Donald Trump is not, and never has been, a conservative

 Consider what he had to say about a couple of particular topics in Iowa:

Former President Donald Trump drew contrasts between himself and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday in Davenport, Trump’s first visit to Iowa since announcing a run for president. 

Speaking to a full Adler Theatre, Trump called his potential rival “very, very bad on ethanol,” compared him to 2012 GOP candidate Mitt Romney, and accused DeSantis of supporting raising the minimum age for Social Security benefits.

During his 2012 campaign for Congress, DeSantis expressed support for restructuring Social Security and Medicare, which aid millions of seniors in the United States, to make them more financially sustainable.

While in Congress, DeSantis voted on nonbinding budget resolutions that called for raising the retirement age and slowing the growth of future spending.

This bit of ethanol pandering is classic Trump transactionalism. He knows that the subsidies are federal gravy for Iowa corn producers and framing it as sacrosanct just may buy their loyalty, the only thing the Very Stable Genius gives a flying diddly about in this universe. 

It also makes clear that Trumpism is not about the free market, or, if you want to put it in macro terms, an allocation of resources that is in any way efficient:

One of the key reasons for the growth in ethanol production has been government subsidies for ethanol — $45 billion in tax credits giving 45 cents to ethanol producers for every gallon they produced between 1980 and 2011. This was a strange subsidy considering ethanol's inefficiency as a fuel, and given the fact that unlike other renewables, burning ethanol continues to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

It's not like the farmers growing subsidized corn for ethanol production didn't already have a market for their produce. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones calls it "shoveling... ag welfare to a group of people who were already pretty rich."

In January 2012, the legislation that authorized the ethanol tax credits expired. But this didn't end the subsidies for ethanol. Why did the powerful corn ethanol lobby let the tax credits expire? According to Aaron Smith of the American Enterprise Institute:

The answer lies in legislation known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which creates government-guaranteed demand that keeps corn prices high and generates massive farm profits. Removing the tax credit but keeping the RFS is like scraping a little frosting from the ethanol-boondoggle cake.

The RFS mandates that at least 37 percent of the 2011-12 corn crop be converted to ethanol and blended with the gasoline that powers our cars. The ethanol mandate is causing corn demand to outstrip supply by more and more each year, creating a vulnerable market in which even the slightest production disturbance will have devastating consequences for the world's poor.[AEI]

So the ethanol subsidies are still alive through government-guaranteed demand from the Renewable Fuel Standard mandate.

There are so many curbs on human freedom involved here: a mandate, government playing favorites, wealth redistribution.

The other topic on which he pulled the I'll-never-change-one-thing-about-this-government-goodie was Social Security. We covered this last month at LITD, excerpting generously from a piece by Tiana Lowe. We'll just re-up the relevant portion of that:

 I want to discuss a Washington Examiner piece by Tiana Lowe that deserves wide readership. It's short, and it's some bracing straight talk about that perennial third rail: Social Security.

She starts by recounting what President Biden had to say about it last night:

"So tonight, let’s all agree to stand up for seniors," Biden said. "Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare. Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned them. If anyone tries to cut Social Security, I will stop them. And if anyone tries to cut Medicare, I will stop them."

Lowe point out that this is a lot of sound and fury over something that ain't even happening:

But not only is Biden arguing against a straw man here — sadly, no sitting Republicans actually are pledging to cut entitlements — but he is also forgetting that doing nothing is tantamount to a massive cut of Social Security benefits!

Why is that the case?

Absent a major reform from Social Security, the program will become insolvent in a little more than a decade. Upon insolvency, benefits will be slashed by 20% to 25% across the board.

Okay, nobody is talking about cutting benefits or structurally reforming the program. Well, where do we look next to face our country's debt-and-deficit precipice?

If Republicans wish to balance the budget within the decade without touching entitlements or defense spending, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects Congress would need to slash 85% of the rest of the budget.

Could tax hikes fill in the void of the Social Security Trust Fund once insolvency hits? Maybe — if Democrats and Republicans were comfortable with jacking up the payroll tax by 25%.

And then there's what the VSG had to say on Truth Social about one of America's thorniest foreign-policy problems:

“Kim Jung Un of North Korea, who I got to know and got along with very well during my years as President, is not happy with the U.S. and South Korea doing big training and air exercises together,” Mr Trump said. “He feels threatened. Even I would constantly complain that South Korea pays us very little to do these extremely expensive and provocative drills. It’s really ridiculous. We have 35,000 in jeopardy soldiers there, I had a deal for full payment to us, $Billions, and Biden gave it away. Such a shame!!!”

Folks to the right of center finding appeasement of totalitarian belligerents loathsome has Cold War roots, but it's still found fairly recent expression. Barack Obama deservedly came in for outrage for his apology tour, accepting a Loan Chomsky book from Hugo Chavez in front of the world's cameras, and pursuing a worthless agreement with Iran about its nuclear program.

But the VSG speaks in terms about Kim suggesting maybe they ought to get a room, and the drool-besotted cult is fine with it. 

And there's the transactional element again. These allies, they need to pony up! We're putting a lot of young US asses on the line over there!

No, his culture-war nods, delivered in the most boneheaded manner possible, do not make up for stuff like this.

Still, most Republicans want him to be the 2024 presidential candidate. 

That's sick.