Iowa Republicans tromped to their caucuses and chose . . . Donald Trump. They’re hungry for a repeat of 2020 and the dismal results of 2022. As I’ve said before, if Trump is the party nominee, I’ll leave the presidential line on the ballot blank.
Please don’t press the same old tired binary (if not him, then it’s them). I did that calculation twice. I can’t do it a third time. His protectionism and isolationism, alongside his repugnant behavior in and out of the Oval Office, make him a poison in the party. Personality cults are not a healthy thing when it comes to governing.
A discouraging outcome in November, maybe outright defeat, could be very therapeutic for the party in removing his baleful influence.
Bottom line: he’s the best chance for the Democrats to remain in power. Whole demographics can’t swallow him, never could. The Democrats ruin the country, and the Republicans choose the least electable candidate. Go figure. A vote for Trump is a vote for the Democrats’ campaign strategy.
I’m out, from being a voter in the presidential contest that is. I may have to rethink my party registration.
The term (radioactive personality) comes from the National Review editors’ op-ed on the eve of the Iowa caucuses (see below). Indeed, Trump is a radioactive personality. It bodes ill for the GOP in November.
No doubt about it, it’s true, and it’s true not because Trump drives the Left – which means the root-and-branch of the Democratic Party – nuts, but because everyone, even his friends and loyal supporters, recognize his self-absorbed boorishness and then run to a banal recitation of his accomplishments. The reprehensive demeanor is hard to avoid. This simple fact has profound repercussions. Going into this election’s primaries, Trump is the weakest rival to Biden in a general election, also, no doubt about it. If the Democrats should change their standard bearer, all bets are off for even the rosiest Trump scenario of a narrow victory in November.
How radioactive is he? His avid fans are giddy about his head-to-head slight lead (within the margin of error) in some major polls. Remember, he’s running against a guy who every day reminds the public that he belongs in a nursing home and not the oval office. In addition, look at the hash Biden’s party has made of the country and our national security. Everything from Abbey Gate (the deadly Kabul fiasco), inflation, the uncontrolled border, the assault on our standard of living in eco-totalitarianism, the neo-Marxism in DEI, the boosterism for transgenderism’s teenage genital mutilation in “gender affirming care”, the orchestrated annihilation of American education, et al, doesn’t leave much for the donkey party to run on, except the looming Trump ascendancy if he is the GOP’s avatar.
The tone for the general election is set. Biden’s speech last week in Blue Bell, Penn., made Trump the focus of evil in the world. It’s a replay of the strategy in the 2022 midterms. Did it work then? I don’t know, but the expected GOP banner year turned out to be The Great Disappointment. Apparently, it’s safe to assume that enough people fell for it. If anything, the person of Trump animates the Democrats and sends shivers down the spine of at least a sliver of Republicans. Not good for someone who’s already a close-run thing.
Biden’s “Jim Crow 2.0” speech from Sept. 2022 in the runup to the 2022 midterms
The polls tell the tale, and have been telling the same tale for quite some time. The second-place candidate in the Republican primary contest does significantly better than Trump in a face-off with Biden in the general. The crazy Trump indictments and other Democrat shenanigans have certainly contributed to a heavy sympathy vote among Republicans for Trump. While they have contributed to Trump’s political ballast among GOPers, once Trump gets out of the safe confines of the Republican primary, expect Democrats to cater to the electorate’s already deep disdain for the man from Mar-a-Largo, if only they can successfully distract the voters away from Biden’s catastrophes – a big “if”.
Follow the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of polls and follow them from 2023 on (see below for the latest). The trend is clear. At best, Trump eeks out a lead in the margin of error. The polling details vary (for instance, registered vs. likely voters) but the direction is obvious. Biden screws up, Trump improves, slightly! Yesterday (Jan. 10), the YouGov/The Economist poll registered a Biden and Trump tie at 43%. Both are stinkers with negatives in the mid to high 50s. The last time, December 2023, a general pairing of Haley or Trump versus Biden by the Wall Street Journal shows Haley smashing Biden by 17% with Trump squeaking out only a 4-point lead (see below). For the life of me, why are Republicans determined to make their election prospects so difficult? It makes me wonder if this is populist sadomasochism at work.
Nikki Haley (l)
I’ll leave the prognosis of sadomasochism to the field of psychology, but, at the very least, one must conclude that we live in crazy times. Trump is still radioactive, and Biden is a bumbler after having surrendered to his party’s neo-Marxism. Oh, America, why are we so gun-ho for mediocrities, and repulsive ones at that?
RogerG
Sources:
* “Republican Voters Can — and Should — Rethink Nominating Trump”, The Editors, National Review online, 1/10/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/republican-voters-can-and-should-rethink-nominating-trump/
* Latest FiveThirtyEight polling at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
* “Why Nikki Haley polls better against Joe Biden than Donald Trump does”, Steven Shepard, Politico, 12/9/2023, at https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/09/haley-electability-trump-biden-polls-00130926
The Protected: John Kerry windsurfingThe Unprotected: residents of East Palestine, Ohio, waving Trump flags, Feb. 2023
Peggy Noonan’s growing “political dynamic” of our times (from 2016):
“There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it …. The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created [emphasis in the original].”
Peggy Noonan in a speech from 2017
She’s right, and it should gall anyone with half a brain.
************
I had a little time Wednesday, 1/3/24, while exercising to listen to Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. He inspired me to take a third look at Peggy Noonan’s piece from 2016, “Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected” (see below). Hewitt used the article as a launching point to discuss the fall of Claudine Gay, the disgraced president of Harvard. His point was that the vast majority of working Americans don’t care squat about the problems of a Harvard president. If anything, the episode reminds the common person of the rank favoritism of those who have placed themselves above the mire that they have made for everyone else. Good point, but it only goes so far.
