An Unbeholden President Trump Takes The Measure of Vladimir Putin

For the first time in years, we have a President who is not beholden—a President who can ignore special interests and do what he believes is for the good of the country. With both houses of Congress, he will enjoy considerable power, but that power will be subject to the ingenious checks and balances of the Constitution. His Democratic opponents, who argue for a “living Constitution,” will now have to rely on the 1789 version to check a President they fear.

The unbeholden Trump raised relatively little money for his campaign, largely from small donors, and won the election at $5 per vote versus his opponent’s $10. According to one of his ads, he got $10,000 from hedge fund managers and Clinton got $45 million. Thus we have a President elected by the people—whom his opponents and baffled press describe as “angry” – but they are “the people.” Trump owes his allegiance to them, not to financial, educational, and political elites. Embraced tepidly, Trump owes little to his own, albeit recently adopted, party. Both parties are held in disrepute by the public, but thanks to Trump, the Republican Party is no longer the party of “rich white men.” Despite party skepticism, the Trump campaign showed that the Republican Party can compete on an expanded electoral-college map.

The new President should be able to restore growth and economic confidence with the ready remedies of deregulation, tax reform, and the end of zero interest rates. Trump can reverse the Obama’s “legacy items” passed by executive order. He can replace ObamaCare at the height of its unpopularity as rate increases kick in and doctors opt out.

Conservatives can embrace much of Trump’s economic program of tax cuts, deregulation, and the freeing of the energy sector. The Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street Journal will have to learn to live with his populist arguments for secure borders and strict regulation of immigration. We would have a President Clinton without the immigration issue. Trump no longer has to tiptoe around the mainstream media. He has demonstrated how to emasculate them by attacking back.

Globalists will have to wait and see how a Trump administration renegotiates trade deals. If Trump wants them reexamined for special-interest wheeling and dealing and lack of compliance, they could indeed end up improved. Trump would be prevented by checks and balances from using arbitrary penalties to dissuade companies from moving abroad. Presumably his tax policy would remove tax advantages as a reason for relocating to other countries.