The first real Republican president in a half century
Which president is different than all the others?
When George Bush Jr. was elected president in 2000, he also won majorities in both the House and the Senate in Congress. At the time I remember quite naively saying that he now was in a position to force through some real change, because any radical leftist proposal needed three different signatures, and the Republicans in all three branches just weren’t going to give it.
Hah! What a fool I was. During Bush Jr’s eight year rein the federal government grew in leaps and bounds, even more than under Bill Clinton, with every leftist desire fulfilled, though generally quietly in order to avoid outraging the American public that wanted change.
Nor was Bush Jr. the exception to the rule. No, every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower has been nothing more than a Democrat in disguise, and that includes Donald Trump during his first term as president.
Only now do we see a real conservative president in power. You need only look at the official portraits of all these presidents to the right to understand this. Just compare Donald Trump’s official picture in 2021 with this picture in 2025. In 2021 he was a happy leader who innocently thought the administrative state he was in charge of would do as he said.
In 2025 he is innocent no longer. Instead, he is a hardened warrior ready to do battle. And that is exactly what we have seen, a Republican president unlike any since before World War II.
For once, the voters got a choice on election day. For once, the Republican who said he wanted to change things really meant it.
Moreover, Trump did not enter this second term determined all by himself. He prepared well, gathering to him whole cadre of loyal and equally conservative troops equally ready to do battle. All, like today’s Trump, have no loyalty to the industrial-military complex that has been controlling Washington since Eisenhower. All recognized that if they wanted to actually change anything they needed to do so without mercy.
Thus, in only the first two weeks Trump and his troops have hit the federal executive branch like a tank, smashing through it savagely, issuing orders to reshape and even shut down whole agencies and — more important –instantly removing any civil servant who tried to defy them.
One need only read a list of his actions in his first week in office and then his second week to understand how shockingly different this Republican president has been from past Republicans. Both Bushes as well as Trump 45 merely said they would change things, but in the end none of them had the courage to really clean house. Nor was their general inaction much different than earlier Republicans Nixon and Reagan. Reagan was not afraid to fire people, such as the striking air traffic controllers, but he never cleaned house. Instead, he allowed the administrative state to grow bigger and stronger and more powerful.
Now however we have a new gang in town, and it is going about its business in ways Americans haven’t seen in many decades. This new gang also illustrates most starkly the utter corruption and incompetence of the established Republican Party that offered itself to conservatives for the last half century. While a handful were sincere conservatives, they held no real power. Instead, many in that party were simply timid cowards afraid of challenging the status quo. Others were clearly beholden to government cash — as Trump’s crew is now documenting — and did what they could to protect their cash cow. A large percentage were simply corrupt, liars eager to tell voters what they wanted to hear but never doing it so that they could keep the gravy train flowing.
The result was that, until Trump, the old saying, “It doesn’t matter who you vote for because both parties are the same!” was largely true. Establishment Republicans since the 1960s trimmed a bit at the edges to make it seem they opposed big government, but in their hearts they had no intention of trimming anything seriously. (We should have recognized this during the last six years of Clinton’s administration. Then Congress was controlled by the Republicans, who forced a balanced budget not by cutting any spending but by simply holding the increases down enough so that inflation eventually made up the difference. The goal however was always to allow the government to grow and get more power, and when Republicans also gained the presidency after 2000 under Bush Jr. their spending then went hog wild.)
A real house-cleaning has finally begun
It took an outsider like Trump 47 to expose this corrupt party and change it fundamentally. When he is done the new Republican Party will be quite different, and might actually represent the American conservative values it has been touting for decades.
Moreover, Trump’s second term is going to force major changes in the Democratic Party, or else it will die entirely. At the moment the Democrats can’t seem to understand what is happening and remain wedded to their racial politics. Thus the party’s death seems more likely.
Regardless, the real changes that Trump is bringing to DC explains why the DC swamp worked so hard to stop him from regaining office. They knew he would not be so easy to roll as during his first term, and feared he would do exactly what he is now doing.
For ordinary Americans, the news can’t be better.
