Republicans often ignore Trump’s socialistic moves. Spirit Airlines could test that

For more than a year, Republicans in Washington have largely stood by as President Donald Trump staged a series of remarkable government interventions into private business.

The moves flew in the face of decades of conservative, free-market-capitalist orthodoxy. Some of them have even sounded a lot like, well, socialism.

But the administration’s interest in Spirit Airlines is testing the GOP’s laissez-faire approach.

Some prominent Republicans have quickly delivered an apparent brushback pitch against the Trump administration’s idea to bail out the troubled airline with $500 million. Importantly, CNN reports the administration’s proposal is expected to include the federal government taking a stake in Spirit, as it has in several other companies over the past year.

“This is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas posted on X, comparing it to the 2008 bank bailouts. “The TARP corporate bailouts were a huge mistake & the government doesn’t know a damn thing about running a failed budget airline (that the Biden admin killed).”

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas was a little less adamant, but still raised concerns.

“If Spirit’s creditors or other potential investors don’t think they can run it profitably coming out of its second bankruptcy in under two years, I doubt the US Government can either,” Cotton said. “Not the best use of taxpayer dollars.”

And Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina said that Americans “shouldn’t be on the hook for another failing business as its competition thrives.”

Even Trump’s own transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, hasn’t sounded particularly thrilled by this idea.

After Trump seemed to float the government buying Spirit during an interview Tuesday morning on CNBC, Duffy said: “The president says take a look, and he is my boss, and so we will take a look.”

In an interview with Reuters, Duffy pointed to the potential pitfalls of not only the bailout but also the government taking ownership of the company.

“There’s been a lot of money thrown at Spirit, and they haven’t found their way into profitability. And so would we just forestall the inevitable and then own ⁠that?” ​Duffy said. “We can’t make dumb investments.”

Duffy then added: “If no one else wants to ​buy them, why would we buy them?”

There are valid reasons for the Trump administration to not want Spirit to fail. Perhaps doubly so since the airline industry is currently dealing with surging jet fuel costs due to the Iran war, which are forcing airlines to cut back on routes and raise prices.

But it’s one thing to bail them out; it’s another to buy a stake in the airline.

Of course, this has become one of Trump’s go-to strategies.

Over the past year, his administration has taken stakes in more than a dozen companies, totaling more than $20 billion, according to new data this week from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Many of the deals are aimed at protecting US supply chains and the American technological industry, as well as contending with an increasingly important battle for critical minerals. The CFR labels it the largest US government acquisition of private equity stakes since World War II.

Oftentimes, the shares have been relatively modest — around 10% of the companies. But in some instances, they’ve given the federal government major control over private businesses.

That includes a “golden share” in US Steel Corp that gives the government (Trump) veto power over investment and production decisions. It also includes a deal with Westinghouse in which the government can force it to launch an initial public offering if its value rises over a certain point, and can also buy a larger share at a discounted price at a later date.

Those aren’t the only ways Trump has run afoul of conservative free-market orthodoxy.

There’s also his protectionist global tariffs — many of which were recently struck down by the Supreme Court. He’s effectively bullied private businesses to bend the knee by wielding threats of using government power, like forcing ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel. And his quest to lower prescription drug prices has included the launch of a direct-to-consumer, government-run drug platform called TrumpRx.

Still, to this point, the pushback from the right has been very limited.

Some prominent conservative and free-market activists in February wrote a letter opposing some of Trump’s prescription drug efforts. Cruz also strenuously objected to the Kimmel pressure. And a handful of Republican lawmakers balked at Trump taking a stake in Intel last summer.

“The U.S. federal government should not be buying companies,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said back in August.

That’s certainly not an outlandish position to take in the modern Republican Party — or at least, the version that existed before Trump. But it’s a principle that very few Republicans have vocalized lately.

So why might that change with Spirit?

For one, it’s looking like the government could take a much larger share of Spirit than of those other companies, giving it much more ownership. Second, the situation doesn’t involve issues that the government could argue directly impact national security, like strategically important minerals.

But don’t undersell how much Trump’s historically low popularity could have to do with this.

So much of Trump’s second-term approach is predicated on having the political capital to bully people and steamroll the traditional guardrails of politics — to deter potential objectors from speaking out, for fear of the consequences.

But that’s much more difficult when there are indicators that the GOP base has soured on the president. Some people who might have held their tongue before could feel emboldened to stand up for their principles.

And this would seem to be a logical spot for conservatives, many of whom genuinely abhor socialistic policies, to make a stand. After all, just think about the big-government precedents Trump is setting that the next Democratic president could exploit.

Not to mention, politically it makes it more difficult for Republicans to argue Democrats are the socialists when the Trump administration is literally giving the government a historic amount of ownership of private companies.

Republicans have largely stood by while Trump took a wrecking ball to several party principles. But the Spirit Airlines saga could be a breaking point.