With few policy prospects, will conservatives divorce Trump?

On the basis of strict, short-term utilitarian logic, conservatives made the right call in sticking with Trump in 2016. After all, if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, conservatives wouldn’t have gotten any judges or any tax reform. But, as Donald Trump knows all too well, marriages need not be for eternity, especially shotgun nuptials such as this one. If conservatives have extracted about all they can from Trump, why keep lugging around his considerable baggage? Why allow Trump’s persona to define the Republican Party and the conservative movement?

There are a few signs conservatives are beginning to back away. Evangelical leaders are warning of an “enthusiasm gap” after Congress failed to defund Planned Parenthood in the recent “omnibus” spending bill, and Ann Coulter accused Trump of “total betrayal” since the bill lacked money for a border wall. CNN found that several Republican members of Congress are holding off from endorsing Trump for re-election.

With Trump’s approval still sky-high among Republican rank-and-file voters – who seem to care more about waging culture war in the media than notching policy victories – GOP officeholders and conservative leaders can’t easily throw Trump overboard, and probably won’t try. But with every day of inaction on the issues they care about, movement conservatives have to wonder if their marriage with Trump is akin to one in which they only stay together for the kids.