In 1805-06, Republican Rep. John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, broke with President Thomas Jefferson in large part over foreign policy. In a political sense, it represented the first major setback of Jefferson’s two-term administration.
“Randolph’s revolt spread confusion and dismay in Washington. For four years, in the service of the administration, he had terrorized the House with his bludgeoning talents, his javelin-like wit, and his loss to the administration could not be easily repaired,” Jefferson biographer Merrill D. Peterson wrote in “Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation” (1970).
In other words, let us not exaggerate the novelty of the situation when President Donald Trump, in the midst of a Senate battle over a Democrat-sponsored resolution designed to prevent him from imposing tariffs on Canada, takes aim at four “unbelievably disloyal” Republican senators, as the president did early Wednesday morning on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump scolded Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, both of Kentucky.
The president implored those recalcitrant senators to “get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.”
According to The Hill, Democrats’ resolution would “bar his emergency declaration to impose tariffs on Canada.”
The president has characterized Wednesday as “Liberation Day.” He plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on various Canadian, Chinese, and Mexican imported goods. He has cited those nations’ failures to halt the flow of deadly fentanyl into the United States, though tariffs, of course, also serve Trump’s broader “America First” agenda by promoting domestic manufacturing.
“They are playing with the lives of the American people, and right into the hands of the Radical Left Democrats and Drug Cartels. The Senate Bill is just a ploy of the Dems to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it,” Trump continued.
Then, the president amplified the pressure, accusing the four senators of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Do you support Trump’s tariff policy?
“Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS? Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why?” he added.
Finally, the president urged constituents to apply similar pressure by contacting their senators.
Republican voters sometimes grow squeamish at the sight of intra-party squabbling. I understand. In fact, I did not initially approve when Trump began calling Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “DeSanctimonious.”
But does anyone care about that now? After all, DeSantis made his own bed by challenging Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Whatever his future holds, the popular governor will rise and fall on his own merits, not Trump’s patronage or disdain.
In like manner, Paul will determine his own fate. No Trump voter cares about McConnell, Collins, or Murkowski. But Paul represents real Republican values on nearly every issue.
The question at hand, however, involves whether or not Paul represents Republican values on this issue.
Whatever one thinks of tariffs in the present day, no serious historian would deny that Trump had it right. Before World War II, in fact, no American could have written a serious paragraph about Republicans without mentioning tariffs. To say that protection of domestic industry constituted a core Republican value from the 1870s through the 1930s would have been like saying that the late Marvin Gaye could sing a little. That doesn’t quite do it justice.
Moreover, Republicans inherited that protectionist mantle from former Whigs like Abraham Lincoln. And Lincoln learned it from his hero, Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky, author of the “American System” of protective tariffs.
In a perfect world, the Founding Fathers preferred free trade. But no such world existed. James Madison argued, in fact, that free trade in a world of tariffs amounted to national suicide.
Thus, one may conclude whatever one wishes about Trump’s tariff proposals. But the president believes — and believes rightly — that something has gone very wrong in America since World War II. It must change.
Of course, one may oppose Trump’s tariffs if necessary, but let us stop the reflexive libertarian worship of free trade. Let us not pretend that supporting capitalism necessarily means supporting free trade as its handmaiden. Free trade prioritizes cheap labor and cheap foreign baubles over the welfare of American families. It always has.
And let us not pretend that we have broken new ground with intra-party disputes.
Republicans like Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln once understood these things.
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