A FReeper discussion on the history of Trump's conservative pro-America positions

Some people claim that Trump only recently arrived at most of these viewpoints, so I'd like to discuss Trump's history with each of these issues (sorry for the length but I think these important topics deserve to be delved into).

Trump’s political registration records since 1987 are public and available online. During this period, Trump has been a registered Republican for more than twice as long as he was a registered Democrat. If people would bother to read his books, look at the full-page ads he took out on policy issues in the 1980s, and watch his old interviews in their entirety, it should become clear to them that he was never an actual “liberal” and was always to the right of Rudy Giuliani for example. Most of the people attacking Trump from the right only have heard bits and pieces of the full story of his past views or they are prone to great exaggeration about his current positions. He has always leaned towards a nationalist-populist stance that places the safety and economic security of Americans first. Some people may not see that as “conservative,” but it is fundamentally about conserving the nation.

Build the wall. Enforce the law. Deport them all. End sanctuary cities. End anchor babies. Slap a moratorium on muslim immigration.

Already in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump was talking about the problems of an open border and illegals ("America is experiencing serious social and economic difficulty with illegal immigrants who are flooding across our borders…It is a scandal when America cannot control its own borders…It comes down to this: we must take care of our own people first. Our policy to people born elsewhere should be clear: Enter by the law, or leave."). He made clear that he thought Americans' interests (which includes safety) should be put first, which is the main reason for his Muslim entry moratorium proposal now. In 2011, he said on O’Reilly and in a CBN interview that’s on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWzDAvemJG8) that the world has a “Muslim problem,” because of all the Islamic terrorist attacks.

By 2011 in his book, Time to Get Tough, he was calling for a border wall, many more border patrol agends, an end to citizenship for “anchor babies,” and deportation of illegal criminals. In a similar vain to his speeches now, he wrote: “Look, if a nation can’t protect its own borders, it ceases to be a country.” He explicitly wanted U.S. immigration laws wholeheartedly enforced (“This wholesale abdication of a president’s constitutional duties is as shocking as it is foolish…Sacrificing American laws on the altar of political expediency is immoral”).

In 2013 in multiple tweets, his CPAC speech, and an interview with the Breitbart website, he said the proposed amnesty bill was a "monstrosity" and would be the death of the Republican Party.

It’s true that Trump only came around to the idea of actively working to deport all non-criminal illegals last year, but too many Cruz supporters throw up an example or two of his older position on deportations to pretend that he hasn’t been very hardline on securing the border, a separate but related issue, for many years now. (And while we’re on the subject, why did Cruz as recently as Dec. use weasel words to avoid committing to actively working to deport illegals? I listened to him do that twice with my own ears.)

Cut the taxes. Cut the spending. Cut the regulations. Cut the government. Cut the debt. Cut the EPA.

Even in the 1980s, Trump was clearly for fighting government wastefulness and ineptitude and for less regulations on business and cutting back on the bureaucracy. His most famous book, The Art of the Deal (1987), is replete with stories of government overregulation that made doing business an extraordinary challenge. In the Wollman Rink story and some of the nonsense about the NYC convention center especially, Trump exposed the tendency of the government to be incompetent and to egregiously waste taxpayer dollars. Throughout the book, he clearly saw cutting costs and working as efficiently as possible as huge positives. He also discussed the challenges the city government was having with building over the water on, I think, the Hudson River because of hand-tying environmental regulations. In The America We Deserve (2000), he attacked bureaucrats as “morons” and coined the term “buron” (a portmanteau of bureaucrat and moron).

In a 1987 full-page newspaper ad, in which he mainly criticized the trade deficit, he called for federal tax cuts. It’s true that in The America We Deserve (2000), he called for a one-time wealth tax on the very rich to pay off the national debt, but he thought that the ensuing economic boom (that he believed eliminating the debt would create) would more than make up the money lost for most wealthy people. He saw a large national debt as a threat to the future of the country. Overall, he called for much lower taxes for the middle class and effusively praised Giuliani's reduction of taxes in NYC, specifying each tax cut Guiliani enacted and what the benefits of each were. He spent more of the book talking about tax cuts than discussing his one-time tax increase for a tiny percentage of Americans that had a conservative end goal.

