Project 2025 is no match for MAGA dysfunction

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

60% : A general telos unites many of these groups: to ensure, if Trump wins again, that his vision for America won't be stymied by personnel who don't fully embrace it.
58% : "And so, almost immediately after Trump left office in January 2021, conservatives in Washington began mobilizing to prepare for his return.
53% : Initially, Trump seemed to stand behind the work being done at places like Heritage and the America First Policy Institute.
51% : The latest Mandate for Leadership also departs from prior iterations by taking a Trumpier approach to immigration (proposing "the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate") and wavering on international trade.
48% : After the 2020 election, Pence refused an order from Trump to interfere with Congress' certification of Joe Biden's victory.
44% : Out were the commitments to limited government and free trade, the insistence on fiscal belt tightening and entitlement reform, and the largely sunny orientation toward immigrants associated with previous Republican leaders such as former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
44% : Democrats are trying hard to paint Project 2025 as part of a "playbook for Trump to achieve his dream of being a dictator on day one."
38% : Standing by Trump after the events of January 6, 2021, was apparently a bridge too far for some Heritage insiders.
35% : Trump could not manage it last time -- and many of the people he did appoint turned out to be insufficiently sycophantic for his taste.
33% : Finally, there's the problem of Trump himself: that even as he demands unswerving loyalty from his subordinates, he exhibits zero hesitation about throwing those around him under the bus when doing so suits his interests or his mood.
32% : The pick stood in contrast to 2016, when Trump chose then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to balance the ticket and calm any misgivings that evangelical Christians and other traditional conservatives might have had about voting for a philandering TV star.
28% : "Trump was supposed to be a repudiation of "Conservatism, Inc." -- not just in tenor but in substance.
28% : But Trump had trouble getting the rest of the governing apparatus to line up behind him.
26% : This, mind you, was after Trump declared that "a Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.
24% : Vance, a power-hungry populist who once mused to a friend that Trump might be "America's Hitler," later said publicly that he can be counted on to do what his predecessor would not.
19% : Yet a clear-eyed analysis of the situation offers at least one source of comfort: Many of the things that prevented Trump from putting his worst impulses into action during his first term would likely do the same in a second one.

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