At least in #NeverTrump land, things have already reached the pre-autopsy report stage, where they begin discussing the worst elements of Trump and Trumpism. Over at the National Review, there’s been an interesting <a href="http://back and forth between Noah Rothman and Peter Spiliakos. That Trump will lose and lose “bigly” (costing them both houses of Congress) is now taken for granted in these circles, so I can be absolved of accusations of hubris for meeting them where they stand.
There’s something appealing about these conversations, perhaps because they involve the admission of guilt and a desire for redemption. At least, they normally do. But Rothman thinks that this can be done globally by all parties, without finger pointing or assignations of blame. At least, that’s what he recommends.
Reviving the heated internecine squabbles of 2016 and earlier is a dead end. Whatever anyone did in this annus horribilis must be forgiven. Did you endorse Trump? Did you oppose him? Did you rail against his program? Did you find merit in the nobility of the outrage into which he tapped? None of that matters. All is water under the bridge. Reuniting the coalition and focusing on stymieing Hillary Clinton’s legislative objectives matters far more now than self-righteousness and the pursuit of retroactive vindication…
…Relitigating the presidential-primary process that yielded a candidate who will likely lose a winnable race for the White House, and perhaps take the GOP’s congressional majorities with him, is precisely what I contend we must avoid.
Spiliakos immediately seizes on this aspiration as unrealistic.
There are several problems with this. First, trying to get Trump supporters to admit that they and their ideas are the reasons for losing the White House, losing Congress, and basically ruining America is going to go over badly. Second, it is galling to do this under pretext of not wanting to relitigate the 2016 primaries. Third, and most important, this condemnation of Trumpism (as distinct from Donald Trump) is not obviously true.
To which Rothman replies that he is not demanding that Trump supporters express “repentance,” and that:
“…the only amnesty I’m advocating is of a blanket sort for Republicans, almost all Republicans, with the understanding that perpetually revisiting past battles is unproductive. When it comes to Trump’s rise, no one on the right or left is faultless. All must take stock of our roles in leading the GOP into this cul-de-sac. They should not have to fear the Star Chambers in doing so.
To a certain degree, these conversations have the character of whistling past the graveyard because they assume that the shattered eggshell scattered along the base of the wall can be glued back together satisfactorily provided that the right epoxy is found and utilized. But Rothman, in particular, is advocating something that manifestly will not happen. Trump’s own actions in the past few days assure it will not happen because he’s aggressively pursuing a preemptive “stab in the back” strategy to explain his defeat. His supporters are now primed to blame fraud on the left, sabotage from the “globalist” media, and disloyalty and betrayal from Speaker Paul Ryan and dozens of Republican lawmakers, pundits, and operatives who have spent their time flaying him and his campaign rather than fighting Hillary Clinton.
The war within the Republican Party is only getting started, and fighting over why Trump lost will be the first pitched battle of the war.
The #NeverTrump folks are engaged in two main prewar strategies. The first is this delusional idea that defeat will chasten their enemies and make them open to making common cause in a coherent opposition party. The second is that they’ll just have to go create a new party for themselves made up of people who aren’t fueled on rage. But if you take the contemporary Republican Party and subtract the Trumpistas from it, you don’t have anything more than a third party. It would splinter the right where it competes against the GOP and it would never be a serious contender in national elections. Moreover, even if they could win a few seats here and there, their elected officials would have to caucus with Trump’s legacy GOP once they got into office. Or, perhaps they wouldn’t. Perhaps they’d caucus with the Democrats instead, as a coalition that rejects budgetary nihilism and still sees a role for America to play in international affairs.
This whole spectacle really does look a bunch of people gathered around the corpse of someone who just jumped off a skyscraper. But instead of having an appropriate discussion about what a tragedy this is and how messy it is going to be to clean up, they’re acting as if they can reanimate the jumper like Lazarus.
“When it comes to Trump’s rise, no one on the right or left is faultless.”
Ah. I see that’s their out, of course. I assume they mean the left he means is the so-called “moderate” side of the republican party. The “Cuckservatives” I believe they go by these days, and wore that new name they earned with pride when the Trumpsters gave it to them.
