February 22, 2025 - 10:00pm
As Republicans abandon the bow-tied gentility of the Reagan era in favour of the “based” rhetorical and governing styles wrought by Donald Trump, it has become commonplace to describe this trend as the MAGAfication of conservatism. But, as Trump’s message to CPAC 2025 made clear, it is no less apt to think of it as the CPACification of MAGA; that is, the seamless absorption of traditional conservatism’s policy goals into the worldview of the president’s populist coalition. His closing address at this inner sanctum of the US Right, though littered with rambling Trumpisms (“I love beating George Washington!”), nonetheless confirmed not so much the disjuncture but the continuity between old and new.
Where Trump as a candidate in both 2016 and 2024 evinced little concern for the small government pieties of the Republican establishment, Trump once in power seemed to imbibe, as if by osmosis, the belief that nearly all of the country’s problems could be solved with cuts to either taxes or spending, or more likely, both. This explains the rush toward “the largest tax cuts in American history,” which the president called for in the speech (that were originally designed by Paul Ryan). It’s also noteworthy that Trump had outsized praise for the visiting Argentine leader Javier Milei, the Western Hemisphere’s chainsaw-wielding, arch-libertarian.
While Trump had no trouble bragging about axing DEI, USAID and the CFPB in his address, he had to find a much more artful and sensitive way to talk about Social Security and Medicare, programmes he has pledged to defend. This stance has put him at odds with Republican legislative offices and policy shops, who have been angling to make cuts for years. The resulting trade-off seems to be to assert widespread fraud and corruption (such as by claiming 150-year olds are receiving cheques) as a means to opening the political space to discuss potential changes to the programme, something press secretary Karen Leavitt had to make reassurances about on Fox News.
Even tariffs, which occupied a lengthy, protracted section of the speech (“my favourite word in the dictionary…” “will bring in so much money…”) had been anathema to the pre-Trump Right, has been folded into the new GOP orthodoxy, in such a way as to justify and compensate for tax cuts, which has been the central policy dogma of the party for over 40 years. Indeed, Trump harked back wistfully to a time “when we were very rich” before income tax and the welfare state.
Yet even as the president calls on his base to “fight, fight, fight” and boasts of “the highest poll numbers ever,” a rising tide of doubt and discontent is becoming evident not just from the usual; liberal and Democratic quarters. It is also coming from an array of key GOP-leaning constituencies set to be adversely affected by the cancellation of government services and contracts, not to mention the imposition of pain-inducing tariffs. Among these are veterans, farmers, small business, the elderly and red state communities more generally.
Perhaps the escalation of such opposition will bring about the long-delayed reckoning between the MAGA and CPAC halves of American conservatism, who may finally realise that they are not — and never have been — natural allies.
1TrueCuencoism
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeLarge coalitions inevitably entail internal conflicts, but don’t expect many of us to prefer the Democrats over CPAC, MAGA, or any combination thereof.
After having finished this article, I have no idea what I just read.
Essentially the right now has a similar problem to that which has been affecting the left for years, in that it will be getting pulled in different directions from differing wings of the party.
With the left you have the old working class, middle class managerialists and uni graduates, with the latter two having gained control in recent times.
On the right now you have a combination of Reagan neoliberals, libertarian tech bros, MAGA protectionists and Evangelical nutcases. Now the left are out of power they’ve lost their common enemy and it will be interesting to see how long it holds together
BB ” Now the left are out of power they’ve lost their common enemy”
The Left are down but not out; they’re apparently still bent in defense of the mad ideas that lost them the election in the first place. Have they rejected open borders, men in women’s sports and bathrooms or a massive, intrusive state?
There’s enough crazy remaining to galvanise the right for decades.
If they’re out of power they’re an irrelevance, you said yourself those more madcap ideas cost them the election so if they stick to them they’ll keep losing.
An unelectable opposition won’t be enough to hold together the diametrically opposed wings of the right however
As an Evangelical and a Trump supporter, I feel deeply offended by your dismissive phrase “evangelical nutcases.” You should be prosecuted for hate speech. Except I don’t believe in that sort of thing.
Bubbles can get quite big but they all burst in time.
The WWF ‘flood the zone’ style of course gets the crowd cheering. It’s retributive entertainment…until consequences start to become apparent, alongside the favouring of Trump’s Billionaire cronies. The great betrayal is coming. The contradictions in promises too great and we know which way he will lean if he has to choose between the ‘little guy’ and the Billionaire.
And as we now also see there was much more in the Putin-poodle notion than even many of his supporters thought credible.
The unravelling is inevitable. But as it progresses the search for scapegoats and smokescreens will not abate.
Can anyone name some government services that have been cut? We keep hearing this, but no essential services have been named.