Lets’ face it, Gay was not hired for her high achievements in scholarship or administrative skill. She fit the new ideologically laced identity standards of our insulated, self-anointed aristocracy: black, female, immigrant-affiliated, and predictably left-wing. She fits the superficial bill. She was placed on a fast track to a fully tenured professorship, Dean of the Arts and Sciences, and the Harvard presidency. Yet, she’s an empty suit with a checkered resumé. It should rankle the parents of any working-class kid who was booted for the same infractions committed by the appointed sovereign of Harvard College, one whose academic accomplishments are extremely thin and plagued by charges of academic fraud, plagiarism (see below).
The disgraced Claudine Gay, and protected, at a Harvard graduation
Don’t think for a moment that she’s relegated to a bread line after her resignation. She’ll still garner $900,000 a year as a Harvard professor. She’s protected no matter how bad she’s been. If that doesn’t pore salt into the open wound of the “unprotected”, nothing will.
Yet, where does the recognition of this new political battle line take us? Nowhere, and fast.
Politically, it could easily end in a disaster. Are the animated “unprotected” sufficient in number to constitute a governing electoral majority? Recent history makes that possibility very tenuous. The Trump victory of 2016 was by the skin of his teeth. With narrow majorities for both parties in Congress during his term, it teetered wildly between Reaganite measures and Trump impeachment. By 2018 and 2020, the Republican congressional footprint shrunk. The expected GOP banner year of 2022 would go down as the Great Disappointment. It is apparent that a rebellion of the bellicose “unprotected” isn’t enough. Plus, you have to factor into the political calculus what is lost in a stance catering to the shrillest in those ranks.
And that brings me to Donald Trump. As a character on our political stage, he’s both the middle finger to the “protected” and repulsive, repugnant to large swaths of the voting public open to the GOP being the antidote to the left-wing lunacy coming from our so-called “betters”( the “protected”), the supporting mass of the Democrats’ progressivism. Is the goal of a political campaign to win or simply be a stage for venting? Losing leaves only the wallowing in wild conspiratorial excuses.
Chief among the excuses is the charge that the system is rigged. It is, and the complainers (the “unprotected”) are right to be up in arms. The pandemic brought it all into the spotlight. Protests for thee but not for me. Private and open schools for thee and closed ones and distance-learning for my kids. Then, parents learned of the hard-core porn and neo-Marxist indoctrination that were being inculcated into their children. The “unprotected” experienced the loss of one to two years of learning while the “protected” raced forward in their exclusive private academies. Small and medium businesses were shuttered and jobs lost leaving a monopoly for the bigs. Cops closing down church services as rioters were free to torch the downtowns and federal courthouses from one megalopolis to the next. 2020 to 21 was a disgrace, courtesy of the “protected”.
Though, admittedly, the rigged-system charge sounds eerily like the banal Marxist complaint, the one wholly embraced by the “protected” Left. When a complaint goes “systematic”, that’s carte blanche to tear down the society, the system, a totalitarian uprising. This time from the right, Donald Trump hinted as much when he suggested that his followers should not adhere to the niceties of the Constitution. To correct the alleged fraud of his election loss, on Truth Social in late 2022, Trump called for “the termination of all rules . . . even those found in the Constitution” (see below). He quickly took a rhetorical two-step away from it. But still, root-and-branch actions to upend the “system” was broached by a figurehead on the Right. The Constitution to the woke snowflakes is a white man’s slavery compact. For Trumpers, and Trump himself, it is a compact for sinecures of the “protected” Left and election fraud. For both sides, the ends justify the means. History is not encouraging about the repercussions of that tact.
I’m not quite ready for the Hobbesian life of solitary, nasty, brutish, and short outside the rule of law. Yet, that’s a possible destination for the country for both sides.
As we head into election season 2024, the faces of both parties – Biden and Trump – appear ugly to overwhelming numbers of voters. It’s a battle of the repulsive. FiveThirtyEight’s list of current polls consistently register disgust. Media and the incendiary commentariat focus on the head-to-head matchup. Trump is up, Biden is down, but regardless, 52% to 55% consistently view both with a jaundiced eye (see below). If Biden v. Trump II was pay-for-view, the investors would face a ratings disaster.
My worry is the down-ballot. If Trump should win, it won’t be by much, and he won’t have coattails, never has. If Biden wins, ditto. If elected, I expect Trump to be immediately impeached if the Democrats ascend to the majority in the House and Senate. If roles were reversed and Biden wins, Republicans will impeach not only Biden but his entire cabinet, leaving the VP to giggle and uptalk her way through the next four years. Unitary GOP government would give us more chief executive flamboyance and impulsiveness, and Trump isolationism and protectionism. Unitary donkey party rule will be an attempt to turn the country into California. Either way, the “unprotected” will get screwed either as part-and-parcel of them getting what they want – Trump elected and proving the failure of protectionism, isolationism, and chaos in the executive once again – or being the target of command-and-control social engineering after another Trump election failure and more donkey party eco-totalitarianism.
The “unprotected”, by themselves, don’t make an electoral majority. Their middle finger to the “protected”, in the person of Donald Trump, is repugnant to the vast center of the electorate. The goal of politics in democracies is to win and the “unprotected” don’t have the numbers by themselves. Trump is a divisive figure, not a unifying one. After all, he’s a middle finger, not a statesman. Thus, by default, given the narrow appeal of the orange man, the “protected” have a good chance of remaining protected and in power to continue to make hash of our lives. We need to move beyond a mere repeat of the same contest and practice a little more election calculus. The equation ends in the unavoidable conclusion: if the “unprotected” want protection, first, win elections!
