Donald Trump’s surprisingly good State of the Union speech got a record 70 to 75 percent positive poll approval from those who watched. Even if you discount (as you should) for the Trump haters who can’t bear to watch him and chose another of their 100-plus cable channels, that’s not chopped liver.

If they’d watched, their reactions would undoubtedly be as sour as those of the Democrats in the hall, who stayed slouching and frowning in their chairs even at some patriotic lines.

Trump is different. He has embraced the causes of religious conservatives, as anomalous as that may be given his persona. But you didn’t hear too much about that in the speech.

You did hear a lot about the new tax law, formerly known to Democrats and their media allies as the “tax scam,” and how it’s producing wage increases and bonuses for those at the low and modest ends of the income scale. And how paychecks will rise when the IRS’s new withholding schedule goes into effect in two weeks.

Trump did, appropriately, pay more tribute than usual to Americans’ engagement in the world and aid to foreigners. But his repeated theme was that he would always serve Americans first. Americans like the heroes and heroines in the gallery whom he spotlighted with grace.

Two other issues mentioned briefly in the State of the Union have the potential to move Trump's party away from Bush’s. One is his daughter Ivanka’s proposal for family and medical leave, something free-market Republicans have usually spurned.

Democratic versions of this feature yet another Great Society bureaucracy and new taxes on businesses. Trump Republicans might embrace the proposal of lawyer Kristin Shapiro and American Enterprise Institute’s Andrew Biggs to allow parents to finance leaves through early withdrawals from Social Security in return for delayed retirement. As with Social Security retirement, recipients would arguably paying something for what they get.

The second issue is infrastructure, on which Trump called for $1.5 trillion in spending. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., preemptively attacked the public-private financing Trump is said to embrace. But public-private financing has been enormously successful abroad, whereas Schumer’s preferred system, the New York Times reports, produces subway tunneling costs per mile seven times the average of the rest of the world.

The State of the Union probably won’t elevate Trump’s low job approval. But competition between Trump Republicans and Democrats wedded to socialism and a secularism of religious intensity might not turn out the way the latter would like.