Of course, not all constraints are "logical." If I asked you to create a logical rule to produce either the bundle of policies that now define liberalism or conservatism, you couldn't do it. Conservatives will insist that their defining principle is "small government," or "individual liberty," or something like that, but such platitudes fall apart when you bring up issues like gay marriage or drug legalization. Since ideologies are not defined by logical constraints, though, the bundles of policies included in either ideology can change. Who changes them?
Intense policy demanders and coalition merchants, to use terminology from Hans Noel's Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America. Socio-political log-rolls. What does abortion have to do with tax policy? Not a fuckin' thing, except that abortion rights advocates attached themselves to the redistribution side, and the pro-life side attached itself to the supply-siders under Reagan. Voila! Ideology created! It's a more complicated process than that, but you get the gist.
So... trade. This has been a tricky one for a while. It hasn't fully lined up with liberalism or conservatism in the public sphere, being a very low-salience issue. NAFTA and the TPP cut across traditional lines because you can find free-traders and restrictionists on each side. Chamber of Commerce-types like free trade agreements, but paleo-conservative isolationists have always had strains of mercantilism running through their blood. On the left, unions sometimes get twitchy about trade, while DLC-types are more open. Trade policy just never really became a left-right issue.
Trump, of course, isn't just an isolationist. He's pro-tariff. That puts him in an odd position relative to his party. He doesn't just want to burn trade agreements. He wants to do it by raising taxes. Which he has done. And now we're in a trade war. China has retaliated. This thing is really happening.
So, what's going on in the GOP? Hello, Grover Norquist, where are you? Remember, he's the guy who has Republicans sign pledges that they will never, on pain of death of puppy, raise taxes. He's been, strangely brought to heel.
There's a basic empirical observation here. The leader of conservatism-- the man who currently defines conservatism through his actions and cult-like control of every member of the Republican Party at the elite level-- has not only ended the fight between the trade advocates and isolationists in the party, for now at least. He has done so by RAISING FUCKING TAXES.
I've been periodically picking on the Grossman & Hopkins argument for a while now, going back to February of 2016. They have a rather prominent argument that the GOP is more extreme than the Democratic Party, basically because the base is more ideological, and they want purity, whereas the Democrats are a coalition of interest groups. The problem is that the GOP nominated the most impure candidate they could find, and he keeps doing impure things.
Like raising taxes. And nobody in the party is saying shit about it, except in the most mild, anodyne and ineffectual ways.
I repeat: A Republican President started a trade war, and he did it by raising taxes. What does this portend for the future of liberalism and conservatism?
Who the fuck knows? I don't even know what this portends for next week at this point. Trump could wind up firing John Bolton after he offers Ivanka a free mustache ride, and it wouldn't surprise me.