The lack of promises with regards to abortion and same-sex marriage is huge. It's a colossal shift. Trump has always been more of a traditional Jeffersonian Republican than a Federalist - he's in favour of shifting power from the federal government to the states. This is an increasing indicator that the states will be what decides on these social topics, not the feds.

That also explains why he's getting so much funding and support from the elite in Silicon Valley - they would like nothing more than for California to decide legislation rather than DC.

It's increasingly apparent that Trump views the role of the federal government as an arbiter of the economy and the role of the United States (as a concept) as a way of unifying the disparate interests of different states with regards to foreign policy. By gutting federal agencies, the only logical result is pushing power down to the individual states.

I mean, yeah. It'll be interesting to see if that means that they'll still pursue those legislative ideals (just without a platform or unifying cry or whatever), or if they're happy to push the responsibility down to the states.

My opinion is that the Republicans see the writing on the wall: why make unpopular decisions federally when you can make popular decisions at the state-level? They can maintain a christofascist state in their home ground without having to project onto states that'll ignore their legislation anyway.