RogerG
Sources:
* “Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected”, Peggy Noonan, originally published in the Wall Street Journal, 2/25/2016, at https://peggynoonan.com/trump-and-the-rise-of-the-unprotected/
* “Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?”, Christopher Rufo and Christopher Brunet, 12/10/23, at https://christopherrufo.com/p/is-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist
* “Trump Backtracks On Calling For ‘Termination’ Of Constitution Following Backlash”, Sara Dorn, Forbes, 12/5/22, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2022/12/05/trump-backtracks-on-calling-for-termination-of-constitution-following-backlash/?sh=7118d1d74161
* FiveThirtyEight latest polls at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
The Trump slogan “Make America Great Again” is in my view a noble sentiment. America is a dispirited nation today. In some ways we have become a laughingstock on the international stage (Remember Kabul?). Our navy has fallen under 300 ships which means that a focus on saving Israel effectively could be an abandonment of Taiwan. Our defense industrial base is so emaciated that it can hardly support our peacetime military, let alone two stalwart allies like Ukraine and Israel willing to bleed in defense of the West. We eviscerate ourselves in masochistic eco self-flagellation and race/gender Marxism. This, for me, should be the impetus for a real campaign to Make America Great Again.
But inside that cluster of elements surrounding Trump comes a special definition for Great. “Great”, for them, is tantamount to isolationism: diplomatically, militarily, and economically. America for these folks becomes a better place when we abandon the world under the guise of our domestic problems. This won’t end well. MAGA has made itself into a funeral dirge for America.
Michael Ramirez is my go-to cartoonist for he captures our current moment so well. Ramirez harkens back to the conservatism of Reagan, Thatcher, Buckley, Goldwater, and back to a time when we had a 600-ship navy, and not to the Trump cult of personality with its infatuation for isolationism.
In the cartoon, Ramirez reminds us of the bloody future awaiting us when we let despots run wild on the continent of Europe. Trumpkins are oblivious. Dickens’s specter of Christmas Yet to Come stands before us.
ntiwar March outside Crisler Arena on the University of Michigan Campus, September 20, 1969. Courtesy of The Detroit News Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
Stalwarts of America First (SAF) approved the following manifesto on July 24, 2022: “[SAF] advocates that the U.S. get out of [Ukraine] for the following reasons: (a) the war hurts the [Ukrainian] people; (b) the war hurts the American people; (c) [SAF] is concerned about the [Ukrainian] and American people.”
The above is a bit of fiction. Most of the manifesto wording, with the substitution of “SAF” and “Ukrainian” for “SDS” and “Vietnamese”, was originally the official demand of the overt socialist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam that was approved prior to their notorious March on Washington, April 17, 1965. Give it a few years and their wish would be fulfilled, and the demons turned loose. All of Indochina fell in reeducation camps, gulags, executions, a genocide of the Laotian Hmong people, the Khmer Rouge bloodlust in Cambodia, a quarter million boat people, the hammer-and-sickle red flag flying over all of Indochina.
This time, it’s Ukraine on the chopping block, and the appeasement is coming from the right in a fit of real pretzel logic. Could it be “He must be for it; therefore, I must be against it” at work? People who placed Black Lives Matter yard signs out front in 2020 are flying the flag of Ukraine in 2022. Democrats and Biden cheer Zelensky; therefore, Zelensky and Ukraine are suspect. Is it that infantile? Don’t underestimate the slipshod reasoning of our so-called “thought leaders”, whether of the left or right.
Yep, peaceniks on the right. Who would have thunk it? It’s pretty bad when a person must turn to the always-wrong left for at least a glimmer of sense. Tucker Carlson, now banished to the hinterlands of podcast world, displayed a dose of the Left’s unhinged quality on the eve of the Soviet, er, Russian, invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In language reminiscent of the 1960’s New Left, Carlson accused Ukraine of being “a pure client state of the United States State Department”. After the invasion, he kept it up, throwing mud on Zelensky. He accused Zelensky of being a dictator, a demagogue. He, Zelensky, is charged by Carlson of taking “the opportunity to turn Ukraine into effectively a one-party state, which it now is.” He’s oblivious to the attempted obliteration of Zelensky’s country, or the fact that the martial law measures were passed by the Ukrainian parliament, a parliament that was really elected.
I wonder how long would it be before Carlson starts calling for the shuttering of the New York Times after the Peoples Liberation Army comes pouring over the Sierra Nevada. George Washington marched at the head of a militia force in 1794 to put down resistance to a tax. Carlson: “Der Fuehrer Washington”? I shutter to think about Carlson’s contempt for Lincon’s suspension of habeas corpus when Lincoln was confronted with the dissolution of the Union. Overwhelming threats to national survival make opposition to national existence under the guise of freedom a dangerous luxury. You may not agree but at least it’s understandable.
Tucker’s bloviating has earned him the respect of the Putin regime, the same junta that murders opposition at home and abroad, even before Putin’s tanks embarked on their misbegotten invasion in February 2022. He’s the go-to for Putin propaganda to buoy Russian spirits in the midst of the catastrophic losses. One headline in official state media, Russia Today, says it all: “Tucker Carlson wonders why U.S. elites hate Putin. Biden will pay for ‘defending freedom’ of Ukraine out of your pocket, controversial Fox host warns Americans.”
