“The Monumental Fall Of The Republican Party”: A Step-By-Step Capitulation To A Politics Of Unreason
The fixed smile on Donald Trump’s face as Sarah Palin unleashed her free-association, who-knows-what-she’ll-say-next harangue endorsing him on Tuesday sent its own message. “How long do I have to stand here?” it seemed to say. But of all the developments in the astonishing Republican presidential contest, this moment told us what we need to know about the state of a once-great political party.
Consider the forces that brought Palin to the national stage in the first place. In 2008, John McCain, running behind Barack Obama in the polls, wanted to shake up the contest by picking a moderate as his running mate. His first choice was then-Sen. Joe Lieberman, and he also liked former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge.
But McCain won the nomination against the will of the Republican right as more-conservative candidates had fractured their side’s vote. “He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of the Republican establishment — and that distinction is key,” said Rush Limbaugh, using language that is now oh-so-familiar. The establishment, Limbaugh charged, had “long sought to rid the party of conservative influence.”
A moderate VP choice would have been too much for Limbaugh’s legions. So McCain, facing a full-scale revolt on the floor of the Republican convention, gave up on Lieberman and Ridge, turning instead to Palin. A new hero for the Limbaugh-Fox News disciples was born.
Where Palin was concerned, Limbaugh overestimated the establishment’s dedication to principle and underestimated its opportunism.
After Obama won, the main goal of Republican leaders of all stripes was to take back Congress as a prelude to defeating the president in 2012. The angry grass-roots right — it has been there for decades but cleverly rebranded itself as the tea party in 2009 — would be central in driving the midterm voters the GOP would need to the polls. Since no one was better at rousing them than Palin, old-line Republican leaders embraced and legitimized her even if they snickered privately about who she was and how she said things.
Today’s Republican crisis was thus engineered by the party leadership’s step-by-step capitulation to a politics of unreason, a policy of silence toward the most extreme and wild charges against Obama, and a lifting up of resentment and anger over policy and ideas as the party’s lodestars.
Many Republicans are now alarmed that their choice may come down to Trump, the candidate of a reality-show populism that tries to look like the real thing, and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), an ideologue whom they fear would lead their cause to a devastating defeat. There is an honorable pushback against this outcome from champions of a genuinely more moderate and tolerant brand of conservatism — the columnists Michael Gerson and David Brooks among them.
But this is a battle that needed to be joined long ago (which, I should say, is a central theme of my new book, “Why the Right Went Wrong”). A showdown was required before the steady, large-scale defection of moderate voters from the party. Now that opponents of Trump and Cruz need the moderates, they are no longer there — except, perhaps, in states where independents might cross into the party’s primaries to save it from itself.
And instead of battling the impulses now engulfing the party, GOP honchos exploited them. They fanned nativist feeling by claiming that illegal immigrants were flooding across our borders, even when net immigration from Mexico had fallen below zero.
They promised radical reductions in the size of government, knowing no Republican president, including Ronald Reagan, could pull this off. They pledged to “take the country back,” leaving vague the identity of the people (other than Obama) from whom it was to be reclaimed. Their audiences filled in the blank. They denounced Obamacare as socialist, something, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is pointing out, it decidedly is not. Indeed, it’s rooted in proposals Republicans once made themselves.
Politicians whose rhetoric brought the right’s loyalists to a boiling point now complain that they don’t much like the result. But it’s a little late for that. Why shouldn’t the party’s ultra-conservatives and its economically distressed working-class supporters feel betrayed? At least with Trump, Cruz and Palin, they have reason to think they know what they’re getting. “We are mad, and we’ve been had,” Palin declared on Tuesday. “They need to get used to it.”
So watch for the establishment’s next capitulation. There are reports that some in its ranks are already cozying up to Trump. Given the record, there’s little reason to doubt this.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 20, 2016
“Why The Republican Field Is Incapable Of Challenging Trump”: No Candidate Is Grounded In Authenticity And Truth
Tying in to what Martin just wrote about the Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy, I’ve long felt that, even though the GOP has put up a large number of candidates this time around, the quantity doesn’t make up for the lack of quality.
