Mailbag: Donald Trump Isn't Just A Pawn
Newt Gingrich ... Twilight Zone ... Trumpcare
Thanks as always for your participation, readers. Have a question for next Thursday’s mailbag? Leave it in the comments below.
And if you have the time and inclination, I rapped with
on ’s flagship podcast for about an hour on Tuesday. I thought it was a good conversation and think you all might as well.
Bill: The GOP has made owning the libs over all else their defining characteristic since the heyday of Newt Gingrich.
Why do you think this is and what do you see breaking this spell?
It may be a bit reductive, but I think the answer to “why” is the movement right-wing’s febrile antipathy to the New Deal and Great Society.
If conservative organs and their fanatical donors had at some point made peace with the social compact, and the distributive institutions required to insure against deep poverty, old-age poverty, medical bankruptcy—but was still determined to fight over other unresolved issues—we’d live in a much different world. In that world, the GOP might well have proven even more successful than it has in this one.
Why didn’t that happen? Part of it hinges on timing and coincidence, but much else hinges on the decisions of powerful actors. Imagine if after LBJ crushed Goldwater, right-wing fundamentalists with too much money on their hands had reached a stage of acceptance: There will be progressive taxes and welfare and civil equality in America, but we’ll be here to slow or stop a creep toward social democracy, and fight for conservative regulatory policy, social policy, and cultural priorities.
That would have changed the course of realignment, or at least slowed it. Republican appeal would have been less regional, less white, less concentrated in the south. Instead, Vietnam took LBJ out of contention, and the conservative movement continued on its parasitic course. (Nixon’s illegal, secret diplomacy would foreshadow Reagan’s Iran-hostage sabotage, and Trump’s encouragement of Russian election interference.)
Conservatives rebuilt. They made further inroads into the GOP, and in almost no time fomented the Reagan Revolution. Then George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan. The far right believed it had achieved total victory, its destiny manifest. When Bush showed disloyalty to the movement by increasing taxes, conservatives viewed it as a kind of treason against what should have been his higher loyalty, and turned on him. America was for conservatives, not for technocrats. One of the leaders of the revolt was a megalomaniac named Newt Gingrich.
It was Gingrich who schooled congressional Republicans in the art of personal-destruction politics: Our opponents aren’t worthy, and we should degrade and dehumanize them in public discourse; the rules don’t have to apply equally to the two parties, and shouldn’t be presumed to apply to us at all. Do whatever you can get away with, within the bounds of the law, and maybe even outside them. Democracy as hunger games rather than pragmatism and compromise.
Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992 delivered the right a huge psychic blow, but by then the movement and its counter-establishment were big and mature enough to fight back dirty against him. If by some stroke of good fortune, Democrats hadn’t lost the 1994 midterms, Republicans might have finally taken an offramp. But Republicans won in a landslide, and never relented. It was only natural that they stole the 2000 election, because they could.
We’ve been on a wild ride ever since. And it shows no sign of stopping, because most of the feedback Republicans get tells them that “all in against the Democrats” is a viable play. Their reckless bets have paid off : Massive resistance to the Obama agenda prefigured the post-2010 gerrymander; the complicity with Russian election interference won them the presidency and allowed them to steal the Supreme Court. Rehabilitating Donald Trump after the insurrection might leave them poised for permanent authoritarian rule.
The propulsive force in all this is that they still insist taxes on rich people must fall and fall and fall, until a crushing rollback of the welfare state becomes inevitable. The notion that they might otherwise be a more dominant political party doesn’t sway them, because they can still win when it counts without conceding anything.
As to what will break the spell, I can think of a few possibilities.
It’s a bit late in the game and I don’t think it’s likely (they just pulverized the welfare state again) but post-Trump Republicans could still evolve into a fiscally liberal, socially conservative, non-authoritarian party.
Donald Trump’s death or debility or discrediting will leave the party leaderless in a way it hasn’t been since at least 1993.
The Epstein scandal??? (Maybe?)
The substantive and fiscal consequences of starving the beast could discredit movement conservatism nationally, the way it did kinda-sorta did in Kansas in the last decade. Millions will lose health and food security, while deficits rise and prices rise and interest rates rise, and the super rich get richer. Under those circumstances, the working class drift toward the GOP might reverse. If Trump-era conservatism ends up discredited in the minds of voters the way New Deal liberalism ended up discredited in the age of stagflation, the far right could be set back decades.
An implication of the last bullet point is that right-wing economic fanaticism is a self-imposed handicap. I suspect a Republican Party that eased up—that made peace with our moderate taxes and safety net, and supported cradle-to-grave health care; that championed serious abortion restrictions, but tempered them with real government support for families with children; that took a nationalistic, but non-nativist approach to immigration and assimilation—would be very hard for a progressive party to beat.
One thing that would help is a Democratic Party committed to the institutional destruction of movement conservatism. When Barack Obama won the presidency, Republicans lashed out like cornered animals, convinced Obama intended to destroy what was left of the GOP. If only! In reality, nothing could have been further from the truth, and to this day, Democrats remain too lacking in self-assurance, too convinced (based on a crude read of ideological self-identification) of the center-right nature of the country. They pine for bipartisanship. They want political cover for all their ambitions. They want to heal the GOP so it can be compromised with. They win elections and then give the right space to regroup, whereas Republicans win elections and immediately take aim at Democratic power centers.
If that doesn’t change, why wouldn’t Republicans make another all-in bet? If Democrats manage to pull us out of the abyss over the next three-and-a-half years only to once again “look forward not backward,” I will probably hang up my spurs as a political commentator and open a bar somewhere.
Joseph Kay: There’s a broad framing that I think profoundly wrong, and also that tactically plays directly into the Right’s hands. This is the framing that Trump has agency. This is wrong. Trump’s ego ceased to develop at the age of three. He wants: (a) money; (b) people to tell him he’s the best; (c) to touch women’s parts; and (d) for anyone who frustrates him in his pursuit of these to suffer….
I suggest this framing is accurate but, more importantly, it's powerful: First, Trump is mocked, treated as weak, pathetic and infantile, exposing the media framing as ridiculous and undermining his appeal to the base. Second, it illuminates that Trump is not a “populist” fighter, he’s the tool of stateless wealth working to tear down the U.S. (and indeed nation-states generally). The existential threat to humanity is not Trump, it’s concentrated private power. When Trump is gone, the threat will remain. Without Trump’s “populist” façade and perverse charisma, the machinations of stateless wealth will stand naked, and be much less appealing to both MAGAs and the oblivious majority. We should waste no more time in reorienting the conceptual and rhetorical space for the fight.
To summarize, the question is why Democrats don’t think about a framing and apply it consistently, particularly where it might be both correct and tactically powerful.
If you’ve never seen this episode of the Twilight Zone, or haven’t seen it in many years, you should watch or rewatch it now. Or bookmark it for the weekend.