From my column today:
Donald Trump will never be mistaken for a cosmopolitan, but he will bring a distinctively European flavor to the 2016 presidential election, should he win the Republican nomination.
As in continental Europe, the two parties in a Donald Trump–Hillary Clinton race would accept the basic parameters of the welfare state, and the debate about the size of government — so central to American politics for decades — would fade to the background.No matter how appalled the Left may be by Trump, his prospective takeover of the GOP would be a watershed for progressives. For 80 long years, they have demagogued and shamed the GOP in a forlorn attempt to get it to give up on fundamentally reforming the welfare state. How much time and energy have been devoted to depicting Republicans as shoving elderly people off cliffs and as hell-bent on destroying Social Security. And here comes Donald Trump to finally cry “uncle.”