>More conservative than Reagan. Not even close.
Yep. I expected Trump to be quite liberal on some issues, but that hasn’t happened. Trump’s the most conservative president since Calvin Coolidge.
Merely applying common sense and a realistic view of how the world works will inevitably lead someone toward conservative principles, even if that person never sits around musing philosophically about conservatism vs. liberalism. I do think, however, that since becoming president Trump has begun to see how the political swamp really works and is therefore maybe even unbeknownst to himself beginning to develop a more solid conservative foundation.
He’s been relentlessly attacked by former “friends” on the left, such as Schumer, and by the establishment on the nominal right. My gut feeling is that that is having a profound impact on him, and that to the extent that he may have been politically naive before, particularly regarding the true nature of liberalism, he is no longer as he is rapidly discovering true conservatism, and that it is really just another name for our foundational American principles and values.
Now THAT is saying something.