Neither Project 2025 nor J.D. Vance is a sign Trump would accomplish more than he did last time.
By Ramesh PonnuruJuly 18, 2024 at 12:12 p.m. EDTTwo recent developments in the presidential campaign have strengthened one school of thought about what a second Trump administration would bring. Both have been taken to mean that if Donald Trump wins in November, the next four years will see a more disciplined effort to recast American government than we saw from 2017 through 2021. The first is Trump’s choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio) as a running mate. The second is the intensifying Democratic attack on Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s set of plans for a second Trump administration.
The polls have also given new urgency to the question of what another Trump term would look like. The Republicans in Milwaukee this week for their national convention can look forward to the real prospect of a November sweep that puts them in charge of the White House, the House and the Senate. The last time they won an election that big, in 2016, it took them as much by surprise as it did the Democrats. If Republicans find themselves with unified control of the federal government in 2025, they will have had more time to plan. But although both Trump’s most ardent fans and his fiercest foes have convinced themselves otherwise, it’s not at all obvious that he would accomplish more than he did last time.
The official Republican story about the party’s last stint in power is that it was a tremendous success. Working with Republicans in Congress, Trump cut taxes, halted the growth of regulation and appointed conservative judges to the federal courts. But an undercurrent of disappointment about Republican failures, from the non-construction of the promised southern border wall to the non-repeal of the Affordable Care Act, is influencing how Republicans think about Trump’s possible second term.
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Trump’s most devoted supporters have gravitated toward a common explanation for what went wrong when Trump was in office: He was sabotaged by disloyal underlings — by “deep state” bureaucrats, by Never Trumpers, by old-guard Republicans who resisted his orders. Some of them allow as well that Trump came to office without detailed plans or knowledge of how to manipulate the levers of government.
Follow this authorRamesh Ponnuru's opinionsFollowThe prescription follows from the diagnosis: This time, Trump should come into office with a pre-set agenda and stack his administration with true believers committed to it. He should exert more control over the executive branch and acquire greater power to hire and fire to facilitate that control.
When Trump took office in 2017, he could not staff his administration with officials who were fully on board with his leadership because there were not enough of them. But lower-ranking officials from the last term would now have the credentials to move higher. Trump-allied institutions such as the Heritage Foundation have been trying to develop lists of potential policies and personnel from which he would be able to draw. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo asserts that because of an “emerging right-wing counter-elite,” Trump 2.0 would “be an order of magnitude more effective.” Trump critics worry that Rufo is right. And Trump has fueled these hopes and fears by selecting Vance as his running mate.
If the problem with Trump 1.0 was too many old-school Republicans and not enough dedication to Trump, replacing people like Mike Pence with people like Vance would be the solution. Pence was a loyal vice president until nearly the end, when Trump made him choose between obeying him and obeying the Constitution. But Pence is very much a pre-Trump Republican. Since his own presidential bid failed last year, he has launched an organization dedicated to the old Republican verities of free markets, global leadership and moral conservatism.
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Since becoming a supporter of Trump, Vance, by contrast, has in some ways gone even further than his running mate in breaking with the old orthodoxy and taking leadership of a “New Right.” Vance led the charge against U.S. aid to Ukraine, arguing that putting America first demanded no less, even as Trump helped House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) cut a deal to send such aid. Vance’s office has worked more closely with union leaders on legislation than the Trump administration ever did.
Vance has also gone further than nearly any other Republican official in arguing for expansive presidential authority over the executive branch, saying in 2021 that he would advise Trump to fire “every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” and ignore courts that got in the way. Vance has also suggested that he would have aided Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 results.
Exhibit B for the theory that a second Trump administration would be more disciplined and goal-directed than the first one is Project 2025. Progressives have in recent weeks been trying to rouse the public into alarm — sometimes with false claims about it. Its roughly 900 pages of policy recommendations do not, for example, include any proposals to end no-fault divorce, repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or cut Social Security.
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Andrew Prokop, who has written a useful summary of what it does include for the liberal news site Vox, divides........