His compatriot at Fox News, Laura Ingraham, has similar sycophantic tendencies. Zelensky’s admonition to Putin to not attack his country was turned into “a pathetic plea” by Ingraham. She characterized the bid for conquest as just a “border dispute”. According to her, we are conditioned to “hate Putin” by the Dems, our media, the “establishment”, or something. There’s nothing to worry about from dear old Vlad. Whenever aid to Ukraine comes up, you can expect an insult directed at Zelensky or Ukraine from her. She did it again last night (12/15/2022).
Not everyone at Fox News agrees. Brian Kilmeade wouldn’t let Senator J.D. Vance (R-Oh.), a favorite of the Carlson/Ingraham crowd, get away with it. Vance on more aid to Ukraine: “It feels sometimes to me like we’re just shoveling money over there without any clear plan for what it’s meant to accomplish.” The no-plan, no-objective canard didn’t sell for Kilmeade: “Think down the line, though. You let Russia take 20% of a country, what about the next country? Give them another 20?… You gotta play this out. What don’t you understand about that?” Precisely.
rian Kilmeade on the couch to the right on Fox and Friends; Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Oh.) to the left.
Other voices from the newly emerging isolationist right have jumped onto the pro-Putin bandwagon with gusto. Candace Owens is foremost, after she removes her foot from her mouth. In a full-throated endorsement of Putin propaganda, she refuted Ukraine’s right to exist. She said, “Obviously Ukraine wasn’t a thing until 1989. Further, “Ukraine was created by the Russians. They speak Russian.” Actually, according to their latest census before the invasion, 29% of Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language.
Candace Owens
She went further. The Left has claimed for years that the U.S. is at fault for provoking our international conflicts. From the right comes Candace Owens to blame America first. She tweeted, “As I’ve said for [a] month— NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward. WE are at fault.” In her fevered imagination, we upset Vlad and we ought not tinker with the delicate sensibilities of a despot. This is akin to the hazy “systemic racism”. Think of systemic America’s fault, equally as vague as the chants of Antifa.
The retort to Owens came from an imminent historian of Soviet atrocities (the gulags, the Holodomor), Anne Applebaum. She succinctly tweeted in reference to Owens, “Behold the face of pure ignorance.” Quite right.
Anne Applebaum
The symmetry of the peacenik left and peacenik right is evident in recent remarks by that aging paragon of the 60s New Left, Noam Chomsky. He praises Trump for opposing aid to Ukraine. His compatriots at left-wing publications such as “Jacobin”, “New Left Review”, and “Democracy Now!” blame, like Owens, the U.S. and NATO for Putin’s brutal invasion. Is the horseshoe theory of politics – when the political extremes come to take common positions – validated in our time? Mmmmm, something to think about.
Appeasement doesn’t normally go well, especially on the continent of Europe. 1939-40 brought us the America First movement, and Hitler’s and Japan’s rampages over Europe and Asia. The 1960s brought us the New Left’s Anti-War Movement, and the bloodbath in Indochina. The Age of Trump has horseshoed us back to the old isolationism, this time under MAGA. What is in store for us under this New Right?
RogerG
Sources:
* “On the eve of war, Tucker Carlson defended Putin. Now he’s backpedaling”, Lorraine Ali, LA Times, 2/24/22, at https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-02-24/ukraine-russia-vladimir-putin-tucker-carlson-laura-ingraham-fox-news
* “Why America’s Far Right and Far Left Have Aligned Against Helping Ukraine”, Jan Dutkiewicz and Dominik Stecuła, Foreign Policy, 7/4/22, at https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/04/us-politics-ukraine-russia-far-right-left-progressive-horseshoe-theory/
* “Fox News Host Confronts GOP Senator J.D. Vance on Opposition to Ukraine Aid”, Fatma Khaled, Newsweek, 1/27/23, at https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-host-confronts-gop-senator-jd-vance-opposition-ukraine-aid-1777122
* “Resistance and Revolution: The Anti-Vietnam War Movement at the University of Michigan, 1965-1972”, “The March on Washington”, at https://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antivietnamwar/exhibits/show/exhibit/the_teach_ins/national_teach_in_1965#:~:text=The%20SDS%20March%20on%20Washington%20to%20End%20the,college%20students%20and%20others%20to%20the%20nation%E2%80%99s%20capital.
* “Tucker Carlson wonders why US elites hate Putin”, Russia Today (RT), 2/23/22, at https://www.rt.com/russia/550320-tucker-carlson-putin-hate/
* “Candace Owens Blames America For Russian Invasion of Ukraine: ‘WE Are at Fault’”, Caleb Howe, Mediaite, 2/22/22, at https://www.mediaite.com/politics/candace-owens-blames-america-for-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-we-are-at-fault/
* “‘Behold the face of pure ignorance’: Candace Owens mocked by Pulitzer-winning historian for Ukraine comment”, Gino Spocchia, The Independent, 3/19/22, at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/candace-owens-ukraine-anne-applebaum-b2039581.html
* “Is Ukraine a Democracy? Separating Fact From Fiction”, Darragh Roche, Newsweek, 3/22/22, at https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-democracy-separating-fact-fiction-russia-1690505
* “Tucker Carlson, downplaying Russia-Ukraine conflict, urges Americans to ask, ‘Why do I hate Putin?’”, Timothy Bella, Washington Post, 2/23/22, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/02/23/tucker-carlson-putin-russia-ukraine/
* “Tucker Carlson Challenges Zelensky to Prove Ukraine Is a Democracy”, Aleks Phillips, Newsweek, 1/23/23, at https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-volodymyr-zelensky-ukraine-democracy-1809590
* “Candace Owens Says U.S., NATO to Blame for Russia’s Ukraine Invasion”, Patricia McKnight, Newsweek, 2/22/22, at https://www.newsweek.com/candace-owens-says-us-nato-blame-russias-ukraine-invasion-1681589
* “Candace Owens Backs Putin’s Claim Russia Created Ukraine”, Katherine Fung, Newsweek, 3/16/22, at https://www.newsweek.com/candace-owens-backs-putins-claim-russia-created-ukraine-1688700
Hugh Hewitt got me going. I was listening to his interview with Tim Alberta in last week’s program (12/6/23) about Alberta’s new book on the rise of Christian Nationalism (CN) in the evangelical movement. Hewitt disputed Alberta’s claim of a growing Christian Nationalist sentiment among evangelicals. Regardless of the trend’s size – and neither Hewitt or Alberta could put a finger on its actual magnitude – Hewitt misses the point. I think that Hewitt certainly understates CN’s impact, and, more importantly, he ignored the probability of it as a manifestation of Trump’s baleful influence within a good chunk of the Republican base, evangelicals. Today, Christian Nationalism is religious Trumpism.
