Will the GOP be wise enough to listen to this veteran of three Republican administrations and Romney-Ryan advisor? Probably not. NYT Op-Ed:
Consider this historical comparison: In 1956 the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, won nearly 40 percent of the black vote. In 1960, Richard Nixon won nearly a third. Yet in 1964, in large part because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater (who was no racist) won only 6 percent. More than a half-century later, that figure has remained low. Mr. Trump — through his attacks against Hispanics that began the day he announced his candidacy — is doing with Hispanics today what Senator Goldwater did with black voters in the early 1960s.
The less resistance there is to Mr. Trump now, the more political damage there will be later.
The stain of Trump will last long after his campaign. His insults, cruelty and bigotry will sear themselves into the memory of Americans for a long time to come, especially those who are the targets of his invective.
Mr. Trump is what he is — a malicious, malignant figure on the American political landscape. But Republican primary voters, in selecting him to represent their party, and Republican leaders now rallying to his side, have made his moral offenses their own.
There will be a fearsome price for Republicans to pay for their embrace of Donald Trump. Especially after the attacks on Judge Curiel, Mr. Ryan and Mr. McConnell, decent men who have already criticized Mr. Trump harshly, should rescind their endorsement of him — as Mr. McConnell just hinted that he might. Mr. Trump’s bigotry should earn him their enmity, not their loyalty.
After all, supporting its presidential candidate is a big part of what political parties do. I think many of them think that they will be able to “control” Trump as a candidate and (potentially) as president. But as we’ve already seen, that’s unlikely. Trump is going his own way, and in opposition to both the conventional wisdom of how to run campaigns and the Republicans’ own views built up since Reagan.
It’s not clear what Republicans should do, from their perspective. Do you jump on board to save seats down-ticket, even if you’re secretly hoping Trump is nowhere near the nuclear codes? Do you fight him, potentially threatening your congressional majorities and angering a significant part of what is now your party’s base? It’s not clear, though perhaps the best result from their perspective is to seem supportive in public, do nothing to help him in private, and hope he loses and build from there in 2020.
The piece also goes into why the Republican base voter and right leaning independents have been spoon fed a steady diet of dog whistle bigotry allowing someone who doesn’t even bother masking it to take the lead:
So while my cosmopolitan college republican classmates condemn Trump and link to stories about Paul Ryan or Nikki Haley condemning racism while embracing free markets, they get excoriated on right wing blogs and talk radio-where the real GOP voter lurks.
Can the GOP nominate a center-right candidate who embraces a multicultural America? Can it nominate a candidate of color? I am not sure if either electorally necessary possibility is possible after Trump, even if he is routed.
Had Wallace won the Democratic nomination in 1972, I would hope the likes of Humphrey would’ve publicly backed his opponents or done a third party. When the IL Democratic Party nominated an anti-Semitic LaRoche slate on the 80’s for statewide offices, they ran an alternative third party ticket just for that cycle, knowing it would probably lose but that it would provide a decent landing pad.
I’ve mocked David French and the NeverTrump crowd for their desperation, but I actually find their efforts to be the textbook definition of patriotism by putting country before party. Even Romney by not endorsing is making a statement worthy of praise. I’ll keep praising the ones who have including our own Porcupine and MG. Our old friend Rob Eno refuses to back him as well, and we know the many pundits and intellectuals and even a few politicians willing to reject this stain on their part.
You and I might think of Donald Trump as obviously, obviously more dangerous than the exceptionally qualified Hillary Clinton, but I think that’s because you and I don’t watch Fox News, listen to talk radio, read Daily Caller, and post comments on Red State. In Conservative World, Hillary Clinton is a deeply dishonest, corrupt politician secretly eager to take away our civil liberties while posing as mild and reasonable. She also wants to murder the unborn. If you weigh things within their world view, it’s much harder to arrive at the conclusion that Clinton would merely be a bad President while Trump would be a disastrous one.
movement on business-oriented conservatives, who are more concerned about business and the economy and reliability.
The rest are going to vote for Trump, not going to vote, or vote for a fringe candidate.
Somewhere along the way, it seems to me that objectively-measurable reality must be acknowledged. The speed of light in a vacuum is what it is, whether or not Rush Limbaugh agrees.
I hear you about epistemic closure. The fact remains that much of what the “conservative world” hears on Fox News and the others is simply and factually WRONG. Hillary Clinton did not murder Vince Foster. Climate change is real and is caused by human behavior. And so on.
If we attempt to maintain a democracy while we simultaneously attempt to ignore flagrant and egregious ignorance and delusion among our electorate, we will fail.
The fact that so many Americans think that Donald Trump ought to be president suggests strongly that we have already failed.
with historic significance.
My advice to fellow Democrats and Independent friends is to cut our Republican opponents all the slack they want for their public hanging.
And remember, HILL YES !
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Trump is just the germ that has attacked the weakened GOP body politic.
The GOP program hasn’t worked for most people. No or low taxes, racism, and religious bigotry can only take you so far when the economy has stopped working, and the regime you set up has created has led to destructive inequality. There was never a serious affirmative argument for movement conservatism, and saying “no” doesn’t stop the world from changing.
Evangelicals and the working-class, resentment caucus have realized that the GOP doesn’t really care about their concerns. Many of them will stick with the GOP, but the GOP can’t continue to succeed with it’s shrinking base and destructive policies and world view.
No, a market segment.
Conservatism seems to run more as an identity than as an ideology. In fact, Trump’s apostasies from conservative orthodoxy and his policy incoherence sort of prove that.
And as a market share, it’s proven robust. Moreover, the epistemic closure is so tight that, for them, things printed in the Washington Post and New York Times might as well be issued in Korean from Pyongyang. It’ll take a long time for the egregious effect of Republican policies to filter in.
Witness Kansas.
The Soviet Union collapsed because its ideologies could not work, no matter how passionately its government and at least some of its people worked to avoid that outcome.
Whether we use fancy words like “epistemic closure” or simple words like “ignorant mob”, the result is the same. “Might makes right” does not lead to stable government. “If you believe in it hard enough, it will happen” works in Disney fairy tales. It does not work in real life.
Whatever language we choose to describe this portion of the electorate, if we don’t find a way to change it America as we know it will collapse, just as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Finding the secret key would be great, but it’s not at all obvious where it’s hidden.
In the G. W. Bush Administration, there was some combination of Iraq and Katrina that woke up a bunch of people. That combined with demographic changes helped us to a President Obama.
Trump’s criticism of the Iraq intervention is interesting because it seems to have been accepted by Republican voters without any of them wondering about Republican rule.