Reasons for Conservative to Oppose Trump Even If He is an Economic Royalist

I want to revisit my past post on why some conservatives have warmed up to Trump and others have not.

This column explains why some Never Trumpers opposing him during the primaries and have changed their minds.  They feared that Trump was not an economic royalist.  It turned out that he was.  All reason to oppose him vanished.

In my personal opinion, fear that Trump was not an economic royalist is the silliest possible reason to oppose him.  Of course Trump is an economic royalist.  What else would he be?  No other ideology could possibly justify Trump, or allow him to pursue the career he has followed.  Of course he wants to remove all constraints on profit-making.  His whole life and being has been about worship of the almighty dollar.

But there are other eminently reasonable reasons for conservatives to oppose Trump, either before the election or now, even if he is an economic royalist.

Conservatives might fear Trump is not a social conservative.  (He isn't, but is willing to play one on TV for political advantage).

Or they might have feared that he would appoint someone like Judge Jeanine to the Supreme Court.  That particular fear did not pan out.  Trump has been completely orthodox in his judicial picks, but it was reasonable to fear that he might not.

Or they might have taken is talk about non-interventionism seriously.

Those were reasons to oppose Trump in the primaries, fears that he might not be a good Republican even if he was an economic royalist.  But there are other reasons conservatives might oppose Trump even after he won the nomination, and even to this day.

There are the reasons I gave before:

• That  he knew absolutely nothing about government or policy and showed no interest in learning.
• That he saw facts and evidence as things he could make up as he pleased, on the fly.
• That he had the attention span and impulse control of a small child.
• That his entire career was built on fraud.
• That he seemed to have no concept of the rule of law, or of the public good aside from his own personal interests
• That he appeared to think that if he won the federal government would be his own private property.
• That  he was blatantly appealing to hate and celebrating base impulses as "authenticity."
• His threats to use libel and anti-trust laws to silence his critics
• His encouragement of violence at his rallies.
• The prospect of such a man having his finger on the nuclear button.

And I can add other reasons that have come up since the election for conservatives to oppose Trump:

• His sons running his business empire while he runs the country.
• His appointment of his daughter and son-in-law to important positions of power that they showed no qualification for.
• The possibility that his foreign investments might create conflicts of interest.
• His apparent belief that the Justice Department is a tool to protect his allies and harass his opponents.
• The flagrant corruption of many of his nominees.
• His positive delight in alienating democracies and befriending dictators.
• The complete amorality of his foreign policy.
• His unwillingness to do any of the work involved in being a President.
• His disregard of the information resources available in favor of what he sees on TV.
• His lax approach to security.
• The whole disturbing Russia business.

Wait a minute, some conservatives may say.  Those the reasons that liberals oppose Trump.  Why should conservatives agree.

And I agree.  Those are reasons liberals oppose Trump.  They are also good reasons for conservatives to oppose him.  Liberals have other reasons to oppose Trump as well that conservatives do not share.  For instance:

• He is deconstructing the administrative state (as Steve Bannon puts it), otherwise known as wrecking the regulatory agencies by corruption and incompetence.
• His health plan, if it had gone through, could have stripped some 20 million people of their health insurance.
• He is still working at undermining Obamacare and stripping as many people of insurance as he can.
• His tax cuts are absurdly skewed to the top.
• His tax cuts threaten to precipitate a fiscal crisis and undermine Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
• He is stacking the federal bench with economc royalist judges.
• He wants to deport Dreamers and deny refuge to asylum seekers.
• He scapegoats immigrants and treats them with pointless cruelty.

But I get that to conservatives these (except perhaps that last) are reasons to support Trump.  They are policy matters.  Disagreements about policy are normal and will always be with us.  But there ought to be areas that liberals and conservatives agree on, as well as disagree.  The things I have cited above go to our whole system of government, law, and loyalty.  And when they stop being priority, we have a very serious problem.