Hugh Hewitt interviewing Tim Alberta
So, what is Christian Nationalism? Historically, it’s the identification of Christianity with American patriotism. The concoction is too strong for my tastes; however, I saw a reasonable commonality of interest of the two at a certain point in time. The term goes back to the Cold War. At the time, many Americans viewed the contest as a battle between a mostly Christian USA and godless Soviet atheism. It was a contest of powerful and obviously incompatible ideas. The latter was a serious threat to the former. The intersection of Christianity and American patriotism made sense.
In the interlude after the implosion of the Soviet Union, CN went dormant. In the last five or so years, it was reawakened in fits of despair over failures to break the Democrats’ and their neo-Marxist allies’ grip on political and cultural power.
And guess who appeared on the stage in 2015 to champion the dejected? Why, of course, Donald Trump. They wanted a fighter and they got one, and everything associated with it such as combativeness, bellicosity, and bombast. No deep thought and contemplation here, just in-your-face belligerence. The desire for drama quickly overshadowed policies and ideas. The Trump wave particularly spread over evangelicals and a reconstituted Christian Nationalism became just another manifestation of Trump’s cult of personality.
Yes, personality. Trump’s searing attraction was his pugilistic personality. It’s no surprise that a tabloid star would garner such loyalty in this combustible atmosphere. The Cold War’s battle of ideas degenerated into today’s mudslinging between the Democrats’ New Left and the Republican personality cult.
Trump didn’t bring anything to the table but histrionics, and a couple of policy ideas easily grasped and exploitable for visceral effect: the wall and evil foreigners stealing our jobs. There’s a great deal of truth in the need for a wall on the southern border, and much balderdash about the theft of jobs. While trade with Communist China is indeed a scandal for national security reasons, tariffing trade with allies is the height of stupidity. As the CCP becomes a global enterprise in Belt-and-Roads and a 300-ship and growing navy, Trump told our Asian allies to pound sand by taking TPP off the table and threatened tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, and on the exports of a host of present and future allies. The guy loves and brandishes tariffs if all his talk of the glories of them is sincere.
Pres. Trump signs executive order imposing tariffs on imported steel from Canada and Mexico.Pres. Trump shows signed executive order withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Jan. 27, 2017.
The related issues of outsourcing and offshoring were demagogued; all the while, our contribution to driving American businesses away went down the memory hole. Alongside empowered NIMBY’s everywhere on American soil, EPA-like commissariats at all levels of American government, armies of neo-Marxist activists cropping up everywhere, and unions driving heavy manufacturing into bankruptcy, we voluntarily bludgeoned our home-grown enterprises with the highest corporate income tax rate in the world (see The Tax Foundation below). Yes, congressional Republicans and President Trump cut those rates beginning in 2018 (Tax Cut and Jobs Act), but that wasn’t part of Trump’s schtick in 2016 when the Trump sect made its appearance. It’s much more politically fruitful to blame foreigners than Americans for the situation. Instead, Trump’s tariffs were always the locus of his heart’s desire. They fit his style.
His allure washed over Republicans and the evangelical wing of the base. For the religious-minded, the cultural issues took center stage and Trump delivered the Supreme Court. For some with an evangelical bent, Trump would be identified with the Old Testament’s King Cyrus, a foreigner, a pagan who nonetheless was God’s agent to do good according to the prophet Isaiah. That formulation is the seed of a new Christian Nationalism centering on Trump. Today, when I read Christian Nationalism, I read Trump.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit held at the Tampa Convention Center on July 23, 2022 in Tampa, Florida.
The bright glow of the Trump personality attracted all sorts of imitators like moths to a lamp. Marjorie Taylor Greene, that Trumper of all Trumpers, pulls no punches in donning the garb of Christian Nationalism in 2022 at a Turning Point gathering when she declared, “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”
Lauren Boebert
For such people, brashness is a virtue. There’s no one more brash than Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R, Colorado, 3rd Dist.). She scoffed at the commonly understood separation of church and state when she announced during a sermon at Cornerstone Christian Center in 2022, “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.” She goes further, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.” Brashness has no room for subtleties and nuance. Trumpian brashness is entertaining. There’s always time later to clean up the verbose mess.
