Trump wants to create an Anti-Woke University and Freedom Cities supported by tax hikes.

Please consider Trump’s Second-Term Plans as described by the Wall Street Journal.

As he campaigns to retake the White House, Donald Trump has increasingly tossed aside the principles of limited government and local control that have defined the Republican Party for decades.

He has said he would establish a government-backed anti-“woke” university, create a national credentialing body to certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values” and erect “freedom cities” on federal land. He has pledged to marshal the power of the government to investigate and punish his critics.

Trump has rallied his millions of supporters in part by tapping into the cultural and social grievances that animate the conservative base.

As president, Trump presided over four straight years of rising annual deficits, signing bipartisan budget agreements that boosted federal spending. He launched a trade war with China. And earlier this year, he warned his party not to “cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.”

“What do we stand for as Republicans? The orthodoxy is a little bit upside down,” said Margaret Spellings, who led the Education Department and the Domestic Policy Council during the George W. Bush administration.

What Has Happened?

Republicans once stood for small government and free trade.

Trump was very upset when the Republican House scaled back his Covid stimulus proposal. Trump wanted the amazingly inflationary deal that Biden signed.

It was Trump, not Biden, who started eviction moratoriums. And trump does not want to cut Medicare or Social Security.

If you go back far enough, Republicans were once Mind Your Own Business on Abortion.

When the Republican national convention convened in Kansas City in 1976, the party’s pro-choice majority did not expect a significant challenge to their views on abortion. Public opinion polls showed that Republican voters were, on average, more pro-choice than their Democratic counterparts, a view that the convention delegates shared; fewer than 40 percent of the delegates considered themselves pro-life. The chair of the Republican National Committee, Mary Louise Smith, supported abortion rights, as did First Lady Betty Ford, who declared Roe v. Wade a “great, great decision.” Likewise, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who had taken a leading role in the fight for abortion rights in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was solidly pro-choice. Even some of the party’s conservatives, such as Senator Barry Goldwater, supported abortion rights. But in spite of the Republican Party’s pro-choice leadership, the GOP adopted a platform in 1976 that promised an antiabortion constitutional amendment.

Trade Wars

Trump is staunchly anti-free trade. He pledged “trade wars are good and easy to win.”

Trump promised to get out of Afghanistan, and didn’t.

Now, Trump wants to erect “freedom cities” on federal land.

And the Right supports this because …. well, you know the reason … Trump proposed it.

If it was DeSantis who proposed “Freedom Cities on Government Land”, he would have been roundly criticized by everyone and sent to the loony bin for being a RINO.

Returning to the WSJ article, here’s a view I solidly agree with.

Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a former Republican senator and governor, said Trump’s ideas were “antithetical to conservative thought and conservative history.” The federal government funds only a small portion of elementary and secondary education and yet Trump would use that money to “mandate 100% of the control.”

“That’s not conservative—but that’s the point: Trump is not a conservative,” said Gregg. “He’s an iconoclastic populist, and his views have no relation to any philosophical views. They’re all related to his personal views, which are built on all sorts of different platforms depending on what he sees in the mirror in the morning.”

That no doubt will trigger calls of me having TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) from those who have TDS Type II, Trump can do or say nothing wrong.

Even some of Trump’s allies have privately expressed doubts about several of his proposals. Several former Trump administration officials said they were skeptical of the feasibility of the former president’s plan, announced in a video message on his social-media platform last month, to establish an “American Academy” funded by “taxing, fining and suing” what he calls “excessively large” private university endowments. Trump pitched the government-backed free online school as an alternative to the current higher education system. “There will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed,” Trump said.

“Free Online Government School!”

Apparently, government indoctrination, is OK, as long as it what Trump wants. He gets to decide the agenda of these “free” schools. And tax hikes are OK as long as they support that indoctrination.

Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought Republicans would propose such a thing as “free federal online schools paid for by tax hikes.”

Then again, Trump is not Republican. He’s the biggest RINO in history.

Oops, here comes another round of TDS charges.

Do You Recall What Was the Deal?

And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

They were singin’, “Bye-bye, My Republican Pie”
Drove my Chevy to The Levee, but The Levee was dry
And Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
Singin’, “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

The Devil We Had Is Better Than the Devil We Got

Despite economic madness from Trump, The Devil We Had Is Better Than the Devil We Got

Voters have a choice between the devil they know and the devil they know. Polls show voters don’t like the choice, but if forced to make a choice between the two, Trump would win. That is what happens when the party promises a moderate and delivers a radical Progressive nutcase.

The saving grace in Trump’s proposal is that it is so economically stupid that Republicans would no go for it.

Unfortunately, Democrats who endorse all kinds of “free” stuff supported by tax hikes, might be thrilled with Trump’s plan. They would get the funding now, then when in total control, change the indoctrination to suit their needs. And tax hikes would support it.

Article posted with permission from Mish Shedlock