John Davidson and Rachel Stoltzfoos of the Federalist poll conservative policy experts on President Trump’s first-year performance.
Daniel Drezner recently argued in The Washington Post that praise from the Right for President Trump’s first year is getting overhyped because it’s coming primarily from culture warriors who don’t understand the intricacies of policy, not policy experts who know better.
Conservative policy wonks simply aren’t praising the president, he argues, referring to this supposed divide as the “one trick” that “explains” the trend of conservative praise for Trump. This is news to those of us familiar with some of those conservative wonks, many of whom report they are actually quite pleased with the Trump administration’s first year. We can’t help but think Drezner might have arrived at a different conclusion had he done a bit of research for his column. …
… [W]e decided to pick up the phone and ask a range of right-of-center policy wonks how they would grade Trump’s first year. What we found is a more positive assessment than Drezner’s column would suggest, although their opinions certainly do not represent uniform approval.
Taken together, Trump averaged a B/B- across all policy areas with the experts we surveyed. That’s a worse grade than his hard-core “culture warrior” supporters probably think he deserves, but no doubt better than the mainstream press might suspect.
