Donald Trump is Not an Ideologue — He's a (Bad) Technocrat

Mark Schmitt wrote for Vox about Donald Trumps own ideological brand:

When standing next to Sarah Palin shouting, "Hallelujah!" Donald Trump easily seems to embody modern conservative ideology at its purest, unchecked confrontational extreme. It’s almost a parody of the right-wing id. Where other candidates would limit Syrian refugees except for Christians, Trump would ban all Muslims. And so forth. Most of Trump's rivals responded to him by scrambling even further to the right, competing for the ideological space now held firmly by Sen. Ted Cruz.

Mixed with Trump’s far-right positions, though, have been some that seem off-key to modern conservative ideology: his support for Social Security, for example, or his December 28 tweet that American "wages are too low," which is too close to the AFL-CIO slogan "America needs a raise" for any Republican to risk saying anything like it, lest he or she open the door to an increase in the minimum wage.

Analyzing Trump in the ideological terms that are now the only political language we have, journalists have seen Trump as an inconsistent conservative — "going rogue, left and right," as Palin put it. Or as Lee Drutman suggested here, he’s a brilliant ideological tactician, marketing a formula — conservative on identity politics but liberal on pocketbook issues — that precisely matches the circumstances of downwardly mobile white voters.

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