Political consultant Mary Matalin praised President Trump as “a great overall president,” calling his job performance “stunning” and adding that she can “die happy now.”
In 2016, Matalin left the Republican Party and registered as a Libertarian but the pundit told PJM she “can’t leave the party because it’s Hotel California.”
“I always thought, as Reagan did, that libertarianism was central to conservatism. I have the same philosophy and I support the same policies. I just thought, at the time, it had nothing to do with Trump, whom I think is doing a great job. It’s just that I didn’t see those principles and policies being reflected in the majorities that we kept electing,” Matalin told PJM in an exclusive interview at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference.
“So I don’t know why it made any difference to anybody, but I want to re-express to myself, to my kids and my community, to remind them of what Reagan said about the balance between liberty, that tension and that part of preserving our freedom has to do with conservative policies. I think libertarianism precedes conservatism or it’s certainly iatrical to it. So I didn’t think it was that big of a deal; I didn’t leave the party and I can’t leave the party because it’s Hotel California,” she added, referring to the Eagles song in which you can check out but never leave.
Matalin, a veteran Republican strategist, said she’s specifically pleased with Trump’s “fabulous” leadership on tax reform and his can-do attitude toward public policy.
“I think he’s stunning; he’s a paradigmatic shift because, for him, I think, it’s an isolated paradigm shift. I don’t think anybody else can do it because everybody else who thinks they know about politics impedes their own forward motion by saying it can’t be done. He doesn’t have that gene –everything can be done,” she said.
“Everything is possible, and guess what? He has proved that it is. Do you know how many years, decades, I worked on tax reform? He did it like that, changing people’s lives. Do you know how long we all ran against Obamacare? …The less reported is the most significant for the economy … regulatory relief,” she added.
Matalin said Trump’s regulatory relief agenda has given hope back to the business community, young families and those preparing for retirement.
“I say this from the perspective of being in a blue city in a red state for 10 years – New Orleans and Louisiana. He’s given people back hope, I mean people really, small-business people or young families or retiring people, in our DNA is always the potential to be better, to strive for something,” she said.
“You couldn’t strive for anything. You’re being bushwhacked at every corner. He has shifted the collective psyche from horribly cynical to helpfully skeptical. So I think he is doing great,” she added.
No Democrats voted for the tax reform package Trump signed into law last December. No Republicans voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010. PJM asked Matalin if she thought the tax reform legislative process was too similar to the way Democrats handled Obamacare.
“There was no support for taking over one-sixth of the economy, there wasn’t when he pushed it through, there wasn’t in that first midterm, there hadn’t been for all of the years that he was in office,” she replied. “Not only did the support never grow for it like it has with tax reform, the opposition to it intensified.”
“People out there, first of all, they dismiss all the – they don’t hate rich people, but this was not a person tax, it was an economic incentive tax and it’s working. I think it was spectacular. And I like the way he does things without – to people out there he makes it look kind of a pain in the neck, but not that hard, OK,” she added.
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Source: PJ Media
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