Heads up to Republicans: Trump is not a conservative.

Democrats cannot stop Trump's assault on our democracy.

Conservatives -- and there are a few left -- might. 

Democrats are largely unified in their opposition to President Trump's policies and actions. They oppose his tariffs, his wars, his abandonment of alliances, his ICE tactics, his politicization of the Justice Department, his attacks on health science, his pardons, and his openly corrupt self-serving grift. Lots to dislike.

Republican officeholders dismiss those criticisms. After all, the critics are Democrats, and the complaints are just partisan politics. 

Democrats' sputtering outrage is a feature in the minds of people who see politics as a tug of war between two parties.

Republican delight that Democrats lose battle after battle with Trump blinds inertia-Republicans to the fact that a Trump political victory is often contrary to what they really value. Trump isn't a conservative. He is a right-wing authoritarian populist, a very different thing. It is confusing for life-long Republicans because there is inertia to think that the GOP stands for smaller government, fiscal restraint, and freedom from government meddling in business and personal lives. The Republican brand has remained, but its policies have changed.

Republican conservatism still exists. The establishment Wall Street Journal and the libertarian-oriented Reason Magazine have partially broken free of Republican party inertia. The Wall Street Journal wants orderly, predictable government to support business; Reason magazine wants liberty. Trump wants neither. Both have been publishing commentary that sharply criticizes Trump for many of the things that Democrats criticize him for: tariffs imposed haphazardly and without congressional approval, ICE operations that ignore Constitutional protections, and crony corruption. Note the headlines in the top stories at Reason magazine the day before yesterday:

Here is the lead editorial for yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

Neither the WSJ nor Reason changes thinking; they reflect thinking. They are bookmarks, showing that some ideas remain under the surface. The lawbreaking, authoritarian, crony-capitalist, corrupt part of the Trump government is offensive to conservatives. 

Conservatives don't share the ethnic and religious nationalism that is part of the Trump populist agenda. Trump's expresses a right-populist view of American heritage based on White, Protestant, English and Northern European ethnicity as the real American. Jews, Catholics, Latin Americans, Asians, and non-English speakers are inherently "other" in that view. Without acknowledging it openly, right-populism accepts the underlying premise of the Dred Scott decision: that some people are essentially and forever foreign. You are American by heritage, not by sharing a creed.

Conservatives favor consistency. They understand that if a Republican can abuse the rights of loathed Democrats and if a Republican can take away broadcast licenses of TV networks, and a Republican can play favorites with businesses, then amid the oscillation of political fortune, a Democrat can do the same to them. 

Democrats would profit by putting aside some of their own partisanship and see allies where they exist. In a Trump world, conservatives are allies. At some point Republicans who voted for Ronald Reagan, John McCain, and Mitt Romney will wake up and realize they were enthralled by a con man. It is so obvious now that even a Republican senator can see it.

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