Thread by @SethCotlar

Good for Joe Walsh for speaking his anti-Trump truth, yadda yadda, but I have a question about one perplexing claim he makes. He says Weld is a moderate, but Trump also needs a challenge from the right. What lies to Trump's right that isn't worse Trump?
nytimes.com/2019/08/14/opi…

Joe raises the issue of deficits and spending in his piece. But Weld is a traditional Republican on deficits. No difference there.

Joe also touts free trade vs. Trump's tariffs. But again, Weld is with him on that as well.

Does Joe have in mind foreign policy? As in, Weld seems more invested in the bipartisan, vaguely neocon foreign policy consensus of the early 2000s? If so, does that mean "further right than Trump" means even more anti-UN and isolationist?

Is Joe thinking about regulations and entitlements? As in, Weld might be too compassionate of a conservative and so we need someone who will slash even more regulations and more entitlements than Trump? Is that to Trump's right?

These are genuine questions. I'm assuming Joe knows what he means by the phrase "to Trump's right," but I really, genuinely have no idea what that means in policy terms. And I study politics and the history of conservatism for a living.

Take another policy, immigration. What could possibly be to Trump's right on immigration that isn't wrapping the nation in military grade, radioactive saran wrap?

Knowing what I know about Joe Walsh's politics, I don't think he's got cultural issues in mind here. I don't think he's saying he wants someone to Trump's right on gay marriage or on issues of race.

Again, WTH would a conservative who was "to the right" of Trump look like?

I can picture the spectrum that runs from the center-right to the left. It has to do with how comfortable one is using state power (regulations, taxation, entitlement programs) to support the less powerful and less inter-generationally resourced portions of the populace.

But when I picture Trump as in "the center" of the right, I'm still struggling to imagine what it is that makes a particular policy further right or to Trump's left (but still conservative).

As one commentator pointed out, it's easy for US to say that what lay to Trump's right is someone like Tucker Carlson or Ann Coulter or Richard Spencer. It's the exclusionary and spiteful racism that makes those people "to the right" of Trump. But that's not what Walsh means.