President Ronald Reagan entered life in the White House with a mandate, after defeating an incumbent president by 10 percentage points, and Republicans got control of the Senate for the first time in 26 years, but President-elect Donald Trump may be more effective at bringing about real change, political analyst Jeff Greenfield writes in an opinion piece Friday.
Reagan, like Trump, made a call for political change, but after eight years, no Cabinet departments or Great Society programs were eliminated, and budget deficits were at peacetime records, and even two of the president's Supreme Court appointees, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy voted in favor of Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling, says Greenfield in his Politico article.
Trump, on the other hand lost the popular vote by what may become 2 million votes and the Electoral College through victories in three states, but he also has Republican majorities in the entire Congress, unlike Reagan, and plans sweeping changes to healthcare, the environment, and more.
He has also threatened to eliminate several key trade agreements, and his Supreme Court choices neither approve of gay marriage or abortion.
Compromise was "a guiding principle" of Reagan's political life, however, writes Greenfield, and even though the GOP controlled the Senate, many were moderate to the point of being liberal, and would not have rejected Great Society legislation.
Now, congressional Republicans are "a more and more homogenous, ideologically militant party, whose members’ biggest fear is being “primaried," writes Greenfield and have "embraced tactics, including a threat to upend the global financial system by holding the debt ceiling hostage, that would have been considered unthinkable a few years ago, and as such will not likely constrain Trump.
Trump will also likely make sweeping changes in the Supreme Court, said Greenfield, noting that "starting with Clarence Thomas, every nominee has lined up exactly where the politics of the president would have suggested."
"Trump is more than happy to cede the Supreme Court to those who care most about it, as a way of protecting his right flank from attack — just as his list of proposed court nominees won him crucial support from the evangelical right, and from allies like Hugh Hewitt," said Greenfield.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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