Trump’s $5,000 handout is an insult to conservatism

President Trump gathered his hardcore MAGA faithful in Dallas last week at the Republican National Convention to officially energize his base to vote in the upcoming midterm election. In reality, the gathering was about paying homage again and again to Trump’s outsized ego. 

The lesson from Dallas is that if calling the other guy a “communist” is the best you can do, you have a serious problem. That applies especially if your own administration is implicitly adopting a leading tenet of socialism — government ownership of the means of production — by taking a federal government stake in 30 private sector companies.

Another nod to socialism came during Trump’s closing remarks on the second night of the convention, when he promised a $5,000 “dividend” to every adult citizen if the Republicans keep control of both the House and the Senate. Sounds to me like using federal tax dollars to buy votes.

Someone in the White House needs to realize as soon as possible that the Republicans’ 2026 electoral problem is not a lack of government handouts.

As Trump pushes the federal government into seemingly every aspect of American life, some of us long for the keystone of conservative philosophy as President Ronald Reagan enunciated: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel recently spelled out the Republicans’ midterm turnout problem........

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