There is a battle across the Anglosphere on the Right side of the political spectrum. We see it in Britain between a ‘we mean business on immigration’ insurgent Reform Party riding high in the polls and the established Tory Party that really did nothing (and repeatedly broke manifesto promises) on that issue and a host of other issues for 14 years. We see it in Australia between a lifeless, Labour-lite dominated Liberal Party – that is unelectable – and the various conservative splinter parties, most noticeably One Nation. And we see it, in a different guise, even in the US.

I speak, of course, of the struggle between what critics label ‘populist conservatives’ on the one side and established, High Tory ‘moderate’ Righties on the other side. The latter tend not to fight on culture issues at all. They are Keynesians on economics. They were all-in on the thuggish, civil liberties destroying Covid lockdowns. They are at least half-committed climate alarmists and Net Zero advocates. And they loved (though pretend now to be a tad sceptical about) mass Third World inwards immigration. The so-called populists (a term that is really only one of abuse, or a proxy for ‘electorally popular’) want big, big cuts to immigration and even deportations. They want non-Keynesian economic policies. And they want to fight the Culture Wars, not cravenly surrender, because they believe that everything else politically is downstream of culture.

So look now at the US, because there this same battle is playing out in part between President Trump, the populist, and a hefty chunk of Congressional Republicans who aren’t. After 11 months, and using pretty much only Executive Orders, Trump is presiding over an annualised 4.3% growth rate, record high stock market tallies, 2.7% inflation, a completely secure border (and hence a massive drop in drug overdose deaths), hundreds of billions of dollars of tariff income (which elite economists promised would send inflation sky high, but hasn’t), a lowered deficit, a 20% drop in murders (largely from sending in the National Guard to a few Democrat controlled cities), real wage gains for the poorest Americans, petrol prices at the pump that in some states are well under half of what they were under President Biden, and energy and electricity prices many Australians would chew their left arms off to have. Oh, and I leave wholly aside the various Trump foreign policy wins such as bombing the Iranian mullahs’ nuclear ambitions, removing the Venezuelan strongman, bringing some stability to the Middle East, pushing the self-indulgent Europeans to spend a lot more on defence while threatening their anti-free speech ambitions and all while pulling out of Paris and Net Zero, effectively ending that lunacy outside of, well, Britain, Canada and most conspicuously here in Australia.

Meanwhile what have the Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives delivered, given that in last year’s election Trump not only won all the swing states, the Electoral College and the popular vote, on his coat-tails the Republicans also won a 53-47 advantage in the Senate and, unusually for Republicans, a majority in the House of Representatives. (Not to mention, and overwhelmingly due to Trump, the fact there is a solid conservative majority of justices on the Supreme Court.)

So what have these legislative majorities of Republicans in Congress done to help Trump and lock-in with legislation his agenda? Wait for it. They have set a record for the lowest legislative output in the modern era, having passed under half a dozen Bills. When the Democrats are in this sort of position they have passed hundreds of Bills. But more than a few Republicans in Congress are RINOs, establishment High Tory types who despise a lot of the Trump agenda, including his closed border and deport-all-illegals policies. For instance, President Trump wants to completely revamp the grossly expensive and weirdly inefficient Obamacare legislation (which the Democrats passed without a single Republican vote). The Republicans can’t get it done – illustrating a truth of modern-day Anglosphere politics that what the Left legislates the Right almost never unwinds: just think of idiotic statutory bills of rights or the whole Tony Blair destruction of the British Constitution.

Or what about legislating the Elon Musk DOGE cuts? Nope. Well, what about Trump’s desire to bring in national voter ID laws? Because it is now patently obvious that some Democrat states are handing out social security cards and then letting those be used to allow non-citizens to vote. Nope. The Congressional Republicans can’t move even on that. Nor can they legislatively lock-in any of the above Trump one-year legacy, making it completely vulnerable at the hands of the first Democrat President to next occupy the White House. The list goes on. But the claim from Congressional Republican leaders in the Senate (which is more of a problem than the House, which has to face voters every two years) is that they are not prepared to take on the filibuster. What’s the filibuster? Well, it’s not part of the US Constitution which already has incredible checks and balances built into it – such as the democratic world’s most powerful upper house, one of the most powerful top courts, vetos, real federalism, the list goes on. The filibuster evolved by accident and has shifted and altered over time but today requires 60 of 100 US Senators to vote for cloture to override it. Worse, the filibuster for most of American history required Senators actually to stand and speak and keep speaking. Now it’s just a formalised device. And the Senate Republicans won’t even change that. There is talk of what in the US they call ‘the nuclear option’, a simple majority vote to get rid of the filibuster (just as the Democrats did as regards non-Supreme Court judicial nominations, later extended by Republicans to cover the top court as well). Look, the US is no New Zealand-style parliamentary sovereignty set-up we’re talking about. There are myriad checks and balances actually in the Constitution. The filibuster is not in it and is grossly anti-democratic. It is being used by Democrats of late far more than it used to be used. And everyone knows that in the same position the Democrats would nuke the filibuster if that was the only way to pass legislation locking in election promises.

Who knows what this new year will bring? I’d certainly do what was needed to bring in national voter ID laws (in a world where we need ID to buy alcohol, get on planes and where Lefties demanded vaccine ID to keep jobs etc.) and protect Trump’s immigration wins. Of course, many RINO Republicans (as with half the Liberal Party’s shadow cabinet) worry about what the legacy media will say. Ha! A recent US study found that only 3.4% of US journalists describe themselves as Republicans. Another found that more than two dozen Yale University departments lacked even a single Republican professor. It’s for losers to worry about what the elites think. We know what they think. And we know they’re wrong. Start doing something you useless RINOs.

Dr James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.