Donald Trump has sold Republicans on his brand of politics. His policy agenda is a tougher pitch.
Republicans of all factions publicly have fallen in line in Milwaukee behind Trump, who the party plans to send to the campaign trail as its formal nominee tonight. The GOP’s show of unity, aimed at winning the White House and Congress, might last through Election Day – obscuring policy debates still marinating under the surface.
Under Trump, the party downsized its policy platform to limit swing-voter controversy. Should Trump win back the presidency, his policy agenda – from abortion to trade and taxation – would face opposition from Democrats, divisions among Republicans, and pressure from lobbying interests that won’t surrender willingly.
“We are unified around President Trump,” said Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming. “Unity doesn’t mean that we agree on every single line of every single issue about every single thing.”
The party’s new platform offers the first draft of Trump’s vision for a second term. It’s light on the details and largely focuses on broad Republican goals like lowering inflation, cutting regulations, and securing the southern border with Mexico. It highlights Trump’s populism on trade policy.
“It’s designed to be benign,” said Rick Davis, a Bloomberg TV and Radio contributor who helped shape Republicans’ 2008 platform as John McCain’s campaign manager.
Lobbying groups and conservative activists already have started to gear up for fights over the specifics, in the event Trump wins.
“It’s no longer a lawyer document, a lobbyist document,” said Mike Davis, who worked on the convention’s policy committee, during an event with Iowa Republicans this week. “It’s actually a good political document, a communications document that reflects President Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party to an America First party, a populist party.”
Congressional control will be almost as important to a second Trump term’s agenda.
“The platform will have to be run by the congressmen first,” Rep. Glenn Grothman said at a breakfast with fellow Wisconsin Republicans. “I’m sure some will be accepted and some will be rejected.”
Hopes for Collaboration
Lawmakers see plenty of room to collaborate with Trump.
Rep. French Hill (Ark.), a contender for the top GOP spot on the House Financial Services panel, called it “a good topline overview of the Republican platform.” He said the GOP ticket’s pro-crypto stance “could be a source of great partnership,” if Trump is re-elected.
Texas swing-district Rep. Monica De La Cruz said Milwaukee was pulsing with energy and unity among her fellow Republicans. “We will be able to accomplish many of President Trump’s goals,” she said, echoing the convention’s themes of “securing America, bringing wealth to American families, and prosperity to American families.”
The margins in Congress, if still slim next year, will frustrate the executive agenda, no matter who wins in November.
“If the numbers are very close, it’s going to be a legislative battle royale on a number of these measures,” said Democratic lobbyist Tonya Saunders, a former Hill aide.
Republicans have readily aired their divisions in the current Congress, overthrowing their own speaker and taking sides against colleagues in primary elections.
“Will all of that dissipate? I don’t readily see how it will resolve,” Saunders said.
Policy Signals
Lobbyists said they were looking to Trump’s first term and his own messaging, more than the platform document, to signal what could come next.
“We don’t need a party platform to know kind of what direction President Trump part two would go,” said Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute. The oil and gas lobby sees a better regulatory environment under a Trump administration but has concerns “about some of the policies that President Trump is pursuing or wants to pursue particularly on the trade side.”
Abortion was a primary sticking point in the lead up to the platform’s ratification by voice vote. The document took a more moderate tone on the issue. That was a “profound disappointment,” Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence said in a statement.
Nick Gourevitch, a Democratic pollster with Global Strategy Group, dismissed the electoral upside for Republicans of their slimmed-down platform.
“Republicans can put whatever they want in the platform, but voters know they’re the antiabortion party, and that’s unpopular,” Gourevitch said. The same is true, he said, for some Republicans’ calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even as the platform pledges to protect from cuts.
“We have the goods on them on supporting all these things,” he said.
Tax Fights
The platform calls for an extension of expiring tax cuts from the 2017 tax overhaul and for an elimination of taxes on wages from tips, one of the few specific proposals that actually has bipartisan buy-in. Nevada’s Democratic Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto – no stranger to close races in their battleground state heavily reliant on hospitality workers – have co-sponsored Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) legislation (S. 4621) that would codify Trump’s pitch to exempt tips from taxation.
Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said his group supports extension of the tax cuts and is already assembling a lobbying campaign. Where it differs with Trump, on trade policy, those conversations would come after the election, he said.
Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation and architect of a controversial policy wishlist dubbed Project 2025, said he expects a Trump 2.0 administration to attract support beyond the right and “probably pretty deep into the political center.”
Like the business groups, Roberts acknowledged there’d be differences between his group and a Trump agenda, but this wasn’t the time to lay those out.
“We will work on those when we’re talking about specific legislative vehicles next January,” he told reporters this week in Milwaukee.
To contact the reporters on this story:
To contact the editors responsible for this story: