Deep anxiety about a president who just won a stunning upset victory after running his campaign largely based on the political ideas of – wait for it – Alexander Hamilton.
The Republican Party has remained startlingly consistent in its economic principles, despite incorporating free market rhetoric in the 20th century. Republicans from Lincoln to McKinley to Coolidge to George W. Bush have been protectionists. Hoover reacted to the Depression by signing the Smoot-Hawley tariff, for all the same reasons Trump threatens tariffs now. And what was the first thing Republicans did in the 1950s, after two decades electoral exile? A huge government roads project that had Hamilton smiling in his grave.
Trump promises more of the same, justifying his stance against international nation-building by saying, “I just think we have to rebuild our country.” And despite a white paper arguing for a partially-privatized road system, Trump’s plan will require $167 billion in government funds and has all the hallmarks of the infrastructure boondoggles that lost election after election for the Federalists and Whigs in the 19th century.
Charles C.W. Cooke pointed out additional ironies when he tweeted, “For the record, Alexander Hamilton was an immigration hawk who endorsed the Alien and Sedition Acts and wanted to deport troublemakers.” That makes the hand-wringing of the cast and fans of Hamliton over Trump’s threats against immigration, and against the freedom to speak truth to power, extra rich.
Even Trump’s campaign slogan was Hamiltonian. Hamilton’s stated political goal was “national greatness.” I kid you not.
Trump isn’t Hitler. He’s Hamilton, advocating the kind of centralist government Hamilton spoke about in secret at the Constitutional Convention and attempted to achieve surreptitiously throughout the rest of his political life by eroding the same limits on federal government power he had trumpeted to sell the Constitution in the Federalist Papers. Trump wants to be Hamilton’s elected king, running a crony-capitalist, mercantilist economy just as Hamilton envisioned.
Even Trump’s campaign slogan was Hamiltonian. Hamilton’s stated political goal was “national greatness.” I kid you not.
And while Hamilton was certainly a more eloquent and well-mannered spokesman for conservatism, Trump is superior to him in at least one way: Hamilton was a military interventionist, whose ambition to conquer the colonial possessions of Spain was much more like Hitler’s desire to seize the Ukraine for Germany than anything Trump wants to do internationally.
One has to wonder: is that the real reason neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham are so anti-Trump?
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