Lauren Boebert speaking at the Cornerstone Christian Center
I suspect that Hewitt tried to diminish the influence of Christian Nationalism to protect the Trump brand from potential turn-offs to large swaths of the voting electorate in 2024. He’s got a big job ahead of him. Overt brashness, conceit, and narcissism invite trouble for those trying to piece together a winning coalition of voters. Hewitt’s tactic is to dismiss CN’s representativeness in the Trump base, and Trumpism, which is more stage temperament – i.e. personality – than policies or ideas.
We are entering dangerous territory in our current state of hyperbolic politics. Both parties are becoming extremely problematic. The Democrats’ neo-Marxism is a national suicide pill. For Republicans, toxic currents are swirling in their pool. What do I mean? The trumpeted marriage of Christianity to nationalism in the bluster of people like Lauren Boebert is, in fact, an inaccurate description. More properly, it’s nuptials between Christianity and Trumpism, that attempt to peddle the personality trait of brashness as a substitute for adult thinking. It’ll be a big turn-off once the 2024 campaigns begin in full swing no matter Hewitt’s declaration of Christian Nationalism to be insignificant.
Hewitt’s only hope is a greater loathing for Biden than Trump, a contest between who smells worse. Hewitt is doing his best to spray Glade over Trump’s pungency.
RogerG
Read more here:
* “Corporate Income Tax Rates around the World, 2017”, Kari Jahnsen and Kyle Pomerleau, Tax Foundation, 9/7/2017, at https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/global/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-the-world-2017/#:~:text=Key%20Findings%201%20The%20United%20States%20has%20the,percent%20when%20weighted%20by%20GDP%29.%20…%20More%20items
* Marjorie Taylor Greene’s endorsement of Christian Nationalism: “Opinion: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s words on Christian nationalism are a wake-up call”, Amanda Tyler, CNN, 7/27/2022, at https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/27/opinions/christian-nationalism-marjorie-taylor-greene-tyler/index.html
* Lauren Boebert’s endorsement of Christian Nationalism: “Boebert says she is ‘tired’ of separation between church and state: ‘The church is supposed to direct the government’”, Brad Dress, The Hill, 6/22/2022, at https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3540071-boebert-says-she-is-tired-of-separation-between-church-and-state-the-church-is-supposed-to-direct-the-government/
* The full Boebert talk at Cornerstone Christian Center can be viewed in full on YouTube at https://youtu.be/P-G-oAl9pF8?si=qbQnoTmB4xxRSJE4
Last night (11/30/23), Gov. Ron DeSantis (R, Fla.) squared off against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D, Ca.) in a debate. It was interesting to note that Newsom tried to use Trump against DeSantis. It’s true that Trump prefers to tear down his opponents early and often with any tool at hand, usually with a huge dollop of balderdash, so there’s much on the record for Newsom to use. Ironically, Newsom’s exploitation of Trump’s hostile words about DeSantis underscores a deepening divide within the GOP that can be summarized as MAGA v. Reagan. You may or may not be aware of it but it is happening before your eyes.
Let’s face it, and here’s the point, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan in thought and comportment. Trump has come to symbolize a rising isolationist element in the GOP. Reagan was a patriot but no isolationist. The dividing lines within the GOP are becoming starker by the month as one part of the party coalescing around Trump pays rhetorical homage to Reagan while they are busy tearing down his legacy.
It’s a battle between big-government isolationism (MAGA) and a philosophy of governance built on smaller government combined with international engagement (Reagan). A couple of weeks prior to the Newsom/DeSantis face-off, David Bahnsen (of the Reagan philosophy) engaged Oren Cass (of the emerging MAGA philosophy) in a debate about this growing rift. This chasm has a greater impact on the future of the GOP than the spat between Newsom and DeSantis.
They debated over this proposition: There should be a greater role for public policy (government) in markets. Oren Cass in the affirmative (MAGA), David Bahnsen in the negative (Reagan).
If you are a Trump supporter, you must ask yourself one simple question: Where would he lead us if elected again? Yes, his first term was Reaganite because he drew from the GOP’s ample stable of Reaganite thinkers, but he burned bridges with them long ago. A second term would draw from the coterie of big-government isolationists such as Oren Cass. You would be voting for this.
Here’s a few takeaways from the Bahnsen/Cass challenge:
#1 – To set up the big-government approach, you have to tar the alternative. The alternative is a more restrained government in order to let markets breathe, what is called free markets. A market is merely a spontaneous arrangement that brings together buyers and sellers, voluntarily and thus free. So, a host of problems are assigned to markets by people like Cass to gouge out a bigger role for government to manipulate and direct them. Though, can stagnating wages, a languishing standard of living, and outsourcing of some American manufacturing justifiably be laid at the feet of markets? That leads me to #2.
#2 – Cass and his cohort in and out of government won’t say it but they’re into central planning. Central planning is government actors – bureaucrats, public employees, and politicians – directing the buyers and sellers. What does this smell like? It smells like politics being injected into people’s private decisions on what they produce, how they produce it, and what they buy. If it was a medical treatment, it’s a poor one. Politician-witchdoctors overriding our individual judgments turns us into serfs and causes more of what they are blaming markets for. That leads me to #3.
#3 – The knowledge problem. Cass and the politicians on the other side of the fence like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren believe that government is filled with wise demi-gods. Do you, or anyone for that matter, actually believe that politicians and public employees possess the knowledge and wisdom to substitute their decision-making for that of millions of people in millions of individual circumstances? It’s been tried before. It’s the culprit behind the implosion of the Soviet Union. North Korea’s misery is caused by it. FDR’s New Deal turned a depression into a Great Depression. For the old timers like me, the 1970’s stagflation was caused by it. Those kvetching about today’s stagnated prosperity don’t realize that it is rooted in it. It’s amazing that the MAGA coterie want more government to cure the ailments caused by government. How’s that supposed to work? That leads me to #4.
