APRIL 24, 2025 | OPINION | By Fiona Frankel (Staff Writer)
“I’m a Republican, but I don’t support Trump.” While I cannot personally relate to this statement, I often hear it uttered and subsequently met with praise and approval. Arguably our institution’s most famous alum, former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, was thrust into the spotlight in 2020 for her open opposition to President Donald Trump. Colorado College hosted Cheney as the 2023 commencement speaker, with former CC President L. Song Richardson commended her for upholding our constitution in her role as Vice Chair of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack. Former Senator and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has received similar praise for being the sole Republican senator to vote to convict Donald Trump in both impeachment trials. Though Trump easily took the Republican Party’s nomination in this past election, winning eighty-one percent of the vote over challenger Nikki Haley’s fifteen percent, a fair portion of American conservatives are quick to defend their political ideology against any influence of Trumpism.
Politicians like Cheney and Romney are facing a consciously risky choice by voicing public opposition to Trump within their party, both electorally and in regard to their safety. Cheney lost her Wyoming primary in 2022 to a Trump-endorsed candidate, ending her four years in the House of Representatives. Trump openly called Romney a “pompous ass,” advocated for his impeachment, and falsely accused him of being a “Democrat secret asset.” Trump’s narrative regarding both figures has incited constant threats to their safety from the MAGA right, based on their purported betrayal of the Republican Party.
Simultaneously, Democrats have praised the bravery of Cheney and Romney, with Biden closing his term by awarding the former with the Presidential Citizens Medal. It is a common refrain from the left in the era of Trumpism to state that they respect the opinions of Republicans, but not Trump supporters. Political polarization has indeed grown as Trump has emerged as the alt-right figurehead. This past election saw the highest share of ‘double-haters,’ with roughly three million fewer voters turning out than in the 2020 presidential election, which occurred during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is generally more palatable for a Democrat to hear that their conservative family member, friend or significant other refrained from voting rather than voting for Trump.
However, is Trumpism really so unaligned with Republican values? In 1982, former President Ronald Reagan established the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), an investigation into inefficient government practices in which corporate leaders – and no federal employees – provided recommendations for cutting supposedly unnecessary spending. The PSSCC, also known as the Grace Commission, did not have the reach that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) does today. But it reflected efforts that are now being carried out by DOGE to gut the federal apparatus: dismantling the Department of Education, blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing regulations, terminating the Department of Health and Human Services and so on.
Reagan’s version of conservatism is what the modern-day Republican Party embodies, and its priorities are what the Trump administration is acting upon. There is an inclination for conservatives and liberals alike to see Trumpism as a departure from the two-party system, a radical entity that is currently enacting legislation so unorthodox that it could not possibly reflect the priorities of a party half the nation aligns with. There is some validity to this argument: Trump has defended recent deportations based on little evidence and with no due process and attempted to interfere with independent agencies, including the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to liaise with the President or Attorney General. These actions transcend partisanship and veer into blatant unconstitutionality, distorting the Republican values they may derive from.
Still, the majority of Trump’s platform and recent actions are, however unpalatable, reflective of the values of the Republican Party. Conservatism has not dramatically altered course since 2016, and the right’s priorities have not been transformed by MAGA ideology, as some may argue. Rather, Republicans are honest about what they want under the Trump presidency. Liz Cheney, though regarded as the torchbearer for anti-Trump Republicanism, opposed the President for his unconstitutional incitement of the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack. Yet during his first term, she supported his repeal of the Affordable Care Act and voted yes on his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. She dubbed Representative Ilhan Omar, a frequent critic of Israel, an “anti-Semitic Socialist who slanders US troops and carries water for Hamas and Maduro.” In 2022, she voiced support for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. These are not surprising values to see from a conservative lawmaker. And yet when actions are carried out by the Trump administration that attempt to accomplish the very goals at the root of Republicanism — smaller government, less federal spending, limited immigration, economic libertarianism, support of the private sector, socially conservative behavior — it is deemed as radical.
Regardless of what one’s ballot looked like in November, many are quick to separate themselves from the support of the Trump administration while they consciously support their ideology, at least in theory. Anti-Trump conservatives do not want to think about what cutting federal spending looks like, nor will they generate a candidate who has an alternative to what Trump has proposed for how to carry this out. They will dismiss Trump, with his crude demeanor and attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, as a far-right radical, while remaining aligned on nearly all of the current administration’s fiscal policy. Tax cuts reflect Reagan, mass deportations mirror George W. Bush and both the latter and former launched direct attacks on EPA regulation capabilities that Trump’s actions replicate verbatim.
This characterization of Trumpism is not just colloquially frustrating. It is also an issue for Democrats who believe that the country that elected Donald Trump will return to ‘normal’ – meaning more liberal – following his final term. In truth, Trump has been able to capture a voting base on issues that most Republicans can replicate. He is not, as prominent figures, including former President Joe Biden claim, an aberration to the party that our conservative parents or grandparents once aligned with.
Donald Trump is a Republican. As a Republican, you might not like that he was caught on tape bragging about sexual assault and you don’t agree with his unconstitutional deportations. You likely don’t think he’s a good person. But fiscally, legislatively and in terms of policy, you might be a Trump supporter.