Yes, Trump ran against "elements of movement-conservative orthodoxy," but Douthat overstates the extent he did so. He ran on tax cuts for the rich, repeal of ACA, guns, anti-abortion, calling climate change a hoax, & tough guy foreign policy. /1 nytimes.com/2020/08/22/opi…
His "populist" feints were obvious bs. He had no universal health care plan (unless "remove the lines" is a plan), he opposed raising the paltry minimum wage, he proposed a huge tax cut for the rich and corporations (still, his only signature piece of legislation)./2
Douthat risibly refers to the "populist pieces from his tax bill," one that even Forbes! said "helped billionaires pay less tax than the working class." /3
forbes.com/sites/camiloma…
I see what Douthat is doing here--he's saying, imagine if we took Trump's "populist" rhetoric seriously and eliminated the racism ("race-baiting"), the favoritism toward the rich, and the disdain he's shown in practice for the people he supposedly promised to help. /4
The question is whether you can really remove the racism, the plutocratic nature of his plans, and the disdain for governing--or whether those are the features and not the bugs of both Trumpism and the modern GOP./5
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