Donald Trump got elected in 2016 in no small part because he had the good sense to recognize a bad deal—and to offer voters a better one. One afternoon in May 2016, soon after knocking off16 Republican challengers to cinch his party’s presidential nomination, Trump matter-of-factly explained how he’d done it. Sitting in his Trump Tower office beside a replica model of a Trump airliner, the future president described for me a confrontation he’d just had with soon-to-be-House Speaker Paul Ryan, a proud avatar of small- government conservatism.
Trump realized that Ryan’s plan to finance a tax cut for the rich by cutting programs such as Medicaid and Social Security would harm the GOP’s White, blue-collar base. It offered voters a lousy deal, while Democrats promised a better one. “I told Paul, ‘We’ve got to win an election,’ ” Trump said. “There’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security,’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’ ” In the GOP primary, Trump had differentiated himself from the rest of the field by assiduously vowing to preserve those popular programs. It worked. Polls showed voters perceived him to be the most moderate candidate in the field and the likeliest to look out for their interests. As Trump told it, he’d rejected his party’s orthodoxy and made voters a better offer—one they’d gladly accepted.
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