bad president.
The most obvious reflection of the importance of character in a President is how they handle a crisis. Character is reflected in our ability to handle pressure, take responsibility, listen, delegate, tell the truth, and so much more. And we have now all seen how Trump’s character flaws have impacted his ability to handle the pandemic crisis. His inability to listen to his experts, and his active undermining of them when they contradict his wishful thinking, his painting a rosy picture of a “miracle” coming early on rather than leveling with the American people about the dangers when he knew the virus posed, and his inability to take responsibility and constantly blaming others…have all hamstrung the federal response to Coronavirus. And as mentioned earlier, the character flaws of our President have contributed to our country’s status as a global outlier among developed nations in the failure of our response to the pandemic. Character has — literally — been destiny.
A similar point is the disjunction between traditional conservative beliefs on masculinity and their complete absence in Trump. I grew up around plenty of people with these old-school beliefs surrounding an ideal of masculinity: Toughness, stoicism, self-reliance… “speak softly and carry a big stick,” in other words. As Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic:
“I am a son of the working class, and I know these cultural standards. The men I grew up with think of themselves as pretty tough guys, and most of them are. They are not the products of elite universities and cosmopolitan living. These are men whose fathers and grandfathers came from a culture that looks down upon lying, cheating, and bragging, especially about sex or courage. (My father’s best friend got the Silver Star for wiping out a German machine-gun nest in Europe, and I never heard a word about it until after the man’s funeral.) They admire and value the understated swagger, the rock-solid confidence, and the quiet reserve of such cultural heroes as John Wayne’s Green Beret Colonel Mike Kirby and Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo.”
It is striking how Donald Trump is basically the exact opposite of an ethic I’m guessing many of his supporters would say they subscribe to. He constantly whines and complains. He completely refuses to take responsibility for his actions. His bragging veers into clinical and delusional narcissism. He faked a disability in order to avoid military service. He is, as Nichols puts it, a “vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard” whom our fathers and grandfathers would never have respected. His “lack of masculinity is about maturity. He is not manly because he is not a man. He is a boy.” If cultural conservatism at its best was connected with the kind of stoic but powerful reserve of a Republican President like Eisenhower, Trump is it’s antithesis. There’s nothing “conservative” about going along with his embarrassing overcompensation, insecurity, and psychological projection. And Americans across the spectrum are starting to recognize it for what it is.
And for those trying to somehow rationalize that this kind of bullying braggart profile was necessary for Trump’s success as a businessman, the new report on Trump’s taxes has shown that image was always a con. Trump has nearly 421 million dollars in debts that will be collected if he wins a second term. He is a financial disaster. And he was a “taker” or “mooch” in the worst sense, paying nothing in federal taxes for 10 of the last fifteen years and only $750 total in 2016 when he was elected. This while working people like firemen, teachers, and nurses pay thousands of dollars in taxes every year to support our troops, protect our infrastructure, and keep our country going. So in addition to failing to deliver “fiscal conservatism” in macro sense, the President was a financial disaster in his personal life. The basis of his appeal for many — his business acumen — was always a lie. Furthermore, Trump’s financial state of affairs is a national security and conflicts of interest nightmare: a financially compromised President on the hook for millions of personal debt from a failed business career. How do we know if he is making decisions based on what is good for the country or based on what is good for his desperate personal financial situation?
III. THE CONSTITUTION
Traditionally, it has been conservatives who hold themselves out as the party of the Constitution. Even today, you hear Republicans like Senator Josh Hawley throw out the term “constitutional conservative” pretty regularly.
It’s hard to imagine anything more central to ordered liberty and the Constitution than the peaceful transition of power after regular elections. That is about as fundamental as you get in a democracy — and if you cross that line you are in a different form of government altogether: Autocracy.
Trump crossed that line that red line this past week, declining to commit to a peaceful transition of power. It was a genuine “break the glass” level dangerous comment in a democracy, and it is disqualifying in a candidate for elected office. Even if I was on the cusp of re-electing a candidate who would deliver all of my favorite policies, if they refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power that would be a dealbreaker. I could not vote for them. It has to be a bright line rule, because any other answer is a threat to our constitutional order. Philosophical conservatism in its origins from thinkers like Edmund Burke was concerned with the protection of institutions, avoiding drastic and destabilizing social change, and incremental change through order and process. These kinds of comments are this tradition’s polar opposite. They threaten disorder and the destruction of our democratic institutions. And they are unforgivable from a sitting President.
To my conservative friends and family: Trump has not earned your vote. And the danger he represents cuts in favor of affirmatively removing him from office by voting for his competitor: an honorable, capable, and decent man in Joe Biden, who will protect our democratic institutions and pull our country back from the brink. You will join a community of Republicans who have recognized it is conservatism and love of country that compels Trump’s removal. And you will be welcomed in the fight for democracy with open arms.
