It might seem like the party in power would be setting the agenda for the country but that isn't really the case right now.
The Trump administration, to this point, has been colored more by its dysfunction than its progress. Some conservative goals have been achieved, of course, while many have floundered. The party in control of both houses of Congress and the White House seems unable to assert its priorities.
Look at the most recent budget. Conservatives (the proper ones, not just people with an (R) after their name) were incensed because of increased spending across all government. In fact, Trump finally achieved one of the goals of the past administration: passing a Democratic budget.
Russell Berman reported for The Atlantic that “President Obama finally got a Republican-controlled Congress to fund his domestic budget. All it took was Donald Trump in the White House to get it done.” For many programs which Trump and his proposed budget suggested cutting, funding levels remained at or above the requested levels of Obama’s final budget proposal from 2016.
Ben Sasse, the milquetoast standard-bearer of genteel conservatism, dispensed this wisdom in a statement: “Every Republican would vote against this disgusting pork bill if a Democrat were president.” But of course. Anyone around during the Obama administration that paid any attention would have seen the constant roadblocks erected only to stymie his agenda.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell uttered these oft-quoted words in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” That didn’t really pan out, so the guiding principle of conservatism during the years of 2009-2016 was simply to say no.
Fast forward to last year, when the GOP attempted to repeal Obamacare. Surely, after over half a decade of voting along party lines almost uniformly to repeal the demonized program, the Republicans had a plan. We soon found out, of course, that they did not. The GOP is resolute in their opposition to Democratic policies, but are in disarray concerning their own. The President threatened, for about ten minutes via Twitter, to veto the bill, but no one really took the Master Dealmaker seriously.
