Has Trump Overhauled the Republican Party?

As I write this, the House of Representatives is debating the One Big Beautiful Bill, and this piece has little, if anything to do with that, mostly.

I have lived through a lot of U.S. presidents.  Harry Truman was in office when I was born, and that means I've experienced about 14 or 15 of them, depending on how you count and when I was old enough to care.

In every case but one, the new president had come in and approached domestic and foreign policy issues in pretty much they same way that his predecessors had, at least those of his party.  Active, passive, high tax, low tax ... same solutions tried whether they worked before or not.

When Donald Trump became president in 2017, he was the first president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 to have never served in elected office before becoming president.  He was the first in anyone's lifetime not to have taken a government paycheck of any kind before becoming president, and that's even more relevant.

Donald Trump was a businessman up until the day he was sworn in for his first term, when he was already over 70.  You can guess that business and economics were well-embedded in his approach to problem-solving by the time he said "So help me, God."  

He served a first term the best he could, hounded by the opposition party, lawfare and, frankly, sub-optimal decisions in selecting Cabinet members.  But he learned strong lessons that term about whom he could trust, for sure, and most certainly how to navigate the weirdness of Congress.  By the time he (and we) had to live through the four years of the incompetent Joe Biden presidency, he knew exactly how to go forward, as we'll see in a moment.

In fact, my point in this piece was exemplified at the end of his first term, when he was able to negotiate the Abraham Accords, the treaties between Israel and formerly hostile Middle Eastern nations. He understood as a businessman that the conflict between those nations, which had been fundamentally of a religious nature, no longer held sway as a religious conflict.

President Trump understood that the Arab nations had a common enemy, and it wasn't Israel.  A peaceful Israel held no threat to them -- but Iran did.  Trump saw that what the Arab states' leaders wanted was to hold onto their power, meaning a stable market for oil, a stable economy, and no external threat.  

Those that signed the accords looked at Israel and looked at Iran, and realized that the threat to what they wanted didn't come from Israel at all. Trump go them to see that the clear path to the stability they sought was economic -- and that there was no stronger world power to keep their economies stable than the USA.

Simple?  "Hey, [fill in the blank with an Arab nation], sign this long-term document guaranteeing peace between your nation and Israel, and we'll have a more favorable set of terms for trade with us and, by the way, if Iran threatens you, we'll have your back one way or the other."  Had Trump gotten his second term in 2021, the whole Sunni Middle East would have signed up.

So up comes Trump's second term, only now he has a vice president (J.D. Vance) squarely on his side, and a Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) and Secretary of Defense (Pete Hegseth) squarely on his side, and a Cabinet full of people he can trust.  How does he approach foreign relations?  America first -- implementing tariffs, an economic lever, on nations worldwide as his actual first foreign policy step.

Trump understands that FTM ("follow the money") is the driver for 99% of what goes on in the world. The rest of the world, that has been ripping us off for decades, will not take up arms if we sue for fair trade terms; they'll just come to the table and negotiate, in the outcome will be fair for the USA -- Trump's own country.

Republicans and Democrats alike have never had the cogliones to do that, ever before. "Oh, oh, we can't offend our allies!"  But the Trump Republican Party will have none of that. The other nations can take care of themselves; we are concerned about America first.

And funny how well it worked.  The NATO types have flipped and agreed to pony up 5% of their GDP for their own defense with barely an argument or naysayer.

No president has done that, taken that approach that is so economically based.  But Trump has broken the Republican mold -- ironic given that the Republicans are seen as economically oriented.  He is using the economic leverage of the USA to create a better USA and, by extension, a better free world.

I want to end by pointing out what President Trump said right after he bombed the Iranian nuclear program into oblivion, and how it reflects an approach we have not really seen from the two parties of recent decades.

Consider all the conquering dictators of recent memory.  How did they deal with defeated enemies?  They took them over is what they did, threw out, exiled or murdered the opposing leadership and annexed the territory.

Trump didn't conquer Iran, he just destroyed their threat, with immense credit given to our ally Israel and their destruction of Iran's air defenses.  And what did Trump say thereafter?  He wanted a commercially healthy Iran, he said, and that if they wanted to ship oil to China or wherever, they could go for it.  His vision was of an Iran that was economically successful, even under the same mullahs, as long as it posed no military threat to its neighbors (or us) and ceased threatening other nations.

The mullahs are surely talking among themselves, and at least one of them will likely say the Persian version of "So what if we just be a great Iran and let America work with us and be a trading partner instead of the Great Satan?" And what are the odds that a few others will allow the paradigm to be shifted enough to sit down and work something out that eases tensions in the region?

There is not a president in decades who would even think like that, because to Donald Trump, unlike his predecessors, he sees that economics drive foreign policy as much as domestic.  "Politics" are a distant, bottom-level factor, because he has a vision of an economically successful world.

The Republican Party has the option to allow his policies and his successes to be the foundation of their principles going forward.  If the younger leaders in his Cabinet, who will be the ones to assume the mantle going forward, can maintain that approach, it will be good for the nation as well as the party.

Because the Democrats are still running on "We're not Trump", and when things are working, that's simply not a winning platform. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.