There are currently 23 Republican state government trifectas - states where Republicans control the governorship and both houses of the state legislature. For all that’s been said and written about the promise of a more responsive and innovative Republican Party, there’s been remarkably little discussion of how populists might leverage Republican dominance in these states to score policy victories.
The challenges here seem obvious:
Whether or not there’s been a realignment in the electorate, the orientation of Republican officeholders hasn’t changed much at all.
Populist discourse has focused mainly on trade, immigration, and foreign policy - issues that don’t particularly lend themselves to state-level policy interventions.
Each of these problems suggests its own solution:
Much of the attention that we’re currently devoting to the debate about who should represent us on the 2024 presidential ticket should be redirected to primary races at the state legislative level. We have an extraordinary, and perhaps ephemeral, opportunity to put W’s on the board in as many as 23 states, and that’s to say nothing of the states where some measure of bipartisanship is possible. It would be criminal to squander that.
We need to broaden our policy imagination. Instead of focusing narrowly on the particular policy positions that differentiated Trump from his fusionist rivals, we should take a step back and look at the economic and cultural forces that animated Trump’s base and find new ways to address those forces.
A few areas that seem especially promising to me:
We should seek to reform state university systems in ambitious ways. Most obviously, this means working to fortify a cultural consensus that prizes vigorous debate and academic freedom on campus, and which promotes an unapologetic embrace of Americanism. Even beyond those aims, states should find ways to nudge their colleges and universities to streamline their curricula, introduce new vocational pathways, and better align their programs with the needs of students and employers. And perhaps something can even be done about the administrative bloat that’s inflated tuition rates for years now.
We should incentivize municipalities to revisit their zoning policies, with a view towards increasing the badly restricted housing supply in many otherwise prosperous areas. This is one of the best things we can do for families, particularly young families. It would also lower one of the biggest barriers to small business formation.
Following Governor Desantis’s lead, we can prevent municipalities from obstructing federal enforcement of our immigration laws.
At the federal level, political figures as divergent as former President Trump and Senator Sanders have suggested negotiating drug prices nationally through the Medicare program. What’s the feasibility of doing something like this through state hospital systems? I have a feeling this one is going to turn out to be ill-conceived, but I thought I might mention it anyway.
These ideas aren’t meant to be read as anything like an exhaustive platform. I offer them only to spark further discussion.
Good ideas.