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.

Re: Trump's Faction

Whit, I did not say Trump was running a campaign based on patriotism. I was identifying the passion he was tapping into among the Republican base.

 In this, I am putting you might say the best face on the situation. It is clear that Trump's intention is to galvanize a nationalist/populist coalition around an America First agenda, whether that be immigration controls, international trade, or national security. And there is a vast gulf, in my opinion, between bonafide patriotism - which is a national good - and nationalism/populism - which is a national cancer. The former is a positive pride and self assurance that, whatever particular agenda the body politic undertakes, magnifies the civilizational gains of the Founding of this country around individual rights, whereas the latter distorts and ultimately undermines those rights.

Compare the universal admiration of a patriotic leader like George Washington with the worshipful idolatry of a nationalist/populist like Franklin Roosevelt, and you can begin to see the effects, beneficial and deleterious, respectively, on our politics. The former evokes the unum in E Pluribus Unum; the latter, E Pluribus only, and a bitter, divisive electorate, jockeying for power and favors from the Guvmint.

Trump's quasi Dear Leader style does bear watching. But that is part of my point: the patriotic instincts of the American public are there, Trump is tapping into them, and if we advocate strongly for our principles, I think Trump and Trump's style can be directed to enhance the 'good' instincts of the public, preserving what is best in America - its patriotism, love of country, and pride in our Founding principles.

And thereby put Obama's America with all its rancor, animosity, and divisiveness on the ash heap of history where it belongs.

Re: Trump's Faction

Soaring rhetoric, Whit. And I mean that in the best sense because it is in the service of the best cause.

But I think Ezra is onto something, something that I have not seen clearly expressed among the commentariat, which has tied itself in knots trying to come to terms with the Trump phenomenon. Talk about cognitive dissonance, Whit, they got it.

But let me not project my own cognitivity on Ezra's thesis; at least not yet.

Ezra you have the floor.

Re: Trump's Faction

Whoa, Easy. Patriotism? Trump is running a campaign based on patriotism?

I dunno....

Patriotism evokes to me a dignity that befits the object of patriotism: America as founded by the Founding Fathers. It evokes their sacrifice in a noble cause, a cause that held the world spell bound and continues to do so, a sacrifice that at the time it was made held no guarantee of success - quite the opposite. A revolt against arguably the most powerful sea-faring nation in the world and an army that in a few years would topple the great Napoleon?

Our Founders rolled the dice, embraced a truly profound cusp, and with boundless courage enacted one of the greatest moments in history - and defined forever, for me at least, what true patriotism is.

I revere our heritage, and have a hard time getting my head around your equation of the Trump campaign with American patriotism.

In short, I got cognitive dissonance here, Easy; can you help me?

Trump's Faction*

Indiana has spoken and Ted Cruz has suspended his campaign. Barring an awesome surge by John 'The Postman' Kasich, Donald Trump will take the GOP prize, for better or worse.

According to some, it will be the worser part: a northeastern liberal with a Dear Leader complex rivaling the Kims of North Korea, will become the new face of the party of Lincoln.

Well. As one who cannot be accused of being a Trumpster, I am here to advise everyone to calm down. The Trump Faction is not something new in Republican politics, nor is it unconservative. It is instead a strand within conservatism that has largely been abandoned by Republicans over the last decade.

The strand can be broadly categorized as patriotism, a positive pride in America, it's founding and its continuing importance in the world. It is a muscular loyalty to ''My Country 'tis of Thee'', the sense of triumph in ''USA, USA, USA'', and a basket of little reflexive social norms like the requirement that politicians must wear flag lapel pins.

This patriotic strand of Republicanism is so strong that it fairly leaps off the pages of some reputable social science studies, which indicate that any association with things like the flag or 4th of July parades will significantly influence people to vote Republican. Clearly, patriotism is not just a strand of Republicanism, but the strongest, most durable brand it has among the people at large.

What would cause the Republicans to abandon such a positive brand? Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular: there has been a fullscale assault on American patriotism from the Left, arguably beginning when Barack Obama tried to go without a flag lapel pin in the 2008 primaries. He failed to pull it off, but the Democrat's continued the fight nevertheless in the ensuing years, branding, ceaselessly branding, every display of patriotism as nationalism, Naziism, and/or xenophobia.They have been so successful that in many instances the display of the flag itself has been banned as some sort of Hate crime.

