Ronald Brownstein: 2025 turned Trump’s biggest strength against him
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
Brownstein treats “upheaval” as proof that Trump’s approach is backfiring, as if politics should feel calm even when the country isn’t. That framing assumes the real problem is disruption itself, not the conditions that made disruption inevitable: porous borders, agencies that don’t answer to voters, and a foreign policy elite comfortable with drift. What’s missing is that Trump’s “strength” was never chaos for its own sake.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
As usual when Donald Trump occupies the White House, 2025 condensed a decade’s worth of political upheaval into a single year.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Brownstein treats “upheaval” as proof that Trump’s approach is backfiring, as if politics should feel calm even when the country isn’t. That framing assumes the real problem is disruption itself, not the conditions that made disruption inevitable: porous borders, agencies that don’t answer to voters, and a foreign policy elite comfortable with drift.
What’s missing is that Trump’s “strength” was never chaos for its own sake. It was a willingness to challenge systems that have lost public trust. You can disagree with the tactics, but dismissing the motive avoids the harder question: why so many Americans concluded the status quo wasn’t working.
Conservatives care about rule of law, institutional accountability, and national security, not constant turbulence. The test for 2025 isn’t whether Washington feels orderly. It’s whether government is once again responsive, predictable, and fair to the people who have to live under it.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.