Repeal ObamaCare. Get the feds out and allow health insurance to be sold over state lines.

Trump actually entitled one of his chapters in Time to Get Tough (2011), “Repeal Obamacare.” He wrote in depth about all the negatives of Obamacare, and it’s something he mentions in almost all of his speeches. (What he specifically wants to replace it with is on his website under “positions.”)

A lot of conservatives are troubled that in The America We Deserve (2000), Trump said that the ultimate goal of the country should be single-payer health care for all. He has since backtracked on this, but even there, he spent a few sentences on single-payer and made it clear that was something for the future and not now. He then spent the rest of the chapter saying that there were many things we could do now to improve our private health care system as it was then in 2000. The main thing he focused on was--wait for it--eliminating state insurance boundaries and state specific regulations so that insurance buyers would have more (and cheaper) choices. What did he say that Obamacare should be replaced with eleven years later in Time to Get Tough? Allowing insurance to be sold over state lines. It seems obvious what aspect of health care he’s always been most eager to change, and it has nothing to do with single-payer.

In The America We Deserve (2000), he called out the damage that teachers unions and federal centralization were doing to the education system. He wanted school choice, decentralization, the ability to fire incompetent teachers, etc. His opposition to Common Core is totally consistent with his stances from over a decade and a half ago.

Get a handle on trade. Make trade deals in our own best interests. Bring back capital. Bring back manufacturing. Bring back jobs. Strengthen the economy.

Already by the 1980s, Trump was talking repeatedly about remedying the trade imbalance and about how we were getting ripped off by foreign nations because of our incompetent leaders and negotiators (as shown by his 1987 full-page ad in the NY Times and WaPo and in several interviews, including one with Oprah that’s on YouTube). This was the main topic of his first political speech in 1988 in New Hampshire (discussed in the somewhat slanted article: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/donald-trump-first-campaign-speech-new-hampshire-1987-213595).

He later went into this issue in much more depth in Time to Get Tough (2011) in his chapter on China, which especially criticized China for monetary devaluation that made their goods dirt cheap and our goods uncompetitive, costing us many manufacturing jobs. He wants to use leverage to renegotiate trade deals, with tariffs used as a last resort if certain foreign nations insist on taking advantage of us and refuse to negotiate fairer deals (“Open markets are the ideal, but if one guy is cheating the whole time, how is that free trade?”).

A lot of people criticize him for writing sixteen years ago in The America We Deserve that he was in favor of banning assault weapons. In that book, however, he actually spent more time criticizing gun control than he did calling for it. In particular, he condemned the Democrats for wanting to take away law-abiding citizens' handguns, which he thought would serve to leave only the criminals armed (he's very tough on crime in the book). Even with the support for a ban on assault weapons at the time, his overall position on guns was actually quite conservative for a New Yorker (not to even mention that he wrangled a very hard to get concealed carry permit for himself in NYC). He has recently said that his sons, who are big hunters and NRA members, helped convince him to move more to the right on this issue.

As I mentioned, he was very hardcore tough on crime and pro-police in The America We Deserve. He eviscertated those who excuse criminals and put their welfare above that of innocent citizens, especially judges who are soft on criminals or let them out of prison prematurely. On the other hand, he lavished praise on mayors like Giuliani who cracked down on crime. This attitude was evidenced earlier too in a 1988 full-page newspaper ad which called for hard anti-crime measures and a reinstatement of the death penalty in NY.

Pushing for religious freedom seems to be a new thing for him that started when some pastors told him (apparently to his surprise) that they held back on political involvement because of fear of losing their tax exempt status. About religion more generally, he has talked in the past about how his former pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, influenced him. He included a photo of his confirmation class as a young teenager at the First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica, Queens in Surviving at the Top (1990), Time to Get Tough (2011), and Crippled America (2015). It’s obviously a favorite photo of his.