And thru all of this, the Republicans have been silent, acquiescent, as they have been on so many other Obama agenda items, unwilling to engage and fight for this most basic of American societal values: loyalty to this Country. Thus, the opening for Trump: to pick up on a major inflection of the body politic that crosses all traditional interest groups, men, women, blacks, conservative, liberal, young, old, middle, etc, etc, et al.

So, Trump is not some nascent demagogue, tapping the populist anger of a mob; he's just an opportunist, feeding the patriotic fervor of a people starved by their 'leaders.'

So, what to do? Stick to our principles and be loudly and unapologeticaly American, and we can both steer a Trump Presidency through the gate of liberty and limited government, and bring the people back to an America we can all be proud of once again.

And don't give up, don't ever give up.

*For a similar but not identical take, see also -Trump’s Faction by Henry Olsen, National Review Online.

Re: AstroTurf

Me, a Trumpster? Not even close, although I am not a #NeverTrump guy either. For my money, Trump would be infinitely better than Hillary. For that matter, so would Simon Cowell, Kim Kardashian, and Jeffrey Dahmer. At least the latter would be upfront about his cannibalism of the body politic.

 #NeverDemocrat.

Re: AstoTurf

Well said, Easy, an epic blog. The fact that the Democrats publicly support such anti democratic mob intimidation as they do is a stunning development in the political culture. As you note, they've always used such tactics, but always sub rosa, publicly affirming the opposite.

I am still trying to understand what has changed in the culture that makes the Democrats think they will not experience electoral backlash. They just don't seem to fear voters anymore.

But that is a quetion for another day. Much more important at the moment is, are you a Trumpster now, Easy? That would truly be a stunning political development.

AstroTurf

The political silly season continues, in its default mode of high dudgeon. The target is, of course, that human lightning rod, Donald Trump. Apparently, he is fomenting violence against peaceful protesters, dutifully pursuing their All American 1st Amendment rights to free speech. The Donald just will not abide such behavior at his rallies, and has even gone so far as to promise to pay legal fees for any supporter who will take these Norman Rockwell types out.

At the risk of committing a micro-aggression, I say balderdash. It's true that Trump's rhetoric exceeds the bounds of normal political speech, but that's because Trump is not engaging in political speech. He riffs in the common tongue, utilizing the kind of language you chair warriors use every day watching TV news. ''Look at those jerks ... Somebody ought to punch him in the nose ... Get 'em out a here!''  And Trump gets away with it; and the fact that he does is a large part of his attraction.

On this scale, the Trump scale, he is entirely within the bounds of acceptable speech. Because what his supporters hear is a guy mouthing off, blowing off steam, and they like it. But they do not take it literally as a license to assault a protester.

And the proof of this is clear for all to see. Trump has been assembling crowds upwards of 25-30,000 for months and months, and in all that time we have exactly one Trumpster who has actually attacked anyone. One. Per capita, that is a record of non violence that easily exceeds any confab of Democrats, Black Lives Matter, or even the Vatican Council of the Catholic Church.

What's really going on at these Trump rallies is that the Democrats are out of the closet and all in on the tactics of thuggery as a tool to crush political opponents. Democrats have a long history of these tactics, dating back to the KKK and voter suppression of Blacks for 100 years or more, but also more recently (and currently) with the deployment of Union thugs to tidy up voting habits in certain strategic regions of the country. But it was the advent of the radical student left in the McGovern campaign of 1972 that brought a whole new swath of shock troops into the Democrat orbit, together with a new public 'cover' for baldfaced intimidation: civil rights disobedience and protest.

The cover is, of course, a farce, which would be easily identified as such in any other cultural moment that pretends to honesty. However, these days the national media follows the Democrat party line no matter the circumstances.

These groups are not grassroots, but pure AstroTurf. Black Lives Matter is a transparent racist movement, with liberal elements of anarchy, cop hatred, and old fashioned theft and looting sprinkled throughout, and there is nothing about its 'demonstrations' that can be tied to a real  concern with civil rights for anyone. It wields the power of the mob, but a mob not spontaneously combusted, but one put together with the help of paid apparatchiks who have all the authentic passion for a cause of a used car salesman.

It's time for Republicans to come out of the closet as well and to call these 'demonstrations' for what they are. For some reason (intimidation? rank cowardice? plain stupidity?), the Repubs have gone along with the 'civil rights' meme of the Democrats. The time is now to speak plainly and honestly about what these groups really are all about: thuggery and intimidation and anarchy and vandalism and power, specifically Democrat power. They are anti-1st Amendment, anti-American culture, and anti-America.

The Republic stands at the brink. If not now, when? If not Republicans, who?