Donald Trump has upended Republican orthodoxy on everything from free trade to foreign policy. Now he is being tempted with the ultimate GOP heresy: a proposal, bubbling up on the party’s populist wing, to raise taxes on the rich.
It has created tensions between advocates such as House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, on the one hand, and anti-tax traditionalists such as Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Grover Norquist, the lobbyist who exacts no-tax-rise pledges from GOP House candidates, on the other.
For the moment, Trump seems uncharacteristically squishy on the issue, spooked by something that rarely frightens him otherwise: political blowback.
