Why a Trump loss is best for conservatives

Ideological Tri-D chess

For the past few months eight years, I’ve been making the case that Donald Trump is bad for America. Today, I want to try something a little bit different and explain why a Trump victory would be bad for conservatives. The best outcome for principled conservatives and constitutionalists may be a Trump loss. Yes, you heard that right.

Let’s start by looking back at the first (and hopefully only) Trump presidency. Many people view the Trump years through rose-colored glasses and this is heartily encouraged by Republicans. They remember the Trump years as an era of prosperity and strength, but the recollections do not match reality.

Photo by Piotr Makowski on Unsplash

Even before the pandemic pushed the economy off a cliff (and triggered a worldwide wave of inflation), the Trump economy was struggling. The Former Guy launched ill-advised and disastrous trade wars with China along with almost all of our other trading partners after canceling the TransPacific Partnership. The TPP would have isolated China, but Trump’s tariff (taxes on trade) wars isolated America and both cost America jobs and contributed to an exploding deficit. The Wall Street Journal looked back in 2023 and said, “Trump’s trade war was a loser.”

On foreign affairs, Trump was weak, rather than the strong leader he pretends to be. Trump fawned over dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un and abandoned allies like the Kurds (and the Afghans since the Trump Administration brokered the US withdrawal and then released 5,000 Taliban prisoners who returned to the battlefield). He brought the US to the brink of war with Iran and only avoided conflict by backing down after Iran launched a missile attack on an American airbase in Iraq.

Domestically, Trump’s term was marked by divisiveness and political violence from both sides. The capstone to his tenure was his attempt to deny his election loss and overturn the decision of the people by throwing out the electoral votes of entire states. The January 6 insurrection was only the cherry on top of that effort.

Trump was also disastrous for the Republican Party. The end of the Obama era brought optimism for a new conservative era. Trump replaced that optimism with grudging acceptance that Trump was necessary to beat Hillary, but the grand conservative vision of ushering in enlightened constitutional government died quickly and has not returned. Instead of a positive vision for America, the Republican Party is reduced to making dour predictions about the future if Democrats are returned to power, predictions that have not been borne out in Joe Biden’s presidency.

The Trump years were an epic losing streak for Republicans across the country. Democrats scored their largest gains since Watergate in the 2018 midterms, winning 40 House seats. A hoped-for red wave petered out in 2022, thanks in large part to the poor quality of Trump’s MAGA candidates, and Republicans barely won control of the House while losing the Senate. During the Trump years, per Ballotpedia, Republicans also lost a net of 187 state legislative seats allowing Democrats to gain in two-thirds of state legislative bodies and to capture a trifecta in four states (Colorado, Maine, New York, and Virginia).

Granted, the Trump presidency wasn’t all bad. In the South, we have a saying that even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally. Undoubtedly, the best part of Trump’s tenure was the judges. His appointments to the Supreme Court and the lower bench were good for the most part, and a great many of the decisions handed down by the Federalist Society’s constitutionalist judges have been good ones.

There are a few caveats to that, however. While I believe the Dobbs decision was legally and morally correct, it has been unpopular and caused blowback that has damaged both the Republican Party and the pro-life movement. Ironically, Dobbs, the long-awaited reversal of Roe, has so far been a net negative for the right. And it’s fair to ask why no Republican state government has banned abortion since the decision was handed down.

Even more disturbing, despite a number of good, constructionist decisions, the Supreme Court that Trump wrought also handed down what may be one of the worst and most damaging decisions in American history. The Trump immunity decision may have sown the seeds for the destruction of our Republic and its replacement by authoritarianism.

Other Trump victories were more ephemeral. The movement of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem was the right move but doesn’t affect Americans on a daily basis. Illegal immigration plunged during the pandemic but was climbing by the time Trump left office, largely because Trump’s own sanctions on Venezuela spurred migration. The illegal immigration problem cannot be solved permanently without congressional action and Trump has sabotaged such efforts repeatedly, even while he was in office.

