'Popularity will plummet': Conservatives discuss when 'voters will step off Trump train'

Donald Trump is more popular now than he was in his first term, but that isn't likely to last if he keeps on his current path, according to conservative columnists.

The New York Times on Friday published an opinion piece featuring four conservative writers discussing why Trump supporters love the President more than ever before.

Among other things, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David French and Bret Stephens discussed how the fact that "tariffing" is now a verb "signifies the end of Western civilization."

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Brooks put the blame on progressives, who he says push independents toward MAGA.

"A lot of elite conservatives continue to struggle with what I call the near-abroad problem. They may dislike MAGA, but they (we) are mostly around progressives or moderates on a day-to-day basis, by virtue of being elite," according to the conservative. "These progressives sometimes make our teeth hurt. We react more strongly to minor sins of the people across campus than the major sins of the people far away. This is something I’m working on."

Stephens pointed out MAGA's acceptance of Trump's seeming habit of skirting our nation's laws.

"What I see is a president doing things that are, if not outright illegal, genuinely scary, like trying to go after the Washington law firm representing Jack Smith, the former special counsel. At a minimum, Trump represents an almost unprecedented stress test to the judicial system and the separation of powers. And if he starts openly defying Supreme Court rulings à la Andrew Jackson, that’s when you’ll find me at the barricades," he said before turning to blame the Democrats. "That said, some of what Trump is doing is simply a turbocharged version of what his liberal predecessors did while the mainstream press remained mostly mum."

Healy asked, "Are Republicans really OK if Trump drives America into a recession?"

"It’s so important to distinguish between the core of MAGA — which dominates discourse online — from the bulk of voters who put Trump back in the White House. Online MAGA will pay any price and bear any burden for Trump; they’ll even buy electric cars to keep the DOGE dream alive," according to French. "But the people who actually made him president were primarily concerned about prices, and it wasn’t close. If the economy tanks, MAGA will stay with Trump, but we know from the 2020 election that enough voters will step off the Trump train to swing the balance of power back to the Democrats."

Douthat agreed that, "Trump’s current coalition includes a lot of not-that-partisan non-loyalists who voted for him because they thought he’d be good for the economy, and those voters will be voting Democratic in the midterms without a second thought if we’re in a recession."

Brooks then said, "I do think Trump’s popularity will plummet if the economy really heads south. People will tolerate a lot from their government, but not unnecessary chaos."

Read the full piece here.