, Columnist
A Lesson for Trump's Intellectual Vanguard
The president's early backers saw him as an ideological soulmate. That ideology seems to be lacking.
Talking to Putin...in January.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
In 2016 we found out that conservative elites didn’t speak for Republican voters.
Think tankers may have hungered for entitlement reform and valued free trade, but a large group of Republican voters disagreed, and another large group had no strong views on these issues. When Donald Trump won the primaries and then the November election, many people who considered themselves conservative leaders found out that Republican voters weren’t who they thought they were.