Whatever happened to GOP fiscal hawks?

Trump taught Republicans how to relax and love expansionary fiscal policy. By 2019, he was running a nearly $1 trillion deficit at a time of peace and prosperity, and, of course, the pandemic blew the lid off in 2020. After that, it’s difficult for the party to come back and sound the klaxons again about the dangers of red ink. Besides, the klaxons have issued false alarms before. Republicans realized that past dire warnings of imminent economic harm from deficit spending — rising interest rates, spiking inflation, a debt crisis — haven’t panned out... Meanwhile, GOP politics have become focused on culture-war issues, another change symbolized by Trump. These issues hit close to the bone in a way that fiscal matters don’t. Conservatives worry about their free-speech rights getting trampled, about schools distorting the minds of their children and about the country’s history getting redefined — and it’s hard to get them to care more about a balance sheet than these other, more definitional questions.