He has to mean that. Otherwise, it seems like he’s inviting the “left” in general into their little post-mortem cry-fest. I don’t know if I would accept the invitation to that pity-party. They can solve their own problems.
My guess is that the final report will be “The Left and Its Coarse Culture caused us to Nominate Donald Trump.” “We need to reach out to those idiot minorities”. Quickly followed by “Cuckservatives are about to sell you out again to rapists from Mexico! Give me $5 and I won’t let them.”
Charlie Sykes, Walkers bully boy in WI had a Vox interview where he basically agrees with Booman here.
That interview is something. I’m surprised by his candor, very little equivocation there.
Or, perhaps they wouldn’t. Perhaps they’d caucus with the Democrats instead, …
We wouldn’t need these clowns if we had a functioning Democratic Party. Laugh all you want at the GOP’s misfortune but remember that the Democratic Party isn’t in such great shape these days. And it was long before Bernie Sanders upset the apple cart.
You know what else sucked? According to Jim.
Get back to me when the Democrats start winning back governorships and state houses. Also, get back to me when Democrats stop doing dumb shit like this:
http://twitter.com/wgbhnews/status/786322382839508992
Congrats to WGBH for truth in headlines, for once.
Denial is the first stage of grief. Then comes bargaining. This dialogue is a combination of both. Next comes rage so watch out.
Yes, and don’t leave Trump out of this.
My armchair psych evaluation of Trump is that he has a deeply destructive personality. If you peel it all away, that is the constant of his life and actions. Everywhere he goes, win or lose, there is a trail of destruction in his wake. He enjoys this, he likes hurting people.
Inviting Trump into you house is a very bad thing. He will eat all the food, steal your silverware, try to seduce your daughter and then call you a loser the next day.
Once Trump loses he’s going to try to make the GOP pay for what they did to him and his Brand. And Bannon is the same way.
your daughter and his own, there for a sleepover.
Denial is indeed a major part of this. However, instead of Martin’s image of “a bunch of people gathered around the corpse of someone who just jumped off a skyscraper” who are “acting as if they can reanimate the jumper like Lazarus,” I see something out of Monty Python. Imagine the Black Knight and the owner of the pet shop in the Dead Parrot sketch together around the corpse both saying its just pining for the fjords. As another Monty Python character would say, “that’s silly!”
Ah yes, the future of the Radical Repub Party and the “conservative” movement. You are as always a brave man for postulating a bleak future for our beloved Repubs. I seem to recall many of us on the left envisioned the long-sought Conservative Crack-up in 2008 when we obtained control of the executive and legislative branches. Somehow, this moment was allowed to slip via the determined resistance of McConnell & Co, the lying corporate media, and the weak links in our chain (Joe Lieberturd, etc.) In any event, the seemingly-destroyed Repub party went on to annihilate us in two short years and have controlled the Congress ever since.
So (supposedly) here we are again, on the cusp of another Conservative-Crack-up. Or so we hope. But 8 years on, after an (obvious) national Repub strategy of turning the Repub party into the White Party, and doubling down on every tribalizing strategy possible, it’s hard to see how the fever passes, as Obama once (wrongly) predicted.
We now know, as a result of the tribal strategy the ESTABLISHMENT Repub leaders intentionally undertook in early 2009, that 40-some percent of the citizenry have been turned into creatures who would indeed enthusiastically vote for an American Hitler figure (which was all the real Hitler needed in order to become Der Fuhrer in a parliamentary system, but I digress…)
Reactionary minds are always looking to some past Golden Age, and these two “NeverTrump” worthies think that they can just move back in time to the days before their intentionally created monster broke free. Back to the glorious St Reagan Era, when rivers flowed with honey and dog biscuits grew on trees. All that’s needed is a little Repub “amnesty” ha-ha. They don’t know that you can never enter the same river twice, even while the one blathers about “water under the bridge”. That Repub river is gone. The water flowing in the conservative river is now toxic sewage.
