Trump Voters Love Him More Than Before. Four Conservative Columnists Pinpoint Why. [View all]

David French: In addition to the brokenism that David talks about, there’s a strong undercurrent of raw animosity in our politics. Republicans and Democrats have very negative views of each other, and many Republicans (sadly!) want their opponents to suffer. They’re actually happy to see people lose their jobs or to see nonprofits lose funding if those people are perceived as part of the “deep state” or RINOs.

So, yes, Republicans want a disruptive president, but who’s being disrupted really matters — and if it’s the government or institutions that many Republicans believe are hostile to them, then Republicans are just fine with the pain. Many Republicans dislike foreign aid. Or loathe elite universities. Or hate big liberal law firms. Students and professors at elite universities have a long track record of targeting the free speech rights of their conservative colleagues, and Republicans are rationalizing their own constitutional violations as fighting fire with fire.

Healy: That element of gleeful animosity comes through on Trump’s social media posts, David — like a “Take that!” smack, sticking it to universities or shutting down D.E.I. One of Trump’s most effective rallying cries in the last campaign was “I am your retribution.”

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His biggest policy accomplishment so far is shutting down illegal immigration — something Republican voters strongly support. His signature legislative goal is extending his first-term tax cuts — a classic Republican policy goal. He wants to fire federal bureaucrats, downsize and devolve the Department of Education, cut regulations — this isn’t some populist rebuke of Ronald Reagan’s conservatism, this IS Ronald Reagan’s conservatism! So is picking fights with liberal judges and liberal universities. And if you told someone in, say, 2004 that a Republican president was stretching the boundaries of civil liberties to deport noncitizens accused of sympathizing with Hamas and Hezbollah, absolutely nobody would regard his popularity with G.O.P. voters as a puzzle in need of explanation.



https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/opinion/trump-administration-polling.html