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Republicans will gather for their convention in Milwaukee next week united behind presidential candidate Donald Trump but divided on what the party stands for.
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Rubio’s views found a home in American Compass, a think tank founded the following year by Oren Cass, who was an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. Cass has positioned American Compass as a counterweight to supply-side groups such as Americans for Tax Reform (keeper of the no-tax pledge Republicans are expected to sign) and the Club for Growth.
“A huge problem with the libertarian model is thinking the free market is the end unto itself, and we have no right to question its outcomes or what the common good might be,” said Cass. “The starting point is to define the ends here: human flourishing.”
A central tenet of this conservative view is that making things, i.e., manufacturing, is essential to balanced growth and national sovereignty. While supply-siders deride tariffs as taxes (except when imposed on China), Cass considers them essential to supporting manufacturing, a view shared by Robert Lighthizer, the former Trump trade ambassador, who is on American Compass’s advisory board.
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Donald Trump promised to be a different kind of Republican. Reimagining trade and taxes, instituting a populist economic agenda, serving main street instead of K street. Are Congressional Republicans actually Read more…