What the coaches of Team Conservative can do to re-establish their movement is difficult to perceive, but unfortunately I feel confident that they can do it, especially since they continue to control the majority of states, and have a lock on their (illegitimate) House majority. They will continue their obstruct-at-all-costs strategy, contesting every inch of ground, and frankly there isn’t much the country can do about it, given the constitutional structures currently in place and the rancidity of so many citizens.
The unifying theme of the “conservative” movement is hate for what the country actually is—a pluralistic, multicultural entity–while imaging that they actually “love” the USA. Where’s the “water under the bridge” analogy now? The plutocrats who fund the operation via their endless tax lowering and service-cutting policies will simply have to amp up the volume of the White Party and work to increase the intensity of hatred for the demographic groups that make up the Dem/progressive “party”. The deification of the soldiery and militarized police is a critical element. You can say that it won’t work long-term given the supposed demographics, but if that’s all you got, that’s what you go with.
There’s no turning back now, Repubs, its an American Hitler or nothing! And if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again…
Rothman doesn’t seem to realize that Trump’s base hates all establishment politicians, not just Hillary Clinton. They may hate Hillary more, but they won’t unite with the establishment GOP to oust her. To Rothman, it’s a choice between steak or horse crap. To Trump supporters, it’s horse crap or dog crap. Try to tell somebody who doesn’t want to eat horse crap that they can join forces to eat dog crap.
I was listening to “on Point” this AM and they had on a bunch of GOP operatives: Mike Murphy, Betsy McCaughy, and Rich Lowry, as well as Glenn Thrush from Politico.
I missed whatever Betsy had to say but Rich and Mike were besides themselves with woe and recrimination. Mike doubts the GOP can even put itself back together.
So yes: “these conversations have the character of whistling past the graveyard because they assume that the shattered eggshell scattered along the base of the wall can be glued back together satisfactorily provided that the right epoxy is found and utilized.” I agree with this 100% and with everything else that follows.
Martin once again has some insightful commentary here. But there are issues all around:
#1 – #nevertrump wing sees the problem as “how do we get the Deplorables back in the closet so we can go back to winning elections with racist dog-whistles like before?”
And they’re full of strategies and examine the problems. But, this was never their problem at all! The real problem is that the Southern Strategy was politically useful when you could point your finger at black and brown people and say “you’re what’s wrong with America”, because they were only 12% of the vote. It’s now 30% and going up to around 1/3 in 2020.
Simple math will tell you that if Hillary Clinton is running for election in 2020 and non-whites are 33% of the electorate, and Hillary gets 80% of them that’s 26% of the total electorate. She only would need 34% of the white vote to get to 50% popular vote and win. And Barrack Obama got 39%. The GOP simply cannot win under those circumstances.
#2 – The assumption is that they can sweep Trump under the rug and pretend he never existed, like they did with Bush. Only this is their 2nd mistake! No non-white people are going to forget that the Deplorables nominated Trump and supported him through every racist thing he said or did. They’re not going to join the party with all the racists in it.
This leaves the GOP with choices: #1 they can pretend it never happened, and sweep it all under the rug in which case they will continue to lose non-white votes and decline into a geographically isolated white racist party never winning another Presidential election.
#2 – They can have a come to Jesus moment where they denounce racism, admit that in the past they catered to racism, but they’re kicking the bigots out of their party, and openly advocate immigration reform. Then they can compete as a conservative party of smaller government and less taxes, etc. Standard conservative themes. Problem here is that they will lose elections until they can realign the political system along Left-Right lines instead of white-non-white lines.
In short, it involves some short term pain, and real risk.
All bets are they don’t dare reform themselves, and that they try path #1. Amnesia for everyone!
Interesting discussion of possible paths for the GOP to take.
I did some reading about the demise of the Whigs and rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s. Some excerpts follow. Any parallels to the modern situation?
***********
When new issues of nativism, prohibition, and anti-slavery burst on the scene in the mid-1850s, few looked to the quickly disintegrating Whig Party for answers. In the north most ex-Whigs joined the new Republican Party, and in the South, they flocked to a new short-lived American Party.
