Posted on 03/07/2016 4:59:29 AM PST by Kaslin
This election is the Republican Altamont, where conservatives got knifed by the Hell’s Angels. It’s our own fault too – the GOP teased its base, looked down upon it, lied to it, and when it turned out it wasn’t playing games and pulled a blade the establishment wasn’t ready.
I spent the last few days at CPAC, surrounded by conservatives, and there was a clear preference for focusing on the symptom – Donald Trump and his myriad failings – rather than the disease. Our problem is not this digitally-challenged, bizarrely phallocentric clown; it’s our failure to represent the people left behind as we got ahead.
Donald Trump is the fault of the GOP elite, including movement conservatives, who failed to listen, who failed to follow through, who thought we were meant to lead the benighted past their narrow self-interests and unseemly prejudices to a wonderful new world reflecting our benevolent self-interests and elite prejudices. Funny how the conservative, globalized utopia we sought to impose always worked out really well for us. Except those left behind aren’t laughing.
Trumpism isn’t merely about unfocused anger – it would be super-convenient to write this off as a temper tantrum that will soon blow over and allow us to get back to the business as usual of ignoring the pleas (which are now demands) to stop the immigration disaster, to address the fallout of free trade, and to stop the useless sacrifice of our sons and daughters in wars we’re too damn gutless to win. But it isn’t. Again and again Republicans promised to solve these problems and yet every single time they’ve lied. Rubio got elected in Florida promising to oppose amnesty then not only fails to do so but stands up with the Democrats and did the exact opposite. And we’re surprised a candidate comes along and points that out?
Think of this as, in large part, the struggle between the haves and have nots of globalization. Amnesty was a great idea for bubble people who think illegal immigration satisfies some sort of libertarian ideal, or who only experience its impact by being able to hire a cheaper nanny. It’s a pretty great idea for the illegals too. But leave your nice neighborhood and go where a high school grad who was born here can’t get a job as a roofer since any general contractor who doesn’t hire illegals is going to go broke because his competition will. Tell somebody whose daughter is shot dead in front of him by an illegal who got arrested five times but never got deported that it’s an act of love.
If we had built the damn wall we promised our base back then, we probably wouldn’t have that damn Trump now.
Free trade is great, in a macro sense. It sure helps enrich the donor class. But go tell the guy who lost his $25 an hour job because NAFTA let Carrier move its air conditioning plant to Mexico about Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.” What’s he free to choose? Long-term unemployment? Making a fake Social Security disability claim? Or taking a job greeting at Wal-Mart for $8 an hour?
Immigration and free trade are generally good, but they impose real costs and our base is getting handed the bill. These folks have been asking us for help, and what was our response? Shut up, stupid racists. Well, they finally found someone who is taking their side. His name is Donald Trump, and we made him possible. Hell, we made him inevitable.
But hey, talking about the real problem – us – is hard, so let’s focus on peripherals and hope against hope that we can put the Republican Party’s accounting off for another cycle. Let’s talk about Trump’s weird penis fixation, because that’s easier than introspection. Let’s jump on the ridiculous KKK disavowal train or run a picture of people raising their hands and hint it’s a Nazi salute, even though not one of us actually believes Trump supports the KKK or is a Nazi, because maybe we can tar him (and his followers) with charges we damn well know are false and that will let us avoid the reality of our predicament for a little while longer.
The ultimate denial manifests in the idea that the reckoning can somehow be circumvented if Cruz or Rubio or even Cruz /Rubio wins the nomination. Who goes on the ballot to satisfy Trump’s rebels? Not Tiny Hands – no, he’ll never take veep. How do you keep the yuge numbers of voters motivated by Trump and his willingness to at least talk big about taking the left-behinds’ side from walking? We can’t simply will them and their concerns into silence.
Worse, there are those of us who want to go third party. So, let’s play this out. Trump’s people win the nomination fair and square and then are told, yet again, “No, you still don’t get to win. Sure, you played by the rules, like you always do, but when we elitists saw the outcome, we changed the rules to make sure we won, as we always do.” Good plan. That’ll end well.