Trump did score treaties as well. The US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement was a movement away from free trade and turned out to have weakened the rights of American companies and allowed the Mexican government to seize assets of US businesses. The Abraham Accords was a historic peace deal, but almost certainly had less to do with who was president than the fact that Arab nations were tired of fighting Israel. A similar peace deal with Saudi Arabia was underway in the Biden Administration and the outbreaks of peace likely provided Iran and Hamas with a motive to attack on October 7. The Saudi-Israeli peace deal may still happen, but it won’t be on Biden’s watch.

Having reviewed Trump’s history, let’s now look to the future. In this mental exercise, we will examine the possible outcomes of both a Trump victory and a defeat.

Let’s assume first that Trump wins a narrow victory in the Electoral College, probably paired with a popular vote loss. Trump might have a narrow majority in one or both houses of Congress, but he won’t have a mandate. Nevertheless, he will act like he does.

Trump has renounced Project 2025, but parts of the plan will be quickly resurrected, along with Trump’s own Agenda 47. These will be controversial but the gist of what we can expect is a power grab. MAGA will want to cement its loyalists deeply into the federal power structure on the theory that they will never lose again. Spoiler alert: They will and whatever can be done by Executive Order can be undone by Executive Order.

I expect one of Trump’s first actions to be to restart the trade wars. The economy is on a reasonably strong footing at this point with inflation receding and interest rates coming down, but the Trump trade taxes, if he implements them as described, will have the immediate effect of raising the cost of almost everything. This is also known as cost-push inflation and may be enough to tip the country into the recession that Republicans have predicted for the past four years. Don’t worry, though, I’m sure they’ll still blame Joe Biden.

Abroad, Trump has indicated that his peace plan for Ukraine is to essentially cut off aid to the Ukrainians until they give Vladimir Putin everything he wants. This would have several negative consequences. First, the loss of Ukraine (or a large part of it) would be as bad or worse for American prestige than the pullout from Afghanistan. Ukraine has proven itself to be a technologically innovative country as well as supplying a large part of the world’s food, even during the war. Removing this food from world markets would add to inflationary pressures.

Abandoning Ukraine would also send China a signal that America won’t stand by Taiwan, possibly sparking another war. China has had its eye on Taiwan since the Chinese Revolution. They are playing the long game and waiting for the right moment of Western weakness, a moment that Trump’s isolationist tendencies could bring. If Trump won’t supply American weapons for Ukrainians to fight, why should China think that he would send American soldiers to defend Taiwan?

Trump has also suggested that he would remove the sanctions from both Russia and Iran over concerns that they weaken the dollar. In reality, the dollar is strong and removing sanctions would strengthen the currencies of Russia and Iran. Trump has also advocated for a weak dollar, which is, of course, inflationary.

Even worse, there is a strong possibility that Trump would weaken NATO and possibly completely withdraw from the alliance. European nations see the threat from Russia even if Mr. Trump does not, but a weakened alliance could encourage Vladimir Putin to take other bites of Europe after he has digested Ukraine, risking a pan-European war.

A second Trump term might accomplish a few things, but for the most part, conservatives would have to be happy with Trump just not being Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. There will be no national abortion ban or major legislation because the country and Congress will be too divided and Trump is just not good at governing. The vaunted dealmaker is not good at the compromises from which legislative victories are made.

I’ll add that I would not expect a continuation of the good Federalist Society judges either. Too many FedSoc judges blocked Trump’s attempts to stay in power at the close of 2020. Trump-47 would not want principled judges. He will want loyalists. And thanks to Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, there is no judicial filibuster to block bad judges.

And that reminds me, when Trump was last in office, he advocated nuking the filibuster entirely. Mitch McConnell didn’t play ball, but a new Republican Majority Leader might.

Nuking the filibuster might enable Republicans to pass some partisan legislation, but it would also contribute to an even larger voter backlash. And any gains would be temporary because Democrats would enact their own partisan bills as soon as they regain power, which probably wouldn’t take long.

The net result of another chaotic Trump Administration would be a continued Republican decline. Trump encourages bad candidates like Mark Robinson, who may be the only black man in America who supports slavery. I have to wonder how hard Republicans had to look to find such a person.

Bad Republican candidates mean one of two things: Democrats win elections that Republicans could have won, as in Robinson’s North Carolina gubernatorial race, or bad Republicans get entrenched in states like Alabama, where Tommy Tuberville will probably be in the Senate for decades. Neither is a good option for conservatives.

