The highlighted text I absolutely agree with
Donald Trump has won what might be the greatest “change election” in decades. Republicans leaders are only now waking up to the fact that the change Trump’s voters want will end up changing the GOP, too.
Trump’s voters were not voting for less government. Instead, they believe the promise of American life has been taken from them by elites of both parties who neither know nor care what they are doing to their fellow citizens. Trump stepped into this massive credibility gap with the message that he was different. In his talks, tweets and rallies, he identified the problems these people were facing: stagnating wages, shrinking numbers of good jobs, a political and media culture that treated them as though they were aliens in their own country. For years, they had been longing for someone of Trump’s stature to say to them: “I hear you, and I will make things right.”
These voters backed Trump because they want their heritage back. This is not, as has been charged, a racially tinged impulse. Millions of Trump’s supporters voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Rather, it is the heritage that all Americans are of equal worth, that common values and common activities are worthy of respect and reward and confer dignity. Trump said he would “make America great again,” but he could have run on a different, more intellectual slogan: “Make American citizenship count again.”
This citizenship agenda is less interested in shrinking government than in making it work for average Americans. Trump’s signature issues — immigration, trade, law and order, fighting terrorism — all involve the federal government doing more and doing it better. This push for federal action will pose serious challenges to the reigning GOP orthodoxy. However, if the first 100 days of a Trump presidency involve nothing more than tax cuts, deregulation and other traditional Republican ideas, the voters who wanted something different will wonder whether they were simply marks in a skillful con.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.fd5a2111dc69