Ron Brownstein: Trump’s Economic Nationalism Will Collide with the Traditional GOP Drive to Shrink Gov’t.

BROWNSTEIN: "This whole episodes, I think, revealed what a shotgun marriage it is between Donald Trump’s economic nationalism and the more conventional, small government conservativism or even liberalism that Ryan represents, because there was a direct collision between this bill — a week — a few days earlier in the budget, President Trump made a big statement. He said, I am going to depart from traditional Republican thinking and exempt Social Security and Medicare from any changes, which has been Paul Ryan’s biggest crusade, particularly on Medicare, and — because those are my voters. Because the majority of my votes came from whites over 45 and we have a lot of lower, middle income, older, predominantly white voters who now depend on those program. I’m going to deviate or redirect Republican ideology. Then you come back a few days later with a bill that hammers those very same voters that is driven by Ryan. And it is a remind that in a variety of ways, you’re going to see, I think, a consistent collision between the economic nationalism that Trump is embracing — which in many case — in most countries around the world includes a pretty big government component and the traditional Republican drive to shrink government over all other goals."