A second Trump Administration likely means Democratic control of the House and Senate. As with Trump’s first term, voters will quickly grow alarmed at his excesses and elect Democrats to hold him in check. There are signs that Democrats are marginalizing their radical wing and tacking to the middle. If this trend persists, and if voters grow tired of the Republican clown show, the GOP could find itself as a long-term minority.

But what if Trump loses? For starters, a Republican will almost certainly be elected in 2028. The only time a party has held the White House for a third consecutive term since the FDR-Truman Administrations was the two terms of Ronald Reagan followed by George Bush-41. And with Trump hopefully removed from the political scene, it might be time for that long-awaited conservative renaissance that we could have had in 2017. (That’s assuming that the party isn’t still stuck on stupid, nominating an 82-year-old Trump in 2028, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.)

In the meantime, Republicans could rediscover their conservative roots and build congressional majorities while growing the conservative bench in statehouses. Unless Kamala Harris proves to be much more popular and effective than Joe Biden, there will be good opportunities for midterm gains in 2026. That is assuming again that Donald Trump does not sabotage the midterms by endorsing more Mark Robinsons and Kari Lakes.

Republicans could also reach across the aisle to get things done to help the country. For instance, most Americans want Congress to pass immigration reform and work to reduce incidents of mass shootings. Acting like adults would probably help the party restore its image.

I think history could have been similarly different if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016. Republican congressional majorities would have limited any damage that Clinton could have done, and there is a good chance that she would have been better on foreign policy, trade, and the pandemic than Donald Trump. The odds are that Hillary would have been a one-term president and a Republican, probably an actual conservative, would be in office today.

In a situation where there are two bad options, it can make sense to let the other side have their preference. Let the opposition get their way and take the consequences of their bad choices. Similarly, if a recession is likely, it would benefit Republicans to let incumbent Democrats bear the brunt of the bad economic times. Of course, the risk is that the recent Goldman Sachs analysis that found Harris’s economic plan was more positive for the country than Trump’s would be born out in reality.

I disagree with Erick Erickson a lot these days, but a few weeks ago he said something that I can assent to. In a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Erickson wrote, “Sometimes, good stewardship means letting the field lie fallow for a greater harvest later.”

That’s where Republicans and conservatives are. The GOP is not going to get better if we keep electing Trump and MAGA candidates. Republicans need to lose - and lose badly and repeatedly - to make them realize that the country wants sane, honest conservatives.

To put it another way, when you make a wrong turn, you have to turn around and go back to find the right road. If you keep pushing ahead, you get more and more lost and further from where you need to be. You have to go back to go forward. Republicans have been on the wrong road since 2016, and keep saying, “We may be lost, but we are making great time!”

To put it in computer terms, we are past the point of CNTRL-ALT-DELETE. The GOP needs a hard reset.

A Trump victory this year would be a short-term gain for Republicans but a long-term loss for conservatives. The more deeply entrenched MAGA loyalists become within the Republican Party and the government, the harder it will be to build a new conservative movement and the more dangerous and divisive politics will become. The rock-and-a-hard-place choice that we have had for the past few cycles will be permanent in the face of two Big Government parties, one on either side of the political spectrum.

On the other hand, a Harris victory is likely to be more of the same, and while that is not ideal, it also hasn’t been disastrous. The economy is recovering, our alliances are strong, and the country has returned to normalcy from the chaos of the Trump years.

If Harris is as ineffective as Republicans say, she not only can’t do much damage, but she should be easy to beat with a traditional Republican candidate in 2028. That would put the Republican Party back on the right track with tried-and-true conservative principles of limited government, constitutionalism, and practicality over personality. Hopefully, such a traditional Republican can be found when the time comes.

NEBRASKA UPDATE: The effort to change the way the Cornhusker State distributes its electoral votes that I mentioned on Monday has fizzled. A courageous Republican state senator scuttled the effort, standing against the governor, the state GOP, and Donald Trump.

ELECTORAL UPDATE: Today’s Electoral College update is unchanged from Monday. As a reminder, this update uses Real Clear Politics polling averages without any changes. You can visit the map and make changes here: https://www.270towin.com/maps/eKOjy