Washington: One topic has dominated conversations among elected Republicans since US President Donald Trump's stunning victory: Will he actually pursue his campaign agenda of big-government nationalism, all but obliterating the liberal-conservative distinctions that have defined the United States' political parties for a century?
While some of his advisers suggested that he would slip back into a more conventional Republican approach, Trump dropped hints in interviews, Twitter posts and other public comments that he intended to push his party away from its free-market, internationalist dogma on trade, foreign alliances, immigration, infrastructure spending and prescription drug access.
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Trump speech: 'This is your day'
President Donald Trump uses his inaugural address as the 45th President of the United States to declare the people as the rulers of the nation.
The hints are over.
An inaugural speech delivered with the same blunt force that propelled Trump's insurgent campaign has dashed Republican hopes for a more traditional agenda. With his "new decree", he declared himself modern America's first populist president - and all but dared his own party to resist his Republican reformation.
"Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families," he said.
Trump's vision will inevitably collide with establishment Republican leaders in Congress, and the outcome could determine not just the success of his presidency, but also the identity of his party.
Republicans have resisted Democratic efforts to spend big on the nation's roads, bridges, tunnels and rail lines; use the federal government's power to bargain for lower prescription drug prices; block trade agreements; and limit foreign interventions. Republican leaders have sought a business-friendly approach on immigration laws, offering a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living in the US illegally, and tried to restrain popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.
If the President is able to blur party lines on such issues and harness an ascendant blue-collar coalition to win that clash, he will have untethered conservatism from the Republican Party and shifted the party away from the small-government approach that has been its hallmark since Ronald Reagan stood 36 years ago in the same position on the Capitol steps as Trump.
![President Donald Trump speaks at his inauguration.](/web/20170124162337im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/w/f/o/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw8x9.png/1485236667222.jpg)
But Trump is about to discover that his hopes for a realignment may not come easily. As in his campaign, he faces an array of obstacles: his historic unpopularity and lack of discipline, advisers who hope to nudge him back toward conventional Republicanism and, perhaps most significant, other party leaders who have a more conservative outlook on domestic policy and government spending and a more hawkish attitude on foreign affairs.
The alarm and anxiety within the Republican Party's congressional wing toward its own President are remarkable. And among Trump's most outspoken intraparty critics, the warnings of resistance are unambiguous.
![John McCain, left, has warned that most congressional Republicans are "basic conservatives" in their principles.](/web/20170124162337im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/w/f/q/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw8x9.png/1485070400269.jpg)
"There are three branches of government," said Arizona senator and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain. "We now have a majority in both houses. And both majorities I think hold to basic conservative Republican principles."
Pre-empting the threat of reprisal, McCain said he intended to be true to what he saw as his party and his voters: "Trump carried Arizona by four points. I carried my state by 14 points."
![Donald Trump and his Vice-President Mike Pence have not always sung from the same hymnsheet on policy.](/web/20170124162337im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/w/f/p/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw8x9.png/1485070400269.jpg)
Arizona senator Jeff Flake, who like McCain has repeatedly clashed with Trump, said he was preparing for the President to back his opponent in a primary next year - but it would not dissuade him from putting up opposition on some issues.
"There are some of us who will be pushing to get back to the roots of the party: limited government, economic freedom, individual responsibility, free trade," he said. "Those are things that the party has stood on for a long time."
![Donald Trump's chief of staff, former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, left, joined the attack on ...](/web/20170124162337im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/w/f/o/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw8x9.png/1485152989721.jpg)
Trump and close advisers say such resistance is not just futile but foolish. They pledge to harness Trump's following in the states and districts of recalcitrant Republicans to sound warnings of their own.
"The incentive for many of these members will be to follow Trump's lead because he won many of their states," said Kellyanne Conway, the President's campaign chief turned senior White House adviser.
![Donald Trump's counsellor Kellyanne Conway issued a thinly-veiled threat to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, seen ...](/web/20170124162337im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/v/x/u/k/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtw8x9.png/1485070400269.jpg)
Aiming at perhaps the most powerful congressional Republican, and one of the more orthodox conservatives, Conway pointedly recalled Speaker Paul Ryan's inability to carry his own state in 2012 as the party's vice-presidential nominee.
"Speaker Ryan knows Romney-Ryan lost by seven points in Wisconsin, and Mr Trump just won the state," she said.
There are Republicans who still believe that Trump will govern more as a small-government conservative even as he attracts a broader coalition of blue-collar voters to the party.
"I don't think he is going to fundamentally reshape the party on issues," predicted Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. He added that Trump's political legacy would be to "open the eyes" of voters who had not supported Republican presidential hopefuls in recent years.
Walker said Trump had said he was not "a policy guy" and argued that the President would lean heavily on Vice-President Mike Pence and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus to carry out his agenda.
That is exactly what worries some Republicans who share Trump's views: that the President will be undermined by some in his inner circle. When he veered away from orthodoxy in the transition, some of his advisers quickly tried to recast his comments with a more conservative veneer.
"My concern with Reince is he's bringing in a lot of the traditional-party folks," said Rick Santorum, a onetime senator from Pennsylvania who ran a Trump-style blue-collar campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. "They're not fans of the agenda, much less real fans of Trump."
And, Santorum added of Pence's roots in traditional conservatism, "candidly this is not where Mike has been in the past, either".
Still, Santorum said, he spoke on the phone to Trump last week, and the incoming President was every bit as committed to his style of politics as he was during the campaign.
"He's not going to change," Santorum said.
New York Times