右翼人士就特朗普新提案高呼“社会主义”

Some on the right cry ‘socialism’ over new Trump proposal

2026-09-08T17:52:21.730Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/08/politics/trump-socialism-gop-midterms

The Republican-controlled House last week adopted a resolution denouncing socialism “in all its forms.”

But now the Trump administration is attempting something that even many on the right say sounds a lot like one of those forms of socialism.

And it’s merely the latest example.

Indeed, Trump wants to make socialism the GOP’s big boogeyman in the 2026 midterm elections. But he and his administration have repeatedly compromised that message by doing things that are getting more difficult for their allies to play off as anything other than, well, pretty socialist.

The initiative, championed by Vice President JD Vance, would allow stay-at-home parents to collect childcare subsidies by taking the money from a program that assists working parents, according to The New York Times. So basically, the government would pay parents about $9,000 per child per year to stay home and raise their children. CNN has reached out to the White House and Department of Health and Human Services about the draft rule, which would still need to be finalized.

The proposal got a decidedly mixed reception Monday morning on Fox News’ morning show, “Fox and Friends.”

Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy (who is married to Trump’s transportation secretary) called it her “favorite policy, like ever, that President Trump has brought.” But fellow co-host Lawrence Jones strongly disagreed.

“I see what the president is doing, but I think it’s a terrible idea. It’s socialism,” Jones said. He added on X that “if we are going to defeat socialism, we need to nip it entirely in the bud.”

And he’s not the only one.

“Agree with LJ!” conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen posted on X.

“If only we offered a contrast to Democratic Socialists rather than an echo,” Marc Short, an adviser to Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, added.

“I am old enough to remember a time when Republicans were against government entitlement programs,” said Meghan McCain.

“This is welfare,” conservative commentator Dana Loesch said. “We tried this socialist program many times, and it failed. It utterly and completely failed when Viktor Orban tried something similar in Hungary, too.”

(Orbán, the former Hungarian prime minister, attempted similar policies to raise his country’s flagging birth rates, but the project ultimately failed and he lost reelection this year.)

Former GOP Rep. Bob Good of Virginia called Vance a socialist. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas warned the administration to “Stay out” of the issue. And the GOP’s nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, Bo French, agreed.

The proposal does have its defenders.

But tellingly, rather than argue that it’s good small-government conservative policy, they’ve largely argued that it’s a better way to administer an existing welfare program.

“The principle here is simple: Government should not put its thumb on the scale against parents raising their own children,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri.

Conservative commentator Michael Knowles said the choice was between reforming the program and leaving it alone, because abolishing the welfare state is a goal “no one even pretends to think is possible.”

And in perhaps the most telling response, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts — whose organization once carried the torch for Reagan-style, small-government conservatism — said Republicans should do what they can to use the money for what he cast as conservative purposes.

“The welfare state already exists. The subsidies already exist. And conservatives do not have the votes to dismantle either,” Roberts said. “Until that changes, taxpayer dollars should reward family formation, not subsidize its decline. That is the conservative option.”

Trump’s socialistic policies and ideas

Defenses like this are so telling because they betray a conservative movement that has largely set aside its ideals in favor of using big government to further its purposes.

Over and over again, Trump has pursued ideas and policies that a recent former version of the party — i.e. the tea party version — would surely reject. But because Trump has so dominated his base, the internal criticism has been muted.

Some of the more prominent examples:

• The Trump administration has had the federal government take ownership stakes in 30 private companies like Intel, Nvidia and Nippon Steel, according to a compilation from the libertarian Cato Institute.
• Trump has sought to create a federal sovereign wealth fund.
• He considered bailing out and nationalizing Spirit Airlines.
• He bailed out farmers in his first term and gave them bridge payments in his second.
• He has sought what critics have labeled as “price controls” for prescription drugs.
• He has offered “Trump Accounts” savings accounts for children seeded with $1,000.
• He has moved to cap credit card interest rates, which earned praise from democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.
• He has regularly sought to use the government to crack down on disfavored speech and media coverage he doesn’t like.
• He has recently sought to compel oil companies to lower prices by saying they have made too much money during the Iran war and urging them to produce more diesel.

There was an instructive scene about all this last week at a House Rules Committee hearing.

While debating the House GOP’s anti-socialism resolution, Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado asked House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil whether it would be socialism for the government to take equity stakes in grocery stores.

“That’d be a form of socialism, yeah,” the Wisconsin Republican said.

But then Neguse asked whether it would be socialism if Trump took a 20% equity stake in the grocer Kroger, and Steil was less firm.

“I’d want to see the details,” he said.

This was a hypothetical example, but explaining away things Trump does — or outright ignoring them — has become a survival mechanism in a GOP where Trump has proven so successful at targeting his critics.

The problem is that with each provocation that his small-government-conservative allies give him a pass on, he moves the ball. They repeatedly give him a few inches, and then he takes a mile.

That’s the position the GOP finds itself in. The fact that even the Heritage Foundation is defending a policy like this says it all.

And as the gloss has fallen off of Trump — and his excesses have jeopardized the GOP’s midterm hopes — it seems some conservatives are coming to the belated realization that Trump isn’t exactly the great conqueror of socialism, but arguably a participant in it.