Getting the basics of economic policy right must be the first step in successful governance.
With the stock market slumping over President Trump’s tariff strategy, pundits left and right are invoking James Carville’s famous phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.” A better principle for the second Trump administration would be “EGG before ESG.”
Carville’s rule isn’t wrong, so much as it is incomplete as a guide for governing. It’s true that voters consistently rank the economy as their No. 1 issue. But underneath all the aggregated data, voters care about issues besides their retirement portfolio’s performance. The average voter can put up with a lot, but when he starts struggling to put food on the table, all of these other grievances spill out into the open.
For example, as unpopular as President Biden’s positions were on a range of social issues, Democrats probably could have clinched the election had they not dismissed inflation as “transitory” time and time again. Instead, they leaned into the culture wars as cumulative Bidenflation cracked 20 percent. Examples include jailing an 89-year-old pro-life activist (who fled to the U.S. after surviving a Soviet concentration camp), elevating a transgender kleptomaniac to a position in the Department of Energy, and hosting an event at which one trans guest bared his breasts on the White House lawn.
The Biden administration put transgenderism before transactions and lost working-class voters. But as out-of-touch as Democratic wokeness was in 2024 (consider that even Democratic voters overwhelmingly reject their party’s position on women’s sports), it’s conceivable that they could have still won the White House if it weren’t for the price of eggs.
Conservatives risk making a similar mistake before the midterms by putting ESG before EGG. Republican officials can’t afford to forget that the families that vote for them care about the whole basket of issues. They don’t only want to protect the unborn or promote gender sanity (as vital as those are). They also want to secure wage growth, abundant jobs, and a dynamic economy where they can afford housing, medical bills, education — and, yes, eggs.
Elected officials can sustain their mandate for leadership across the board when they prove themselves trustworthy on the economy.
Republican governors have proven this point repeatedly, even in the middle of a pandemic. Governors Brian Kemp (Ga.) and Ron DeSantis (Fla.) were challenged in their first terms by the pandemic just as they were beginning to make preparations for their reelection campaigns. But because they led the nation in recovery (respectively the first and second states to reopen businesses), they earned the right to continue leading on cultural issues. DeSantis won by almost 20 points in what used to be a swing state, and Kemp soundly defeated a better-funded Stacey Abrams despite being savaged by national media his entire first term.
EGG and ESG are far more politically formidable and resilient together than they ever could be alone. As a result, not only did Georgia and Florida pass some of the strongest pro-life laws in the country, but they survived a brutal season of progressive backlash that unwound similar laws in other states.
While Trump’s relationships with Kemp and DeSantis may have been stormy, securing his agenda beyond the midterms will depend on learning the right lessons from these governors. Trump no longer has to face the voters himself, but his political viability still depends on retaining control of Congress for the second half of his final term.
The early indicators are not encouraging. Forecasts for the first quarter of 2025 show a contracting economy. Rather than recalibrate on its unpopular trade wars with Canada and our other allies, Republicans look prepared to double down with their own versions of “greedflation” conspiracy theories and quack economics — a playbook the Democrats tried in 2024 that proved disastrous.
There’s still time to correct course and deliver on things that matter for American families, like the affordability of eggs and other household goods. Unprincipled tariff fights won’t make any of that cheaper — just the opposite.
If the Trump administration continues down this path, get ready for more woke finance, abortion on-demand, and trans insanity in the 120th Congress. As the economy goes, so goes the election.