Maybe Trumpian Republicans believe that socialists won't be able to seize the means of production or micromanage the economy into (near) recession if MAGA simply does it first. 

With President Donald Trump touring through California and Nevada this week to tout the economic "success" of his second term, it's remarkable just how divorced the new Republican Party has become from the sort of classical conservative politics that traditionally defined it. 

Far from ushering in a new "golden age," Trump's policies have delivered an economy that is quickly souring most Americans on Republican leadership. Wage growth is barely keeping pace with relentless inflation, the share of gross domestic product going to workers is lower than any point since the 1940s, the manufacturing sector job growth has been stalled ever since "Liberation Day" tariffs were first implemented and consumer confidence is abysmal. 

Sure, the stock market is soaring, but that doesn't help most of us pay for gas at the pump or buy groceries on the weekend. 

Luckily, Nevada has managed to avoid the sort of dire economic calamity that usually befalls us when national trends turn gloomy — a resiliency bound to frustrate Democrats in the state, who would like nothing more than to campaign against Trump's economy rather than a still largely liked Gov. Joe Lombardo. However, even with our local economy weathering national headwinds better than expected, the policies emanating from a Republican-led Washington, D.C., is doubtlessly wearing on ordinary people. 

Just as bad as the policies themselves is the degree to which they represent the GOP's gradual shift away from acting as a principled alternative to the supposed radicalism of the far left. 

After all, taking equity shares in private companies, imposing massive import taxes without the consent of Congress and working tirelessly to expand the power of the presidency aren't, historically, major planks of the Republican platform. Does anyone else remember when Republicans used to at least pretend they defended the free market and opposed "big government" central planning? 

I know, I know, that was a lifetime ago. But, still, it's worth remembering there was a time when government buying up equity in private companies would have ignited the Tea Party into a riot. And the idea of one man in the White House unilaterally remaking the economy by levying taxes without congressional input would have left conservatives scrambling to get their hands on enough Gadsden Flags to meet the demands of planned protests.

That version of the GOP, however, seems to no longer exist. 

And yet, much of the rhetorical bullshittery spewed by today's MAGA-first Republicans still revolve around the notion that they are all that stands between Americans and the creeping threat of modern socialism. 

But in practice, Trump has arguably done more to move America toward some form of socialism than any president before him — in terms of inspiring leftist radicals to rise up in the Democratic Party and in terms of the policy precedents he's laying out on a regular basis. 

After all, this administration has emboldened the sort of centralized government needed to implement actual socialism — as well as any other centrally planned "ism" one can think up. And it's a precedent that isn't likely to bode well when MAGA's unpopular avatars suddenly find themselves in the political minority sometime in the near future. 

As Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) recently told Sean Hannity, the real problem with the White House's manipulation of the market is that it allows the worst politicians — on either side of the aisle — to seize the nation's economic engine for their own political goals the instant they gain power. 

"Concentrating economic and political power together is wrong," he told Hannity. "What if, god forbid, you have a left wing president and all of a sudden they own part of our companies?" 

Of course, being the good MAGA comrade that he is, Hannity insisted the governor was comparing "apples to pineapples." 

That concentration of political and economic power, however, is exactly what Republicans used to say they opposed. And Trump's commandeering of private companies (as well as his unfettered use of tariffs to manipulate economic outcomes) is turning out to be a real-life demonstration of why such opposition used to exist. 

Such concentration of power feeds the sort of cronyism and political favoritism that has long haunted the corridors and backrooms of Washington at the expense of ordinary people — which is precisely why the stock market is now riding high while average Americans are struggling to cope with everyday costs.  

Or, to put it another way, "the swamp" isn't looking very drained at the moment. Indeed, it's worse than ever — a stagnant cesspool of cronyism, political favoritism, backroom deals and alleged corruption that makes the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool look like a pristine lagoon on the Amalfi Coast. 

And that "swampiness" should be a worrying trend for anyone concerned with economic fairness, regardless of their partisan leanings. To Polis' point: If you aren't comfortable with your political opponents wielding a particular economic power, you shouldn't provide it to your political allies either. 

The failure of the Trump-era GOP isn't merely the plethora of bad policies we've been given in his second term. After all, that wasn't too hard to predict, and no number of MAGA pep rallies in critical Western states will change how those policies hurt ordinary Americans. 

Instead, the larger failure of Trump's GOP has been the utter lack of principled opposition by pundits, politicians and elected officials on the American right who ought to know better than cheer on such abhorrent abuses of government power by a wannabe mad king. After all, Trump's Peronist brand of economic micromanagement isn't all that different in practice to the sort of economic failure that various forms of socialism have produced elsewhere in the world. 

And if Republicans don't start pointing that out pretty soon, they may find their majorities replaced by a Democratic Party that, in response to such absurdity, has become significantly more hospitable to actual socialists.

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas and founder of Schaus Creative LLC, an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.