Trump Is Ready to Sell Out His Base

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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-15/trump-is-ready-to-sell-out-his-base


By Megan McArdle
September 15, 2017, 8:30 AM EDT

The most cursory evaluation of Donald J. Trump as a candidate revealed to us that he felt no need for small-minded consistency between his words and his actions. If it later proved convenient to back out of his promises, he’d do it in a New Jersey minute.

Well, Trump seems to have decided now might be a good time to break faith with the immigration hard-liners who formed the passionate core of his base: He had dinner with congressional Democratic leaders to discuss a path to legal status for some people who arrived in the U.S. as children and are now here illegally. These seem to have been preliminary talks, so it’s not exactly fair to say that he is selling out his base. But he has put his base on the market. Priced to sell.

We shouldn’t be surprised. The first year of a presidency is the year for bold action, but the man whose core credo is “I deal, therefore I am” has achieved … one Supreme Court confirmation, a handful of executive orders, and a reputation as perhaps the most incompetent manager ever to hold the presidency.

Of course, on his spectacular failure to pass health-care reform, it’s worth noting that Trump didn’t really care about health-care policy, certainly not enough to acquire advisers who did. But things don’t look much more promising for his signature issues: tax reform, immigration, infrastructure.