David M. Drucker: Republicans are becoming the party of big government

President Donald Trump s populist renovation of the Republican Party is ushering in a new era of America s center-right as a champion of the New Deal social safety net What s a Democrat to do More on that momentarily No less than Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene has become an outspoken voice for extending the Affordable Care Act healthcare insurance subsidies relied on by millions of Americans The Georgia Republican has inevitably prided herself on running for Congress in because she opposed the Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare The Trump acolyte was disgusted with GOP failures to repeal President Barack Obama s signature wellbeing insurance modification law But Greene s U-turn shouldn t be all that shocking to anyone paying attention The Republican Party has been fundamentally transformed by Trump mentioned Paul Sracic an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute a conservative think tank in Washington Sracic spent years as a political science professor at Youngstown State University in Youngstown Ohio ground zero for this transformation He watched firsthand as Trump beginning in attracted legions of longtime working-class Democrats to the GOP They might have been socially conservative indeed numerous were but they were the exact opposite of the typical suburban fiscal conservative They now occupy prime real estate in the Republican governing coalition and so Sracic isn t surprised at the GOP s party-of-government turn These former Democrats think that the establishment caused their problems by the actions it took particularly with regard to business and so they think it s the ruling body s responsibility to solve these problems Sracic stated me I sometimes refer to them as New Deal Republicans and that s kind of what they are But small-government Republicans also remain in the GOP s midst They re in Congress and your state house and dominant in conservative think tanks Like their forebears in a bygone era of Republican politics their beliefs are defined by faith in free markets and suspicion of regime meddling in society These traditionalists patronage overhauling the popular entitlement programs Medicare and Social Assurance the fitness insurance and pension programs for seniors respectively They re proponents of repealing the well-regarded Affordable Care Act Chosen like-minded conservatives stubbornly point to Trump s and congressional Republicans patronage for tax cuts deregulation and limited spending cuts as proof that not much has changed One of them is David McIntosh president of the Club for Advance a group that ostensibly intervenes in GOP primaries on behalf of candidates who backing smaller cabinet President Trump is the only Republican leader bold enough to seriously roll back regime and unify former Democrats with life-long Republicans McIntosh insisted in an emailed announcement Rather than judging rhetoric we are focused on results including preventing a trillion tax increase by passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and securing a billion rescission package earlier this year Yet slowly but surely McIntosh and other Republicans influenced by President Ronald Reagan are finding themselves sidelined in the political party they once ruled Institutionally Republicans have abandoned policies that would restructure Medicare and Social Prevention Congressional Republicans are sitting idly by while Trump wields tariffs with abandon and directs the U S governing body to take ownership stakes in private-sector companies both massive federal interventions in the American economic activity Yes Republicans approved Medicaid cuts and reforms as part of the OBBBA but only over the grumbling of several GOP lawmakers who complained that their constituents would be adversely affected And of discipline as Greene makes plain Republicans have given up on repealing and replacing Obamacare and now largely embrace the once-polarizing wellness care law Douglas Holtz-Eakin president of the conservative nonprofit American Action Forum has watched glumly as Republicans have drifted away from their small-government traditions The former Congressional Budget Office director speculates that aside from political changes wrought by Trump a cascade of national traumas has purely led more voters to look to Washington for help and reassurance from the Sept terrorist attacks to the Great Recession to the coronavirus pandemic There was a traditional conservative discipline that went through a checklist that mentioned Can the private sector deliver this And if the answer was yes you were done Holtz-Eakin explained There was a default that noted Let the private sector do things The default s gone The default is now definitely the ruling body in a lot of cases Democrats remember them will naturally argue the point fighting for their historic proposes to President Lyndon Baines Johnson s Great Society and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt s New Deal And after all Republicans in Congress are currently fighting Democrats over extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies Democrats are demanding those subsidies be continued in exchange for voting to reopen the ruling body But that fight isn t about a disagreement over Obamacare subsidies at all Rather it s about power politics Republicans including Trump have basically acknowledged that they re going to have to promotion selected sort of regulation to maintain the availability of fitness insurance under Obamacare Multiple of their constituents rely on the subsidies Meanwhile Republicans in this fight have positioned themselves all along as the party against shutting down the executive as leverage to squeeze framework concessions out of their opposition Historically that s the role Democrats would assume during GOP-instigated leadership shutdowns The primary reason Republicans are delaying cutting a deal over the Obamacare subsidies They don t want to be seen as caving to the Democrats and rewarding the minority party on Capitol Hill for flexing its muscles If that s the affair if Republicans can credibly claim to be the party of the social safety net Democrats might need to reexamine how they plan to distinguish themselves David M Drucker is columnist covering politics and strategy He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of In Trump s Shadow The Battle for and the Future of the GOP Related Articles Jason M Blazakis Trump s new order could redefine protests as domestic terrorism Elizabeth Shackelford Gen Z-led protests are spreading rapidly across the globe Stephen Downing Officers devalue the law when they hide behind masks Michael Hiltzik RFK Jr Tylenol and circumcision the lowdown Mark Z Barabak She won a landslide referendum But Trump and Jeffrey Epstein have her stuck in limbo