#4 – The subsequent lawmaking and enforcement are infected with fatal pathogens, the fingerprints of government, i.e. politics, at work. Let’s take a look at the heralded CHIPS Act. The intent to replant chip manufacturing in the U.S. was larded with ESG, DEI, eco-nuttery, child care mandates, etc. Billions of taxpayer dollars are to be showered on billion-dollar corporate biggies while hitting them with the kind of thing that drove them from American shores to begin with. Go figure. The Cass/MAGA approach has been around for years. Speaking of Gavin Newsom, California is a microcosm of the consequences of this state of mind. Currently, it is causing Californios to flea the state (800,000 between 2020 and 2022) in like manner as American companies found the grass to be greener in China and the Philippines. You don’t need to shower taxpayer largesse on a handpicked industry and its towering players to entice them back. Try not punishing them. Try acting like you actually like them. Dah!
This is the debate that we ought to be having in the GOP. We need more face-offs between the MAGA and the Reagan philosophies so Republican voters know what they’re getting into. I’m afraid that it’s not happening often enough. We’ll end up with a lose-lose. If we win, we’ll get the misery from big-government foolishness under a Republican label. If we lose, we’ll get it from the Democrats. Are we even aware of it?
The Sicarii (Latin for “dagger wielders” or “dagger men”) were a violent splinter group of Jewish Zealots who were militant enthusiasts of the First Jewish Revolt (or first Jewish-Roman War). As Jerusalem was falling to Roman legions in 70 A.D., a portion of the Sicarii escaped to occupy the mountaintop fortress of Masada. There, they committed mass suicide just before the Romans overran their defenses in 74 A.D. according to the ancient historian Josephus.
Sicarii assassinsThe last Sicarii zealot committing suicide before the enter the Masada fortress.The ruins of Masada today
Blind fury, combined with the self-conceit of the purity of one’s motives and beliefs, can take a person to some horrible places. Is Matt Rosendale willing to help lead the GOP to its own Masada?
I am a Montanan and flabbergasted that a person like Rosendale calls himself a Republican and occupies Montana’s second congressional seat. He’s an embarrassment.
To be sure, Sicarii-like mental states can be found Left and Right. Anywhere from much of the Democrats’ base to Antifa/BLM can be found the burn-it-all-down state of mind. Now, in the Age of Trump, Republicans have developed their own Sicarii.
Back in October, in an interview in The Messenger (see below), Rosendale said that he prayed for the defeat of some Republican candidates in 2022 midterms, just enough to ensure a narrow Republican majority in the House. Here’s Rosendale:
“Look, we have shown, OK, with a very small handful of people, six at times, five at times, that we can have tremendous impact in that body and when a lot of people, unfortunately, were voting to have a 270, 280 Republican House, I was praying each evening for a small majority,”
The Sicarii didn’t only direct their anger at Romans. They targeted “collaborators”, fellow Jews. Rosendale, like all fire-breathing zealots going back millennia, heaped scorn on fellow Republicans. Fanatics have their own rhetoric to identify the “enemy” amongst their normal and natural allies. “Establishment” and “RINO” serve the same function for Rosendale and company as “collaborator”.
He says that he wants to push the party further to the right, right into a Republican Masada. Rosendale can’t grasp the fact that there exist many, many people who don’t agree with him, that he doesn’t reflect the Party or the country. His little faction is a splinter of a splinter. Is this guy a loon or what? Does he know the difference between governing and campaigning?
Governing requires working with others who disagree, and there will always be many of those. An adult would understand half-a-loaf and compromise. Not the Republican Sicarii. They have turned the House Republican caucus into a clown car.
I’m in District 1 and represented by Ryan Zinke (R), thank God. Are the constituents of District 2 happy with a politically suicidal Sicarius pulling them into a political rut?
What started out as Joan of Arc ends up as George Armstrong Custer.
RogerG
Read more here:
* “Montana GOP Rep. Prayed for Smaller Republican Majority After 2022 Midterms (Exclusive)”, Dan Merico and Matt Holt, The Messenger, 10/2/23, at https://themessenger.com/politics/montana-republican-house-prayed-smaller-majority
** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/
Well, both parties have gone bananas. The Democrats have gone over to denigrating the entire corpus of western civilization. They are essentially Marxists in belief with their race/gender hucksterism and eco-central planning. Republicans are in a state of madness, consumed in a cult of Trump. If you are an actual conservative, and not a cult member, expect to be reviled and abused. It happened to Mitt Romney.
At times, I have been no fan of Romney. His decision to march with Black Lives Matter in 2020 was a low point in my esteem for Mitt. In February 2020, he was the lone Republican senator to vote in support of one of the two articles of impeachment. I found both charges to be rank partisan prosecutions, something out of Stalin’s playbook. But at least he had the wherewithal to express loathing for repulsive Trump behavior. Rumors have been rife among Republican congressional members and staff of their disgust for Trump but were paralyzed by fear for their personal and family’s safety if they came out of the closet. They have good reason to fear the cult.
One incident stands out. On January 5, 2021, one day before the January 6th riot, Mitt Romney boarded a plane in Salt Lake City for a flight to Washington, D.C. So, to were others who were flying to D.C. for the Trump rally that devolved into the infamous riot. He was met with boos and chants of “Traitor” and “lowlife” on the plane (see below). Is finding merit in one of the two impeachment charges, or expressing disapproval of Trump’s conduct, “treason”? Is disagreement with Trump a measure of “lowlife”?