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Have you seen Eric Berger’s latest screed about the evils of Trump and Musk? Never mind the comments, which are… fantastical. Berger is proving himself a Marxist tool. (BTW, Apple will not autocomplete “”Marxist.” I wonder why.) He’s the best space reporter out there… or was. His ideological leanings have long been apparent, but I never expected him to so completely abandon objectivity with such utter determination. He is now Jeff Foust Junior. Rest in Peace, objective space industry reporting.
Why do I still see stories about J6 prisoners not yet being released?!
Yes, I am sure that a few J6’ers actually might have done something illegal. But anyone still held against their will has suffered a grievous miscarriage of justice! This is the most shameful episode in modern American legal history, and all who contrived and participated in it deserve a reckoning!
1. The Constitutionally guaranteed right to a quick trial with an impartial jury has been proved absolutely meaningless.
2. I made my thoughts known about Eric Berger’s “reporting” on Ars Technica. No doubt it will be hidden from view after many downvotes. But I hope the staff bring it to Eric’s attention, if only as a ridiculous screed to be enjoyed as humor.
I never liked Berger anyway.
I am beginning to suspect the real reason he bashed SLS wasn’t economical but cultural.
Keith Cowing hates SLS because it is a Red State BEO launcher–lefties don’t want human growth.
If I was a Green, I’d repeat a lot of stingy libertarian talking points–and pour fuel on the NewSpace vs OldSpace civil war
Once that victory is in hand and NASA Centers/projects are on the chopping block–THEN I fall upon New Space champions with double the savagery, knowing Old Space advocates are dejected and are unlikely to stand with private pro-spacers after having been vilified.
This is why America Space’s Jim Hillhouse warned us about the in-fighting–and how Old Space and New Space should be praising each other.
I knew this day was coming, Patrick…but nobody listen to Zathrus…
BOOM!
The Zman is 100 on point!
LET THE RE FOUNDING OF AMERICA COMMENCE!
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/let-the-re-founding-of-america-commence
Anyone else notice that his official portrait looks an awful lot like his mug shot?
Chuck: Fight the power. :)
And the rest of the world applauds!
Except the leftists.
Jeff Wright, anyone who is a go-to commentator for Al Jazeera is a no-go for me. I haven’t read Cowing for years.
Yeah, Chuck, they hung his portrait up at work, and I overheard a high-up lament that everyone else is in color with the flag and smiling…and then there’s Trump. I think his official portrait might be monochrome.
A lot of republicans are democrats, but no democrats are republicans. We need to primary the RINOs in red states, and this is just the beginning. We have to see this through and it will take time. The government is used to doing what it wants, with an unimaginably huge slush fund through the grants and loans. EOs can be undone as easily as they are written.
This is it. This is the start of the stand. Win or lose, it is not decided. Everybody fights, nobody quits.
The point about the administrative state is well taken, though Reagan did make some progress in restricting its growth in the short term. He is doing a better job of taking control. But it is worthwhile to look at one of the core issues that drives it. That is his expressed view towards the rest of the world.
Trump governs like an old school paleoconservative. The other presidents you mention are neoconservative. The difference is primarily in nationalism vs globalism. Neoconservatives believe that the US should primarily promote its values abroad….that is, capitalism, democracy, human rights, etc. They value immigration and free trade. paleoconservatives believe the US should stay out of other nations’ affairs, and should focus on its own economic and security interests on foreign policy. Trump is the first president to seriously push back against globalism in a long time. This is what underlies his focus on trade and immigration. Paleoconservatism is almost extinct in official Washington. It is very common everywhere else in America. Finally someone is actually giving opponents of globalism serious influence on policy. This is why Trump actually has some liberal support. Look at the liberals that support him, however reluctantly. They tend to be the type that would protest at a World Trade Organization convention.
What scares official Washington the most is that he can actually implement paleoconservative policies from where he sits. Foreign policy is inherently under the president’s control.
That is not to say paleoconservative is good or neoconservatism is bad. It is far more complex than that. I think there are good arguments on both sides. But for a long time only one kind of conservative could actually influence policy. That has now ended.