Re: Trump's Faction

It has been a mainstay of Republican primary politics for, oh, a quarter century at least, that all candidates must tack to the right to gain the Presidential prize. This was true for George ‘Read my lips, no new taxes’ Bush, but also Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and even those candidates running a loud counter-cultural campaign of moderation like John Huntsman. Whatever a candidate’s real intentions, whatever strategy they think will work in the general election, in the Republican primaries, obeisance must be paid to conservative principles or else your candidacy will be a non-starter.

 Then comes Donald Trump, upsetting the apple cart, smashing the china shop, and shattering the glass house of conventional campaign wisdom – and perhaps the careers of some of the best paid consultants in the business. Trump’s faction, as Ezra calls them, got on board his candidacy early, and after going through a bit of denial about Trump’s viability as a candidate, the other candidates, the donors and the consultant class confidently began hitting him with everything they had about his conservatism – or lack thereof.

And Trump was an easy target; in this new age, tweets and TV interviews are forever, and Trumps has not been bashful about offering his opinion about everything in any media he could get in front of. And his opinion has nearly always been some form of the conventional northeastern liberal take on things, with an overlay of Trump bravado to brand it as distinctively his own. Trump has always craved what in former times was called headlines but in today’s new age is termed buzz. And buzz only occurs along liberal lines, because liberal’s own the culture (see Andrew Breitbart). Headlines and buzz was Trump’s brand, that’s how he built and nurtured his brand, that’s how he maintained his brand, so oppo research to attack Trump politically was easily available.

 Except …. None of it worked as conventional wisdom said it would. Then began the angst of conservatives: all these years they had invested in the Republican Party, fought to make it their own, established litmus tests. After all of this, are we back to 1965 and the terrible defeat of Barry Goldwater? How? Where did the conservative base so painstakingly built up over countless election cycles go? Was it never really there?

Ezra has nodded at the answer.

To be continued.