Republicans’ midterm prospects are in free fall, with only the number of casualties of the blue wave in doubt. When Republicans finish picking through the electoral rubble, they will need to confront the absence of any plausible conservative governing philosophy or, for that matter, any coherent critique of Democrats. Sensing their dilemma, some are madly trying to redefine terms.
Vice President JD Vance has lamely tried to redefine “socialism” as having something to do with “replac[ing] American workers with foreigners workers” and wanting “boys to play in girls’ sports,” a formulation that bears no resemblance to any real-world political platform and that has nothing to do with socialism. But he cannot talk about actual socialism given that Republicans are the ones who, among other blunders, have resorted to a control-and-command economy and run up the debt.
Vance’s nonsense reminds us of the bankruptcy of any Republican political “philosophy” and its betrayal of traditional party views. This intellectual incoherence is especially evident in three key areas.
Trump decries ‘communism’ but acts like a Marxist. Donald Trump talks a good game about capitalism. “We will defeat the communists, and that’s what they are. They’re not socialists, they’re not Democrats, they’re communists,” Trump said at the Republicans’ midterm convention.” He vowed in an illegally taxpayer-funded ad to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.”
But, in practice, he has acted like a communist central planner. NPR reported recently, “The Trump administration has announced equity stakes in more than 30 private companies, imposed dozens of tariffs, and taken the unusual step of trying to lower interest rates via the Treasury Department.” It has not gone unnoticed that in the past a discrete crisis (e.g. the collapse of the car companies) necessitated government action, but now the only urgency is Trump’s frantic race to grab as much graft as possible before leaving office and to bully private actors into flattering and supporting him (e.g. intimidating news/media companies).
What he and his Republican flunkies will leave behind, however, is not merely a hobbled economy but the wreckage of a party that once demanded markets, not governments, direct economic activity. Cronyism, corruption, and protectionism are about as far from market capitalism as one can get.
Trump has created a fiscal disaster. The Congressional Budget Office reported last week: “The federal budget deficit totaled $2.0 trillion in fiscal year 2026, CBO estimates, $218 billion more than the deficit recorded in fiscal year 2025.” A president who vowed to balance the budget (!) and a party that has scorned every social spending proposal as unaffordable have rung up unprecedented debt that will put intense pressure on interest rates, create a drumbeat to slash vital spending (domestic and defense), hamstring the ability of future presidents and Congresses to meet policy challenges (e.g. rebuild the military Trump wrecked in the Iran war), and deprive the feds of fiscal spending capacity when a recession does arrive.
The fiscally conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget last Wednesday explained that depending on the future trajectory of debt spending, “debt would grow to between 124% of GDP and 133% of GDP” (emphasis in original). In comparison with the overall size of the economy, “Deficits by 2036 would grow to as high as 8.8% of GDP by 2036 — nearly three times the 3% target — based on our estimates and relative to CBO’s February baseline.”
Trump may want to direct his wrath at the Fed when it comes to interest rates, but he should try looking in the mirror. “Long-term interest rates have been marching upwards — and not because of anything that the Federal Reserve is doing,” former car czar Steve Rattner explained. “The rise brings higher costs for mortgage-seekers and businesses and may signal increasing worries about the state of federal finances.”
Trump came back into office promising to reduce the national debt and even begin to start paying it off. But the opposite has happened. A variety of policies — particularly his signature tax legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill — are adding to the deficit, at a time when we should be reducing it.
This looming debt creates a “premium” — investors will demand a higher long-term return on investment for the added risk. (Foreign investors may also pull back on U.S. holdings, leaving the burden of debt funding on an even shakier ground.)
For someone who worships the stock market, Trump should understand that higher Treasury and other debt rates make stocks comparatively less attractive, Rattner pointed out. And though stock prices are elevated for now, “if you separate out the artificial intelligence related stocks from the rest of the public companies, the market is actually down more than 5% from its peak just over a month ago.” (That might explain why Trump continues to hawk AI. It’s all that is holding the stock market together.)
Republicans wreck the military. While betraying conservative economic principles, Trump has obliterated any Republican claim to be the pro-military, strong-on-national-security party. He and his depraved secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have lost a war and weakened U.S. military posture in the Middle East and globally (forcing us to beat a humiliating retreat from the UK [!] because we can no longer defend our bases against threat of Iranian drones). As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said on Face the Nation, “Donald Trump was so fundamentally unprepared for this war that within days of the war starting, our billion-dollar air bases and naval bases in the region were obliterated by the Iranians. Every single American should be furious about that.”
Moreover, Hegseth is doing generational damage to the military, as AEI’s Kori Schake explained, by “importing the culture wars into the force in a way that damages both the military and the public’s trust in it.” She recounted:
He convenes troops for partisan purposes. . . . He relieved or coerced into retirement without explanation 23 senior officers, and in at least two cases replaced them with dramatically less qualified successors. He removed 80 officers from merit-based promotion lists, and precipitated the resignation in protest of the secretary of the Army. He attempted to censure and court martial a sitting senator. He revoked press access to the Pentagon. The U.S. has been at war for five months without a single Pentagon press briefing. Most dangerously, as the Quantico meeting demonstrated, he and the president are corroding the chain of command by encouraging disrespect for “the generals” and inculcating loyalty to themselves instead. Such politicization of the military destroys republics.
Democrats, once back in power, will uncover Hegseth’s malfeasance (e.g., potential war crimes, critical depletion of munitions). Repairing the damage will take years, and the Republican Party’s reputation as the party “strong on national security” may never recover.
In sum, MAGA’s fiscal recklessness, cronyism, corruption, spasms of central control, and military malpractice will be its enduring disastrous policy legacy and rob the party of any coherent conservative purpose or direction. Perhaps Republicans’ decision to hand their party and souls over to an unhinged, narcissistic ignoramus was ill-advised.
The amount of money Musk is pouring into the elections to support Republicans has me worried. No one should be allowed to buy our elections like that. And who knows what manner of chicanery may be employed with the vote count. I hope Dems have the spine this time around to challenge election results that are suspicious. Like they didn't do last time.
tRump and his toadies 'govern' through chaos, corruption, cruelty, and incompetence. He will be the most expensive president in US history not only in terms of the direct rebuilding costs but of the future reluctance of competent people to work in government and the military. What tRump is doing is nothing less than treason and he needs to be bagged and shipped off to The Hague for an independent war crimes trial.