I don’t remember him talking much about judges before the last few months (except to criticize Roberts on Twitter for the Obamacare rulings when they came down), but he did talk glowingly of the First Amendment in The America We Deserve (2000). He said in his recent press conference at the Old Post Office in D.C. that he is working with the Heritage Foundation to create a list of around 10 conservative judges that he would commit to choosing from for his Supreme Court picks. Once that list is ready, Trump’s opponents will no longer seriously be able to claim that he will appoint leftists or even moderates to the highest court.

By 2000, he was for cracking down hard on terrorism, which he saw as a big growing threat. Terrorism was also a topic that he criticized Bill Clinton and his administration over in his book. The threat of terrorism was a large focus of The America We Deserve. He devoted a whole chapter to it, plus discussed it in various other places in the book. This was, of course, the book where he mentioned Osama Bin Ladin before 9/11.

In Time to Get Tough (2011), he was for strengthening the military, but using it more judiciously (“Only go to war to win”). He devoted an entire chapter to “Taking the Oil.” He predicted that the Iraqis would never be able to keep control over it themselves. In regard to foreign policy he wrote: “American interests come first. Always. No apologies.”

End political correctness. Take the GOP head-on. Take the media head-on. Take the liberals head-on. And win, baby, win.

His whole life he’s been excessively frank and often called out over it (think for example of the old Phil Donahue interview where Donahue unsuccessfully tried to get Trump to take back his calling NYC’s Democratic mayor Ed Koch a “moron”). He has always refused to allow anybody to prevent him from speaking his mind. It’s about time we have a politician like that.

In the America We Deserve (2000), he criticized both parties, and even though some like to pretend that it’s a leftists tome, he spent more of the book criticizing liberals than anyone else specifically (especially on issues of crime and regulations, though certainly not only on those points). He devoted a whole chapter to the media in Time to Get Tough (2011). (He singled out Lawrence O’Donnell, Bob Beckel, Charles Krauthammer, and Chuck Todd for special criticism, e.g. “The thing I find most offensive about Chuck Todd is the fact that he pretends to be an objective journalist, when in reality the guy is a partisan hack.”)

Trump has seemed to be fixated on winning his whole life. It is something he talks about in The Art of the Deal (1987). In the second chapter on the “elements of the deal,” he essentially lays out various ways to help ensure winning as much as possible. The main point of The Art of the Comeback (1997) is essentially how to win (in the frontispiece for that book, he quoted Churchill: “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival”).

All of the above on a shoestring budget compared to most of the 16 competitors he’s defeated (after they spent 100's of millions of donor bucks).

What’s democrat about any of the above? What’s not conservative? What’s not to like?

He spent several pages of The America We Deserve (2000) criticizing "soft money" and corruption in politics. He also said then that if he ran for president, he would not accept money from big donors (he likewise made a point of insisting then that if he did run, he would be a far less “boring” candidate than usual).

Redo the horrid Iran deal. Take a serious look at NATO. Require our allies to pay more for their defense.

Rebuild the Reagan Coalition and attract blue collar workers by making America first again on manufacturing, trade, secure borders, economy and jobs, jobs, jobs!

In his 1987 newspaper ad, he wrote: “Make Japan, Saudi Arabia, and others pay for the protection we extend our allies… ‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America. End our huge deficits, reduce our taxes, and let America’s economy grow unencumbered by the cost of defending those who can easily afford to pay us for the defense of their freedom”—a statement entirely consistent with his current stance on NATO and foreign affairs in general.

In his interview with Larry King at the Republican National Convention in 1988 (where he was guest of George H.W. Bush), Trump noted that people he had the most affinity with were the workers like the taxi drivers, not the wealthy. In the History Channel documentary on Trump from a few months ago, Al D’Amato remembered Trump’s positive attitude towards and interaction with the regular folks who worked for him. In the 1980 interview Trump did with Rona Barrett (also shown in the documentary), he said that he thought he was perhaps put on earth to provide jobs for people. He also said that he would be happy to devote his life to this country by running for president, but that he thought it would be a hard life because a good personality is often valued over someone who is right but has unpopular views.

Wow! Maybe we should hope the server goes down more often if this is how you spend your off-air time! An excellent and very insightful analysis.

