A Worry on the Right That Trump's Conservative Acts Are Fleeting

By JEREMY W. PETERSFEB. 18, 2017

WASHINGTON — When Donald J. Trump first tried a few years ago to line up a speaking slot at the marquee event for the conservative grass roots, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the organizers almost rejected him because they thought he was a fraud who only wanted a platform to promote his hotels, casinos, neckties and golf courses.

Stephen K. Bannon, then the head of Breitbart News, found himself essentially blacklisted from the gathering, known as CPAC. So he started a rival conference called The Uninvited and ran it out of a hotel down the street.

With Mr. Trump now ensconced in the Oval Office and Mr. Bannon, his chief strategist, right down the hall, it is hardly in dispute who won the fight for control of the Republican Party. But there are still much bigger questions about whether Mr. Trump, who has never claimed to be a conservative but so far has governed conspicuously to the right, will ultimately be loyal to conservatives’ agenda.

Mr. Trump does not dwell on policy, right or left. He prefers the transactional to the ideological. And for conservatives devoted to a cause that is fundamentally about ideas, the distance between the new president and the movement he overtook continues to loom as a red flag.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/politics/trump-conservative-ideology.html?emc=edit_th_20170219&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284&_r=0