Opinion | The GOP’s Moderate Frontrunner

Back in 2016, the most moderate Republican candidate in the race was Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who lost everywhere except his home state.

Perhaps the most moderate candidate in the GOP field as of this moment is former President Donald Trump.

He established himself as a different sort of Republican beginning in 2015. If you want a Republican who won’t cut spending or start foreign wars, he is still your man.

Added to this now is clearly a discomfort with the fight over abortion in the post-Roe environment.

Trump’s main line of attack against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is from the left. He’s hitting the Florida governor hard for his past support for reining in Social Security and Medicare. His super PAC’s ad on this theme is functionally indistinguishable from the countless spots Democrats have run over the years attacking Republicans for even looking at entitlements crosswise.

All that’s missing is an image of DeSantis pushing an elderly person in a wheelchair over a cliff, although Trump made a favorable reference to that infamous anti-Paul Ryan ad in a Truth Social post.

He’s also called the governor’s culture-war clash with Disney “so unnecessary” and “a political stunt,” while not entering the fray in the conservative war with Bud Light.

Of course, Trump’s personal power is such that he’s made loyalty to himself and to his claims that the 2020 election was stolen the standard for being considered right-wing — orthodox conservatives who reject Trump are more apt to be labeled moderates than Trump himself.

The substantive definition of the right is also up for grabs. What is the more right-wing position? Trump saying that he’ll end the Ukraine war in a day through his personal diplomacy — the kind of naive position once associated with soft-headed Democrats — or a hawk saying that he’ll continue to arm Ukraine to the hilt? It depends who you ask.

All of this is an indication of how Trump can be ideologically difficult to pin down, which benefited him in 2016 — both in the primaries and in the general — and could work for him again.

The alleged radicalism of Donald Trump has mostly to do with his personal conduct, his outrageous statements, his conspiracy theories and his contempt for norms and rules. None of these are to be dismissed lightly — indeed, they made for a toxic brew after his loss in the 2020 election — but none of them is ideological, either.

In theory, it’d be possible to be perfectly polite and support a border wall (in fact, this describes most Republicans), or be in favor of open borders and be just as fond as Trump is of coming up with insulting nicknames for rivals.

If Trump were given a magic wand to move America in his direction policy-wise on his core commitments, and we had a secure border, more tariffs, fewer foreign entanglements, greater domestic energy production, the status-quo on entitlements, and a step toward the center-right and away from what Trump calls the “radical-left lunatics” on most cultural issues, no one would think he or she were living in a right-wing dystopia — at least not if they didn’t know who was wielding the wand.

It’s Trump’s unique contribution to take an issue mix that could have broad appeal and make it toxic by association with himself.

In the 2016 nomination fight, Trump’s approach — getting to the rest of the field’s right on some issues (immigration, China) and to its left on others (especially entitlements) — paved his path to the nomination. That road didn’t run through self-described “very conservative” voters, but “somewhat” conservatives.

Ted Cruz put up the stiffest resistance, but winning the very conservatives, or winning them overall by a relatively small margin (42-36 percent according to an ABC News analysis), wasn’t enough for him to overcome Trump’s standing with the somewhat conservatives and moderates.

The crucial South Carolina primary illustrated the dynamic perfectly. According to the exit polling, Cruz won very conservative voters, with 35 percent to Trump’s 29 and Rubio’s 19.

Trump won somewhat conservatives, with 35 percent to Rubio’s 25 and Cruz’s 17. And Trump won moderates, with 34 percent to Rubio’s 23 and Kasich’s 21.

In other words, Trump was competitive with the very conservatives while besting the other candidates with the other two factions.

Now, Trump has reversed the poles of his support. He’s most formidable with very conservatives and DeSantis is strongest with somewhat conservatives. The governor’s strategy of trying to peel off Trump supporters among the very conservative voters by getting to his right on substance, while appealing to the center-right with an electability argument, makes sense in theory.

On the one hand, it’s possible that Trump, by softening on abortion and other culture-war issues, is doing DeSantis’ work for him, especially in the crucial early state of Iowa. On the other hand, the governor could lose voters who care about electability if a sense takes hold that his six-week abortion ban, anti-woke educational initiatives and war on Disney go too far for voters in a general election; there are mutterings about this among donors and politicos. Trump’s distinctive moderation plays into his counter-electability case — according to the latest Yahoo poll, a majority of Republicans think Trump is a better bet to win a general than DeSantis.

Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, Barry Goldwater famously said in his signature riff in his 1964 acceptance speech. That may be true enough, but Donald Trump, of all people, is out to demonstrate that it could be a virtue in pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.