I have hoped for and waited for a “citizen president” for ages, one who would have already achieved success in business and how then turned to give back to his country. Donald Trump is a perfect example of that. Not a perfect man or a perfect conservative, but who amongst us is? (And who is qualified to judge?) But I truly believe that if Trump is elected he will tackle the right priorities and make enough positive change that it will trigger a rebirth of traditional America. I don’t need a President who preaches social policy or moral values - but if President Trump can set the nation on a path of economic growth and prosperity, all of those problems will be resolved by others, just as they have been in the past. Tom Peters is famous for saying that “Management is doing things right, while leadership is doing the right things”. Donald Trump is the leader we need at this point in history; he will do the right things.

If it’s left to the convention, we’re screwed. They’ll change the rules, appoint a GOPe RINO and Hillary waltzes into the White House.

Cruz has no realistic shot at 1237 so Trump must get there.

Or, they should unite now for America and git ‘er done!

A Trump/Cruz ticket with supporters united would be undeniable at the convention and would steamroll over the godless America-hating democrats in November in a landslide with coattails to elect veto proof majorities in both houses of congress.

Then we’d really be set to restore America from the SCOTUS down and make her great again!

The anti-Trump crowd seems to have a bit in common with the “sufferers” of the so-called “Stockholm syndrome”. So damaged and betrayed by your typical politician, when offered a way to freedom, they reject it and cling to their oppressors. Namely, the political class cabal, like Cruz, who beat them, shocked them, lied to them, screwed them over, cursed them, maligned them, treated them like chattel. So damaged by the political class, they cannot comprehend any alternative way of living.

Repeal ObamaCare. Get the feds out and allow health insurance to be sold over state lines.

I am all in favor of this. Ironically, it is the same position Mitt Romney held in 2012. However, I find it deeply disturbing when Trump says things like "Everybody’s got to be covered" and "I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now." This smacks of big government paternalism, which is the antithesis of Conservatism.

Repeal Obamacare? Hell yes. End the federal ban on interstate commerce for insurance? Even better. But when you tell me the government is going to take care of me? I know I am about to be screwed. Not even Obamacare goes this far.

If it’s left to the convention, we’re screwed. They’ll change the rules, appoint a GOPe RINO

I don't see Cruz's delegates abandoning him after the first ballot. Can't say that for Trump since he has no idea who his delegates are.

Well, if he’s opening it up for insurance companies to compete for business over state lines, that’s not government. It’s private.

He’s hoping everyone gets covered by private insurance, but on the other hand, he appears to be wanting government to cover the indigent. I’m not in love with the latter part, but we the taxpayers and consumers of healthcare services already pick up that tab anyway, through higher taxes, higher premiums and higher healthcare costs. Maybe he thinks it can be controlled better with an isolated program for the indigent and uninsurable? He’s stated many times that we shouldn’t want people dying in the streets for want of healthcare. At any rate, those kinds of programs should be handled at the state and local levels.

Ronald Reagan was a Democrat when Democrats still loved America and stood up for traditional family values. Trump was a registered democrat during periods when the democrat party was indistinguishable from the Communist Party. Ronald Reagan left the democrat party before it became the party of Marx and Lenin and gay rights and anti-Christian philosophies and abortion on demand.

Fill in the blank:

+/- 20-25 years before becoming a prominent conservative and eventual Republican presidential candidate, ___________began his political career as a Democrat. He joined numerous political committees with a left-wing orientation, such as the American Veterans Committee. He fought against Republican-sponsored right-to-work legislation.

He planned to lead an anti-nuke demonstration and only his employer's intervention prevented it. He was elected president of a large, famous union twice--a union which had known communists among its members. He appeared ONSTAGE to endorse the Democratic presidential candidate, who subsequently won.

19 years later, as a governor he signed into law a liberalization of abortion that led to an explosion of abortions in his state.

Almost 20 years later, as president, he signed a law that legalized all illegal immigrants who had arrived in the US during the first almost 200 years of the existence of our nation.

I'll fill in the blank for you: our greatest president of the 20th century, known as Ronaldus Magnus, RONALD REAGAN.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.