The election of 1852 marked the beginning of the end for the Whigs. The deaths of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster that year severely weakened the party. The Compromise of 1850 had fractured the Whigs along pro- and anti-slavery lines, with the anti-slavery faction having enough power to deny Fillmore the party’s nomination in 1852….
Attempting to repeat their earlier successes, the Whigs nominated popular General Winfield Scott, who lost decisively to the Democrats’ Franklin Pierce. The Democrats won the election by a large margin: Pierce won 27 of the 31 states, including Scott’s home state of New Jersey. Whig Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming, “We are slain. The party is dead–dead–dead!” Increasingly, politicians realized that the party was a loser.
In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs joined the Know-Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called “corrupt” Irish and German immigrants.
Read this:
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/going-the-way-of-the-whigs/
Among other things, the comparison isn’t apt because:
“…it died because its voters decamped to new, non-Whig, anti-Democratic parties in the local, congressional, and state elections of 1853, 1854, and 1855 before the next presidential election in 1856…”
Yeah, everything looks messy at the top but drill down the the state level and the GOP is more firmly entrenched than the Dems…at least in a lot of states.
I think we’re just a little earlier in the process. The Republican split – bigot vs. non-bigots – is just now becoming visible. I think the Establishment expects to get their party back after the election, so they’re not leaving. The official splintering into multiple parties, or mass exodus to the Democratic, probably won’t happen until after the next time the Republicans lose a Presidential election.
The Democratic party meanwhile has a corresponding problem: how to maintain a majority coalition.
As long as the GOP is locked into a death spiral of racism, non-whites are locked into the Democratic party. But, a non-racist GOP would logically split off some more conservative elements of the Dem coalition.
This is how the GOP won elections during the New Deal Coalition era between 1932 and 1968, electing Eisenhower twice and nearly electing conservative Richard Nixon.
So, the Dem challenge is to break the GOP log jam on legislation so they can produce some benefits to convince the Dem coalition that voting for Progressives is going to change things for the better.
And they must do this before the GOP reforms itself or there’s some event that tilts the electoral map back to the GOP.
In the current environment, though, without the racists/sexists/Christianists, the Republicans are nothing. Even if they made large inroads into minority groups they’d still get creamed.
It looks like Reagan’s 11th Commandment – Thou shalt speak no ill of a Republican — is taking a beating. Thirty years as a political tactic allowed papering over of deeper and deeper schisms in the Republican Party in order to win elections, gain power, and maintain power out of proportion to their real sentiment.
“…a preemptive “stab in the back” strategy to explain his defeat.”
At least he’s not blaming the Jews. Yet.
That might happen after he loses. I don’t think Trump leads that particular charge, given his family, but there will be others who will be happy to oblige. Hopefully they get nowhere.
It’s happening already. Have you seen Twitter these days?
Besides Trumpism the GOP has got to fix the way they govern. Don’t believe the red states can take another Ks or La. Oh, and please look at NC right now. The gov is so consumed with who uses what toilet he let 95 flood and still trying to get people out of their flooded homes.
“Reuniting the coalition and focusing on stymieing Hillary Clinton’s legislative objectives matters far more now than self-righteousness and the pursuit of retroactive vindication…”
Not even a pretense of doing something for the American people. This is just a thin mask over their hatred, not only for Clinton, but for any democrat who dares challenge them. The hatred for Clinton is visceral. It is almost a requirement for admission to the party circles, as in she is a devil. I see it at every turn. I have no doubt at all it can and will be refocused on any strong leader among the democrats, progressive or conservative. At the moment Breitbart’s Bannon and, Trump’s financiers, Rebekah Mercer and father control the game but others are in the wings.
It starts with Reagan attacking government.
Without that — and the resulting chain of policy and rhetoric that led to the Tea Party, they wouldn’t be in this mess or anywhere near it. As Digby keeps pointing out, the Trump supporters aren’t anti-Clinton so much as they’re anti-government; anti-Washington.
And all because someone thought it was a bright idea to demonize elected officials in order to legitimize degregulation of banks and businesses.
The race stuff starts with Nixon but this anarchistic “Don’t Tread on Me” business is definitely damage caused in the Reagan era.