The Republican Party is a round hole and its base is a square peg. They no longer fit together, and there has to be a reckoning. Change must come. Political history students are going to be reading about this seismic shift in decades to come, assuming the world doesn’t end in fire and blood. And do not think the Democrats are in any less trouble – we just aren’t seeing the fractures and the fissures in Team Donk thanks to a mainstream media that won’t report them and DNC superdelegate rules that have ensured the fix is in for Hillary.
Individual conservatives have every moral right to act on their principles and refuse to vote for an unprincipled, unconservative individual. Though I intend to vote for the GOP nominee, each new round of appalling idiocy by that vulgar human troll doll tests my resolve. But as much as we wish to focus on the flawed messenger, the problem is that we have refused to heed the message he has adopted (and which I have little doubt he will abandon if elected). It’s not the illegals who are living in the shadows; it’s our own base, the guys and gals who got the short end of the globalization stick. The vast majority of Trump’s supporters are good people who we have let down, and as free agents in the political free market they have found someone who saw a need and is filling it.
They aren’t going away; we need to reintegrate them. To bring them back into the GOP is going to require us to examine our ivory tower policy preferences as well as our prejudices about our own base – and it’s going to require us to start keeping our word. We had no sympathy for the plight of the base, and that’s why now we have the devil.
Certainly there are some Democrats who really do support Trump. However, there are many that are crossing over in the open primaries to vote for him because they think he can easily be defeated in the general election.
“I never needed any sympathy. The hundreds of millions of innocent, natural unborn Americans slaughtered by abortion/abortifacient, they needed some sympathy.”
Well said.
I’ll say this slowly....and just one more time....
......I stopped reading when this Schlichter guy called Trump a (crude pejorative ) clown.
Why you chose to invert & redirect my post is lost to me.
“My response to Schlichter. Your advice to the GOPe is way too little and too late. This marriage has been on the rocks for way too long and it’s divorce time because all credibility is shot. Too many lies, too many times. There is no trust anymore and no chance to reconcile.”
No doubt about it.
Cruz has issues, real issues. Not a natural born citizen for starters. His wife Heidi played an integral role in the Building a North American Community which is designed to create a European Union type of entity where our sovereignty is gone. How's that working for the Europeans these days? He has shown that he is more than willing to play ball with the GOPe if it means success for him. Not you or the country, him..
Hip-deep condescension from another GOP-e scribe.
Stuff it, Kurt.
You have zero proof of that. What makes you think Cruz would do better? Polls mean nada, zilch, zero, nothing.
Well, Kurt, you could start by honoring your word and supporting the unwashed masses', those gun toten', tobaccy chewen', Bible carryen', red necked raciss, xenophobic rubes' very own---chosen candidate:
DONALD JOHN TRUMP!!!
What’s interesting about this post is that in clearly pointing out the problem of the GOPe while disavowing the common perceived solution (Trump), this guy has unleashed the kind of blind devotion of the trumpites that gives the rest of us some real hesitation.
I’ll vote for Cruz in my primary, and I’ll vote for Trump in the general if it comes to that, because we can’t go on the way we’ve been going. I know Cruz has done things I don’t like, but I also know that Cruz has taken fire politically for trying to do things that need to be done. I know Trump has pointed out real problems (immigration, trade); I have no idea what Trump will do politically, because he has not political track record. But I do know every other “outsider” who’s captured the imagination of the disillusioned has, once in power, turned out poorly.
Perot? He was in the race, out of the race, then in the race again, in a fashion half-assed enough to do nothing other than help Bubba get the office.
Jesse Ventura? A whack job almost from the very start - Minnesota must be so proud with a legacy of him, Al Franken, the first Muslim congressman, and Marco Rubio as electoral triumphs
Arnold? Talked a good game as a “fiscal conservative, social moderate” - then turned into another squish Democrat stooge when the spit hit the fan. Now he’s endorsing Kasich - there’s a surprise.
