Suddenly socialist: Trump’s ideas on Intel, elections are not conservative | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Trump proposed a federal equity stake in Intel, contradicting free-market ideals.
- His election reform plans challenge state authority and conservative federalism.
- Republican defenses of Trump signal a departure from some conservative values.
Increased federal control of elections. More meddling in business, even taking ownership stakes in America’s big companies. Restricting unpopular free speech.
Republicans warned us that all of these would accompany a second Joe Biden term in the White House and, later, a Kamala Harris victory.
They are also all actions or proposals emanating from the supposed “conservative” who won, Donald Trump.
Much of it should cause anguish for those who spent decades building or defending principles such as federalism and deference to state and local priorities, free-market economics and free expression. Instead, far too many on the right are twisting themselves into knots to defend the very ideas they warned as recently as last year would haunt us if the country elected another Democratic president.
Forget AI; tell your kid to go to chiropractic school. There will soon be a boom in center-right elected officials and pundits whose spines are out of whack after a decade of Trumpism.
Consider Trump’s deal with Intel, the venerable semiconductor company that has fallen on hard times. The company sought billions in grants under a Biden-era law to boost chipmaking in the United States. In a meeting with Intel’s CEO, Trump reportedly threw out that the U.S. should get 10% of the company as a result, and the executive, Lip-Bu Tan, leapt at the offer.
Trump’s defenders laud the president’s business acumen and tough negotiating on behalf of the American people. But for decades, conservatives have understood that such state-driven capitalism leads to decisions that serve political needs over customer demands, economic imperatives and American innovation.
They also clearly labeled it what it is: socialism, or at least a form of it. Trump himself inveighs against that failed economic system, but because he adheres to very few underlying principles, he blurted out an offer that should horrify the president’s staunch Republican supporters. And a distressed CEO took it.
Conservatives should want local control of elections
Republicans have sounded alarms at Democratic plans to subvert local control of elections. They want the federal government to require more mail-in voting and same-day registration and nullify state laws requiring photo identification, among other things. States, Republicans argue, can best shape elections based on what their communities need.
So, why is a Republican president threatening to use federal power in the other direction? Trump has said he would, by executive order, seek to curtail mail balloting and even eliminate voting machines — a logistical nightmare and a particular burden for large, urban counties with millions of voters.
Keep in mind, partisans tend to recommend election changes that they think will help them or at least hurt the other guy. That’s part of why Trump’s push — which the White House has walked back a little — is odd. Republicans utilize mail balloting as much as Democrats. There are excesses and security issues that should be addressed, as Texas has, to keep ballots from sloshing around and curtail the crime of “harvesting” votes. But Trump repeatedly offers to unilaterally disarm, while his political advisers have to constantly remind him that he and other Republicans need such votes to win.
It’s especially noxious that, as with so much of his agenda, Trump seeks to make these changes by simply ordering them. That kind of arbitrary executive power is increasingly employed by leaders in both parties, but at least conservatives have made a principled case for it and for Congress’ policymaking supremacy under the Constitution.
Well, they used to.
Flag-burning is free speech, like it or not
Trump’s move on flag-burning is trickier. What’s the higher conservative value: patriotism or freedom of expression? Burning the American flag is a form of protected speech under a 1989 Supreme Court ruling written by a conservative legend, Justice Antonin Scalia.
The president, who has literally hugged flags on stage to demonstrate his love of country, tried to split the issue by ordering vigorous prosecution of other crimes committed by flag burners. Certain crimes of public endangerment should be vigorously policed, but cracking down on demonstrators who happen to do one thing that isn’t otherwise prosecutable is too cute by half.
In politics, positions evolve, language changes and priorities shift. The conservatism of George W. Bush was not quite that espoused by Ronald Reagan, who himself did not completely mirror one of the original conservative heroes, Barry Goldwater. But that doesn’t make alignment with Trump automatically “more conservative.” It’s a corruption of the language, equating whatever Republicans approve of at the moment with an ideological tradition and its principled roots.
Democrats engage in this flip-flopping and hypocrisy, too. With Trump back in power, they’ve fallen back in love with the Senate filibuster, state control of politics and limits on executive power.
Trump has remade huge portions of the Republican Party, bringing in more working-class voters who don’t necessarily approach voting in ideological terms. Where he could not change the GOP, he offered enough enticements to segments such as pro-life voters to keep them enthusiastically in the fold.
Throwback conservatives in the Trump era have just three options: approve of whatever he does to stay relevant, join the rump that’s trying to keep the flame alive until moods change or abandon politics altogether.
For some, it’s a living, so they roll with it. And that’s fine, as long as they get a new label.
Trumpatives? Popu-lites? Contorticons? Whatever. Just leave “conservative” to those who are trying to protect some of the very things Trump aims to destroy.
This story was originally published August 30, 2025 at 4:48 AM with the headline "Suddenly socialist: Trump’s ideas on Intel, elections are not conservative | Opinion."
