Even on immigration, perhaps his signature issue, Trump has been more flexible than advertised. During the primaries in 2016, Trump said he would deport millions of illegal immigrants; after getting the Republican presidential nomination, he softened his stance. In 2018, he blocked a deal to fund a wall on the border with Mexico — one of his main campaign promises — in part because he wanted to slash legal immigration. In 2019, he delivered a State of the Union address calling for more legal immigration: “the largest numbers ever.”
On Ukraine, Trump’s record is only slightly less tangled. His administration sent the country aid, although he delayed it. He has said that if elected he would end the Ukraine-Russia war in “24 hours.” By threatening Russian President Vladimir Putin with additional aid to Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with an aid cutoff, he said he would force the countries to make a deal. Many of Trump’s most vocal fans oppose aid; many of his former foreign policy advisers favor it.
During his 2016 run, Trump repudiated the previous Republican insistence on reforms to rein in spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But he then supported legislation to make major changes, and cuts to future spending, in Medicaid. His budgets included less substantial cuts in Medicare. Trump has sometimes suggested, both in public and in private, that he would eventually turn to reining in these programs.
If Trump weren’t dominating the primary contest, maybe Republicans would be arguing these issues out. But instead the distinctions between the leading non-Trump candidates aren’t getting wide attention or close scrutiny.
The DeSantis-Haley undercard has done nothing to get the party out of its muddles. During the debate in Iowa, Haley refused to engage when DeSantis brought up legal immigration. DeSantis dodged when asked whether he would deport every illegal immigrant, neither endorsed nor ruled out changes to Social Security benefits for future retirees and left his options open on Ukraine.
The methods that parties normally use to decide and cement their positions on policy aren’t operating. Trump has not really tried to use his political power within the party to impose his views on it, in part because those views are inconstant. In the 2022 elections, he endorsed a Senate candidate — widely seen as an avatar of “Trumpism” — who talked about privatizing Social Security.
People who wish Trump would follow a consistent ideological line are pounding the table in frustration that he won’t rule out Haley as a running mate: She’s too pro-immigration, and too willing to commit U.S. resources to overseas conflicts. All of that, they say, is incompatible with the post-Trump Republican Party, and they have a point — except that it was compatible enough for her to have a major foreign policy role in Trump’s administration, and she hasn’t endorsed any immigration policy he hasn’t.
Republican primary voters do enforce discipline on some issues. Members of Congress can rarely get through the primaries if they favor gun control, or voted to impeach Trump. But the voters aren’t forcing Republican politicians to pick a side on the current divisions. Republicans can win primaries whether they favor Ukraine aid or oppose it.
Trump destroyed the old Republican consensus without creating a new one. It’s different in the Democratic Party. Democrats want to expand Social Security, grant legal status to most illegal immigrants and keep aid to Ukraine flowing. Nowadays it would be unthinkable for a Democratic congressman to suggest reining in Social Security’s growth.
For nearly a decade, the central question of our politics — sometimes it seems like the only question, especially among Republicans — has been: What do you think of Donald Trump? The longer they have fixated on that question, the harder it has become for Republicans to answer other ones.
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