While the Heritage Foundation has a history of supporting more “establishment” Republicans, their analysis of Trump should shut up the “never-Trump” crowd for good.
What things do Trump’s detractors on the right have to criticize, except his Twitter feed? Trump gutted the heart out of Obamacare in repealing the individual mandate, signed the first significant tax reform package since the 1980s, annihilated most of ISIS’s territorial holdings, rolled back regulations on the books a few decades, sent the Dow Jones soaring over 8,000 points in a year-and-a-half, appointed a conservative Supreme Court Justice, and is packing the federal courts with his own appointees.
But don’t just take my word for it – Heritage has reviewed Trump’s first year, and found that he’s been pretty much in line with the kind of conservative policies they support. In other words, while Trump isn’t a traditional conservative, he’s sure doing a heck of a lot of good for the philosophy.
As the New York Times reported regarding the study,
The results, Heritage found in its review, exceeded even the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, whose tenure has long been the conservative gold standard.
While Heritage found much that it liked about Mr. Trump’s first year, it also found much that could be improved on — most notably the snail’s pace of nominations by the White House. Of the 635 major postings across the executive branch that require Senate confirmation, the White House has no nominee for 245 of those.
I’m a bit confused here – is Heritage really trying to pretend that the lack of nominations isn’t deliberate? Trump has had no problem appointing people to agencies that they have publicly stated they want to destroy (such as Mick Mulvaney being appointed to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), and it’s a guarantee that if Trump hasn’t appointed someone to a position, it’s because it’s a position he views as unnecessary.
More from the report:
As eight years of a Democratic administration drew to a close, Heritage began developing in 2016 a list of 334 policy prescriptions that a new Republican administration could adopt. It included a variety of actions, like reimposing work requirements for welfare recipients, ending the program that shields young immigrants brought here illegally as children, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and eliminating certain gender identity protections.
Heritage said that 64 percent of those items were enacted by the administration either through executive order or another means of enforcement, or included in Mr. Trump’s budget, which has not been voted on by Congress.
By contrast, how did Ronald Reagan score his first year?
Forty-nine percent on Heritage’s scale.
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