The Donald? Who knows? - well, apparently other than the true believers who fill in the blanks with what they would do if they were the one in office, much like the Obamabots filled the gaps in that empty suit. Trump has laid out an outline of a number of key problems, but what he’ll do about them is something I’d like to have a track record on: he’s already begun to hedge on immigration, and apparently even if he assisted on the dissection of a pre-born human being that wouldn’t be enough to inspire some doubts about Planned non-Parenthood. But if the choice is Hilary, yeah, I’ll go with the hopes of those with no doubts about Trump’s suitability for the Presidency, even if I have mine.
Perhaps the writer of this statement is the vulgar human troll!
I do not like it when writers present unsupported assertions. Do not believe that he has any evidence other than the Harpies complaining and criticizing the Donald out of context to suit their own biases and prejudices.
They should spend more time getting to know Donald Trump, and trying to get over their insane jealously.
Oh, ok. So the answer is to reintegrate us, I see.
So the fact that they are quoting a song that makes unrepentant evil look edgy and cool, while their point is, oh I don’t know, “trust us”?? perhaps?!
Feck off! Seem an appropriate response, I think.
I agree with that fact.
To throw all of that fine work (3 running for president, dumping House leadership and increasing numbers in the body, and winning the Senate and numerous State Houses) for a liberal North East Democrat seems pretty f@#$ing stupid to me.
But some have bitten the shiny lure and are about to get pulled up onto the boat and get gaffed.
How many more Rino/Liberal presidential candidates will it take losing before some finally get the message?
But sure, lets go with Donny the Democrat Donor.
What could go wrong?
heh.
Supporters of CPAC are just plain dumb, I stopped giving them any attention as soon as they supported the New World Order agenda and the GOPe.
I heard a clip of Kasich claiming he is not establishment and never has been. Trump is making all these people nuts.
Sitting on your perch, looking down on us gullible dupes, must be straining on you, Bless your heart.
I was a Cruzer, maxed out on my donations, before I switched to Trump. Was I gullible to donate all that money to Cruz?
You are an arrogant, pompous, elitist, condescending batch, and I'm saying it, not thinking it.
This is why I did not vote for him in the general election. Had he stayed out, President George H.W. Bush would have won his reelection. Also please note it was the rats who forced him to renege on his "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. That is factual
Good article. It is absolutely true that the GOP has been off living in its own head for a long time. I attribute this not only to the longstanding tendency of all politicians to forget who elected them once they get into office, but to the fact that bad GOP leadership in Congress during the Obama years gave them the feeling that there was no point in even trying to oppose the uni-party policy consensus.
Obama ignored the legislative bodies in any case and pretty much took to ruling by fiat - things such as his immigration orders, for example, or even his attempts to interfere in local things like policing and criminal justice - and nobody stood up on their hind legs and fought back or even did more than make a polite murmur of objection. This is the thing that has clearly made the electorate, both Dem and GOP, think that the US form of government is over, the rule of law doesn’t apply anymore, and we might as well dissolve the legislature and go to one-man ruie, since that was what Obama tried and pretty much got away with. Now they just want the dictator to be on their side.
Of course, dictators never are on the side of anybody but themselves, as everybody throughout history has discovered a little too late. A recent example is the voters who elected the haranguing, irrational populist Hugo Chavez in VZ, and are now living in hunger and want under his successor while the late Hugo’s daughter flaunts her status as one of the four richest women in the world with the billions of dollars that Chavez funneled to her out of VZ.
I thought it couldn’t happen here, but it just might, as the consequence of GOP toleration of Obama’s eight years of unpunished, unrestrained lawlessness and contempt for democratic institutions.
Reason is that I have noticed that submariners, I guess because of the submarine culture, almost instantly get Trump, what he is doing and what he is about.
This is the kind of post that seals the fate of any chance of uniting behind anyone at all.
Trump voters will stay home because they have had enough of the insults.
I will stay home if this does not stop now. I am not alone.
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