I have to give credit to Aaron Blake of the Washington Post for taking on the task of contextualizing the most startling statistic of the past week. Namely, the finding from a new CBS News-YouGov survey that Trump supporters trust him more than their friends, the conservative media or their religious leaders.
Trump: 71 percent
Friends and family: 63 percent
Conservative media figures: 56 percent
Religious leaders: 42 percent
As Blake points out, if what you’re interested in is how trusted Trump is overall, the poll results are not very impressive. Yes, his supporters believe him, albeit at lower numbers than when the same question was asked in 2018. Overall, Republican voters do not, and he’s especially mistrusted by non-Republicans.
Yet, I’m not sure I believe Blake’s reassurances. Let’s consider likely Iowa caucus goers. According to the latest NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll , 51 percent of them believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Meanwhile, 42 percent of them have a “very favorable” and 23 percent have a “favorable” opinion of the disgraced ex-president, and 42 percent list him as their first choice compared to 19 percent for second place Ron DeSantis. A full 63 percent of Iowa Republicans say that Trump is their first or second choice or at least that they’re considering him. That last metric is called his “footprint,” and it’s designed to show his upside potential.
Maybe it’s not a great result that a former president can muster only a 63 percent footprint and 65 percent favorability among members of his own party in the first in the nation nominating state, but more than half of them think his coup attempt was largely justified since he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. Somehow a significant number of Republicans who don’t believe the coup attempt was justified still have a favorable opinion of him, which just seems impossible to me.
I think these results are tragic. I don’t have a better word for it. You might like Trump and you might like the job he did as president, but you definitely should have learned by now that lying is central to both his personality and his governing style. You can’t trust him to tell you the truth about anything. I can kind of understand someone not caring about his constant lying because it’s effective. But I cannot fathom actually placing your trust in his word, let alone over your friends and family members.
And you can’t explain this as a cult, because whatever the size if his true cultish devotees, it’s smaller than the number who seem to trust and like him. This isn’t a matter of ideological differences. It’s like half the country’s reasoning abilities just broke.
I really don’t know how much clearer it could be that the 2020 election was decided correctly, and if people just won’t listen to judges, juries, members of Trump’s own administration, or any reputable or even semi-reputable news source, then how can they be reached on any other issue?
These folks have convinced themselves that Trump has been falsely arrested four times over the last several months. In fact, they’re probably going to nominate him as their leader again despite the obvious warning signs that he’s no longer a viable general election candidate.
It’s possible to see why various institutions are not trusted by Republicans, but that still can’t explain why Trump has this lasting appeal. It’s sad beyond measure to see brain rot like this. This is our country, and its morals have been thrown in the compost pile.
Yes, it’s a depressing place, but the silver lining is that at the moment, quarantine seems to be working as a strategy. Trump supporters are an intact, but dwindling power block of voters. As long as Trump is on the scene, it’s pretty likely that Democrats will be in a decent place to exercise power.
I often think back to 2007 and 2008 when I was wondering what Republicans could possibly do after Bush had been discredited and knocked off the pedestal after having invested so much into him emotionally (even then, Republican voters were hungry for something like a cult leader and Bush was the guy for many years). We all know the story of the Tea Party morphing into MAGA via Sarah Palin and other bridges.
Back in 2008 I was still somewhat interested in Republican ideas. I would read Red State, Hot Air, Instapundit (lol) or other right-wing blogs with at least some intellectual curiosity. In 2023, I’m thoroughly sick of their shit and have very little interest in anything they have to say. Of course, both Red State and to a lesser extent Hot Air have purged their more interesting writers and turned their sites into predictably sanctimonious opinion mills for hacks. The right just doesn’t have any ideas. It’s all show.
Anyone who reads this blog isn’t your median voter, so I don’t know to what extent my own judgements are relevant. It may be that the Republican rot just isn’t that important to other voters.
Nevertheless, as long as Trump is around, Democrats will likely by in a decent place. The question is, what will happen to the Tea Party/MAGA complex in the coming years? A few observations:
Just a few thoughts. Things can still go very, very wrong but in the near term, I have hope for the future and that hope depends on the marginalization of Trump and his voting block. Keeping them distracted with Trump drama and deep-fried food is probably the best thing we can do at the moment.
Seems that the conceptualization of Trump followers as a cult is a good descriptor.
The fever will subside after Trump and his rabble are imprisoned. Then most people will forget any of this ever happened and move on.
I do take some comfort in the fact that nearly 60% of Trump supporters have at least figured out that their religious leaders are untrustworthy.
Do we have any good data on whether or not there are fewer self-identified Republicans in 2023 than there were in 2020? I remember self-identification dropped a LOT during the final years of the Bush Debacle.