A general consensus seems to be forming after last night’s debate that Republicans are in the phase of resigning themselves to a Trump candidacy. I’m seeing that noted in a variety of places. For example, Jonathan Chait, Greg Sargent and Steve Benen all have pretty good round-ups on that sentiment. While I was watching the debate last night, I had a growing sense of how the lack of quality in the field has enabled the ongoing dominance of Trump.
For all of his faults (there are too many to name, so don’t get me started), one of the things that Donald Trump is pretty good at is having a nose for hypocrisy as well as the ability to locate and exploit the weaknesses of others. One of the reasons his attacks work is that they usually contain a twisted sense of truth. The example that springs to mind from last night is that he outright called Jeb Bush “weak.” In a field where bullying is assumed to demonstrate strength, that’s pretty spot on.
Part of the reason why none of the current candidates can effectively challenge Trump is that there is not one of them who is grounded in authenticity and truth. For example, one of the things Jeb has become known for in this campaign is saying something and then having to call it back or revise it 3 or 4 times before he’s done. Everyone knows that Rubio is simply spouting lines that he has practiced and rehearsed. As we saw last night, Christie can hardly speak without lying. These days all Carson seems capable of is rambling incoherently. And Cruz is the closest thing we have to a sociopath in this race (with Carly Fiorina running a close second) – twisting his agenda to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The one candidate who exudes even a hint of authenticity is John Kasich. But all he seems to be able to do is flail his arms around, talk about his record, and extol the virtues of trickle-down economics.
In order to take on a bully like Trump you have to look him in the eye and stand your ground confidently – without prevaricating or attempting to out-bully the bully. In order to do that, you have to know what you believe and be able to articulate it authentically. Short of that, Trump will find the opening and exploit the hell out of it.
None of these candidates can do that because what the Republican Party is about right now is all a farce based on fear-mongering and out-dated policies that have proven themselves to be a disaster. They’re putting on a show and Donald Trump is making that obvious to everyone by simply putting on a bigger show.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 15, 2015
“The Dystopian Nightmare That Only Republicans Can See”: Incoming! Quick, Everybody Hide Under The Table
It was unexpectedly convenient to have the State of the Union address and a Republican presidential debate occur in the same week, scheduled just 48 hours apart. The bookends offered the public an opportunity, not just to hear two competing visions, but also to confront two entirely different versions of reality.
Because anyone who listened to President Obama on Tuesday night, and then the GOP presidential candidates on Thursday night, might find it hard to believe they all live in the same country at the same time.
The president made an impassioned case that Americans have reason to stand tall. We have the strongest economy on the planet, the strongest military in the history of the planet, and an unrivaled position as a global superpower. Job growth is strong, our enemies are on the run, our civil rights are a model for the world, and our insured rate is the best it’s ever been.
Obama has heard the naysayers, but he believes we’d be wise to ignore their campaign to exploit anxiety to advance their own partisan or ideological goals. We can aim higher – we can even cure cancer! – and make the future our own.
That was Tuesday night. Just two days later, the Republican Party’s national candidates were simply flabbergasted, baffled by the president’s optimism. Jeb Bush, apparently unaware of the state of the nation when his brother left the White House, insisted, “[T]he idea that somehow we’re better off today than the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States is totally an alternative universe.”
And in a way, there’s some truth to that: the president and the Republican presidential field don’t seem to occupy the same place on the space-time continuum. Obama thinks the American dream is alive and well; the GOP thinks it’s dead. The president wants the public to feel hopeful; Republicans want Americans to feel existential dread. “Alternative universes” isn’t a bad summary, all things considered.
The trouble is, Obama’s the one who seems to live in the same reality as the rest of the public.
Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum noted this morning that it’s “remarkable just how apocalyptic Republicans are this year.” As a public service, he collected the “most ominous” statements from each of the GOP candidates from last night’s debate. The list is worth checking out in its entirety, but some of my personal favorites:
Donald Trump: Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show…. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people.
Marco Rubio: This president is undermining the constitutional basis of this government. This president is undermining our military. He is undermining our standing in the world…. The damage he has done to America is extraordinary. Let me tell you, if we don’t get this election right, there may be no turning back for America.
Chris Christie: When I think about the folks who are out there at home tonight watching….They know that this country is not respected around the world anymore. They know that this country is pushing the middle class, the hardworking taxpayers, backwards, and they saw a president who doesn’t understand their pain, and doesn’t have any plan for getting away from it.
Can’t you just feel the sunny, Reagan-esque optimism?
It’s worth emphasizing that nearly every word of these assessments is plainly wrong, and that matters, but the broader point is that Americans saw seven candidates last night who were effectively encouraging us to hide under a table.
I suppose the natural response is to highlight the underlying circumstances: we’re talking about the GOP field running to replace a Democratic president in his eighth year. Of course they’re going to spend time making the case that the status quo is unacceptable. It’s not like they have an electoral incentive to promise more of the same.
The point, however, is how they choose to make this case. Eight years ago at this time, Barack Obama was facing the same situation in reverse – a Democratic candidate running to replace a Republican president in his eighth year – but his message was rooted entirely in optimism. Obama’s entire campaign message was ultimately summarized in one, four-letter word: Hope.
It’s not because Democratic voters were satisfied about the state of the nation in 2008 – they really weren’t – but rather, it was because Obama saw value in being a positive, hopeful, confident candidate.
Eight years later, Republicans’ collectively are pushing a message that also can ultimately be summarized in one, four-letter word: Doom.
Politico’s Michael Grunwald wrote last week, “America is already great, and it’s getting greater. Not everything is awesome, but in general, things are even more awesome than they were a year ago. The rest of the world can only wish it had our problems.”
It’s the kind of uplifting, can-do message that would have been roundly booed in Charleston last night.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 15, 2016
“Bearish Outlook On Trump’s Prospects”: Iowa Will Not Be Donald Trump’s Waterloo
The paradox of media coverage of the 2016 GOP presidential race is that the longer Donald Trump dominates the polls, the more insistent pundits are that the maverick candidate is headed for a fall. “Donald Trump isn’t going to be the Republican nominee,” Ross Douthat bluntly stated in a column for The New York Times last week, although he admitted that this flat prediction was becoming more difficult to argue with conviction. As Douthat noted, the conventional wisdom that Trump is doomed to fail is an assertion that increasingly “inspires sympathetic glances, the kind you get when you tell friends that you think your new personal-investment strategy is sure to beat the market.”
Yet Douthat is not alone in thinking that The Donald is going to go bust (politically, that is). A broad spectrum of pundits—ranging from Ezra Klein at Vox to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight to John Fund in National Review—share this bearish outlook on Trump’s prospects. The pundit class has coalesced around the theory that Trump’s seemingly high level of support is a balloon ready to be punctured and that the Iowa caucus—now less than three weeks away—will be the occasion when the Trump campaign meets the pin that will prick its hopes. But these pundits might be underestimating how robust and intense the loyalty of Trump’s fan base is.
In late December, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol predicted that when “Trump loses Iowa, the mystique disappears, [and] he’s just another candidate.” Writing in National Review, John Fund voiced a similar thought in an article titled, “Losing Iowa Could Be Trump’s Kryptonite.”
Yet attempts to explain how a Trump loss in Iowa could lead to the demise of his campaign tend to be cloudy and hand-wave-y. Consider Ezra Klein’s projection at Vox: “But there’s another model of failure. Trump could just … not win. He could lose the Iowa caucuses. He could fall short in New Hampshire. A loss in any early state might lead to a loss in every state. Losing a presidential primary is often like going bankrupt: It happens slowly, then all at once.” As Klein himself admits, “A lot of reporters and politicos believe something like this is going to happen to him. But the prediction is hard to talk through explicitly because it’s so maddeningly vague.”