Apparently, Romney is more attuned to popular sentiment than the Trumpers on the plane. Polls consistently show Trump’s disapprovals to hover around the mid-fifties. It’s just that at this juncture, Biden has attained a level of repulsiveness equal to or slightly exceeding Trump’s. So, in a contest limited to Biden v. Trump, Trump edges out Biden – and the celebrity pundits on Fox News are in a party mood.
They miss the point. In a contest against a clearly, mentally and physically wobbly opponent, Trump can only eke out a narrow lead within the margin of error. Don’t mistake these results for a suddenly growing and popular embrace of Trump. That would be a big error in judgment.
The most recent NBC News poll (see below), like all the others going back a year or so, show a consistent distaste for Trump and an overriding dislike of Biden to match. In this binary matchup, Trump is ahead by 2 points for the first time in this poll. But lying in the poll’s weeds are some other interesting findings. Any generic Republican facing Biden is 11 points ahead, and any generic Democrat forges 8 points ahead of Trump. A no-name Republican does 9 points better than Trump against Biden; a no-name Democrat enjoys a landslide vis-à-vis Trump.
For the Democrats, the task is simple: remove Biden from the ticket. They may do it. Democrats are nimbler on their feet. Republicans seem to be hellbent on running their Trump Titanic into the iceberg. On the other hand, he could win if Biden is on the ballot, but don’t expect any coattails if the Trump personality is evident down ballot. Trumpism is a personality cult, and a not very endearing one.
RogerG
Read more here:
* “Kornacki: First Time In 16 NBC News Polls Over Four Years Where Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden”, Tim Haines, Real Clear Politics, November 20, 2023, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/11/20/kornacki_first_time_in_16_nbc_news_polls_over_four_years_where_donald_trump_leads_joe_biden.html
* Steve Kornacke on X about the NBC News poll at https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1726247457414414630
** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/
While listening to a podcast of the musical career of Simon and Garfunkel, up popped a segment of their song “Mrs. Robinson”. The verse struck me as oddly reminiscent of today. Think of the looming contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The verse:
“Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose”
I don’t expect much practical wisdom from rock stars, but this verse hits a chord. A verse from 1968 comes full circle to meet 2024.
A week ago, I happened to be watching an episode of Fox News’s “The Five”. A new Fox News poll had just been released showing Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden. Four of the five hosts were almost dancing a jig on the table about the results, as if votes had already been counted and Trump was preparing his coronation speech. Is Trump becoming popular, or, more likely, is this a choice between the most abhorrent candidates of all time?
Look at the candidates’ negatives. They are far and away more detested than loved. A smattering of polls from the Nov. 8-14 shows these guys to be stinkers (see below). Biden’s detestability hovers between 53% and 59%. Trump’s swings from 54% to 56%. Biden has achieved a level of loathsomeness slightly greater than Trump’s. And the hosts of The Five are dancing a jig over this?
The contest is a consequence of the parties foisting on the general voting public execrable nominees. The Democrats can’t come around to jettisoning their enfeebled sellout to the party’s neo-Marxist Left. The Republicans can’t shake their enchantment with a narcissistic lunatic. Now, the public has experienced both behind the Resolute desk and the bully pulpit. If the contest is reduced to this binary, then the choice is about the least reviled.
So, why does Trump appear to be allegedly riding high? Biden is in the seat of power, more immediate, before cameras, at the head of the nightly newscast, the subject of much conversation, and people get a daily dose of the failures of the party’s neo-Marxism: an overrun border, inflation, climate-change central planning, the unraveling of civilization, the group-guilt shaming, the international scene coming unglued, etc. The present soon overwhelms the past. Trump slides into background noise amid court appearances. As a consequence, if the election were held today, the possibility of a president taking the oath while wearing an ankle bracelet looms large.
What’s there to like?
It is said by many that people prefer Trump’s policies but personally dislike Trump. There’s a lot to that, but those cherished policies are a reflection of longstanding GOP platforms. Prior to 2015 and Trump’s grandstanding on Obama’s birth certificate, Trump had few if any policy ideas other than the border and trade protectionism. His ignorance was profound. In a 2016 debate, he couldn’t name the legs of the strategic triad. He was befuddled by the term “triad”. When he amazingly got elected as a Republican, he not surprisingly turned to Republicans to fill out his administration. From a guy who was a policy empty suit, many of his “wins” were crafted by the input of others who would later be insulted into oblivion. Bill Barr, John Bolton, Mike Pence, Kelly, McMaster, et al, and the congressional leadership who were the fount of these ideas such as Paul Ryan, won’t be around for a Trump second bite at the apple.
In a Trump term #2, who will he turn to, the clown caucus of Matt Gaetz and company? A person still possessing their wits would be a fool to get too close to Trump. Expect any future Trump presidency to be filled with “fighters”, fighters who are a bit too punch drunk: the clown car caucus moves from Congress to the executive branch; the extended universe of isolationists and sycophants; and the rule of the Democrats’ craziness would be replaced by those who romanticize 1932’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the American Firsters of 1940. Mmmm. What would that world look like?
I have to amend my prediction that Trump is a loser. Er, he is; you just might have to look down ballot for the misery. The guy has no coattails because he’s kryptonite at the state and local level. As long as Trump is far from you, he might be tolerable, even if you’ll only see him on parole or probation. Yet don’t count out that Democrat vote-harvesting machine so quickly, or the possibility that they’ll do a switcheroo replacing the enfeebled with a fresh-faced, milquetoast neo-Marxist from the party’s ranks.
RogerG
Read more here:
* For the latest polls turn to https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/publish/home