In an attempt to flesh out this “maddeningly vague” sense that Trump will lose steam, Klein’s colleague David Roberts offers a theory of Trump’s supporters. Trump sells himself as a winner, Roberts contends, which makes his popularity brittle because it is subject to disenchantment if he ever loses. Like the proverbial rodents fleeing a sinking ship, Trump supporters will flee him once the stench of failure can be sniffed.
“If your value proposition is that you’re a winner, your value evaporates the minute you’re no longer winning. Losing refutes a winner, and no one wins forever,” Roberts argues. “Trump’s vulnerability (like his strength!) is that his appeal is entirely personal, entirely based on the expectation that he’s a winner who will win.”
There’s a smidgen of truth to this argument: Trump does ceaselessly talk about how he’s a winner. But he does so in the manner of a military leader like Patton or an athlete like Muhammad Ali, as a way of rallying his supporters and his own psyche for combat. Losing individual battles doesn’t refute such boastfulness; it only reinforces a sense that victory must be won.
To say that Trump’s appeal is “entirely personal” ignores the fact that Trump has won an enthusiastic fan base by taking hardline stances on immigration and terrorism. Pat Buchanan was on surer grounds when he told The New York Times that, under Trump’s influence, the Republican Party is likely to become “more nationalist and tribal and more about protecting the border.” Buchanan’s sentiments were backed up by Leo Martin, a 62-year-old machinist who told the Times, “The Republican Party has never done anything for the working man like me, even though we’ve voted Republican for years. … This election is the first in my life where we can change what it means to be a Republican.”
As these remarks make clear, Trump’s support comes not just from who he is, but what he stands for and what he promises to do. As Fund acknowledges, focus-group research shows that Trump’s supporters display “remarkable loyalty to the real-estate mogul and scant interest in other candidates.” This loyalty is best understood as devotion to the nationalist and tribalist policies Trump is putting forward, rather than simple enthusiasm for Trump as a man. And losing a few primaries isn’t likely to make such devotion melt away.
Trump, for his part, has some experience bouncing back from losses outside the political arena. He knows how to craft a comeback story for himself. In the field where he claims to have mastery (business), he’s declared bankruptcy four times, but has turned that into a narrative of his cunning in exploiting existing law. The need to overcome adversity doesn’t necessarily tarnish a winner, but can instead reinforce the idea that he or she is a fighter and a hero. If Trump were to lose in Iowa, there are any number of ways he could turn the narrative to his advantage, either by implying trickery on the part of his enemies or by selling himself as a “comeback kid” if he wins another primary.
On top of all this, it’s uncertain that Trump will lose Iowa, or if he loses whether the loss will be a significant one. Fund, like many others, points out that Trump might be weaker in Iowa because the caucus system, which requires not just casting a ballot but devoting hours to meetings, tends to weed out poorer voters (who lack resources to spend a day caucusing) and those who haven’t participated in the caucus before—both groups that skew toward Trump. But Byron York, writing in the Washington Examiner, reports that Trump is building a get-out-the-vote machine in Iowa that could overcome such hurdles.
As of right now, the polling we have doesn’t support the idea that Iowa will be the anti-Trump firewall that his opponents are hoping for. According to the aggregation of Real Clear Politics, Cruz has only a narrow lead over Trump: Cruz is at 28 percent and Trump at 26 percent. Marco Rubio stands third at 14 percent. The most likely scenario is a close three-way race as Rubio improves his position. But Trump could easily spin such a narrow race in a way to make himself the winner.
It’s easy to understand why both the Republican establishment and many liberals want to see Trump disappear fast. He’s a toxic presence in American public life. But scenarios of a quick solution to Trump—some silver bullet or Kryptonite to finish him off in Iowa—simply don’t have plausibility.
By: Jeet Heer, The New Republic, January 12, 2016
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