The Saga of Trump is, of course, the saga of the past six years in America, but more than anything, it is the saga of the collapse of the Republican Party. Now, the GOP has been the party of racism and White resentment since Nixon's Southern Strategy in 1968. Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi talking about states' rights over the shallow graves of slain civil rights workers. This strain of nakedly racist GOP politics has always been there, and the paranoid Q-Anon shit goes back to the John Birch Society and Hoover's Liberty League.
What finally changed is that these seething, stupid, angry figures have now overwhelmed the institutional Republican Party. The "respectful" GOP would put up "respectful" figures like Dubya Bush to contrast with the naked hate of a Pat Buchanan. James Carville's old line "Democrats have to fall in love, Republicans just fall in line" represented the ability of the GOP establishment to harvest White resentment without ceding the spotlight to them.
In 2012, there was a revealing moment on Election Night. Karl Rove freaked out because Fox News called Ohio for Obama. Rove was certain Romney had won Ohio and eventually the idea of the "missing White voter" took over. Basically, Romney is a plutocrat. He's not evil, but he's Richie Rich and that doesn't play well in Ohio. (Ask JD Vance's Campaign.)
Trump activated those "Missing White Voters." It still wasn't enough to win a majority of the popular vote and he was probably helped by Russian interference and definitely helped by roiling misogyny and hatred of Hillary Clinton. It was enough, however, to run an inside straight through the Blue Wall.
Rather than see an opportunity to embrace Trump's economic heterodoxy on issues like Social Security, the GOP simply decided to let an erratic, racist, sexist, narcissist overwhelm the party leadership. In 2016, Lindsay Graham said that if the GOP nominated Trump, they would get killed and they would deserve it. In 2020, he likely committed crimes to keep Trump in office against the will of the voters of Georgia.
In other words, Trump won by not being a rich stiff like Romney, but the GOP decided that rather than distance themselves from the Paul Ryan austerity program, like Trump did, they simply seized on to his racism and xenophobia. Oh, and the rank criminality, too.
The GOP has slid so far down into the mire of authoritarianism that reactionary Republicans like Liz Cheney are purged simply because they do not worship at the feet of Trump.
All of this is the context for the FBI search of Mar A Lago and the suddenly bleak picture for the GOP Senate chances.
Trump broke the damned law. His defenders don't even argue that point anymore. They argue against the law or that Trump has magical powers to declassify stuff, but they don't even pretend that he abided by the law. Oh, yeah, Hunter Biden's laptop and shit. It is highly probable that Trump's law breaking with regards to national security secrets goes further than mishandling documents. It is a leadpipe certainty that he has committed massive and sustained tax fraud over the decades. It's on the record that he obstructed the attempts to accurately count the votes in 2020.
However, having basically abdicated any judgment about politics to Trump - they missed their chance in the second impeachment - the GOP is not saddled with Trump until 2024, he goes to prison or dies.
Party hacks like Mitch McConnell can lament that they have to support clowns like Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker or Kari Lake, but they already supported clowns like Rand Paul, Rob Johnson and Louie Goehmert for years before Trump came on the scene. What Trumpism has done is stripped away plausible deniability.
The Dobbs decision - and hopefully an improving inflation situation - will likely determine control of the House. The Senate currently looks to have an expanded Democratic majority, but I've given up hope of relying in the voters of Florida, North Carolina, Iowa or to a lesser degree Wisconsin to do the right thing. But they might! The RSCC is pulling money out of Nevada and Pennsylvania because they are broke and because they don't think they can win.
If the Dobbs decision has the electoral impact on suburban and young voters that I hope it does, then we could be looking at the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate with a commitment to get rid of the filibuster. We could fix voting rights, abortion rights, and a host of other things. It will be because the country is tired of minority rule - whether Trump or the Roberts Court - and because the GOP really seems like the extremist party.
In 2020, the GOP had some success painting the Democrats as extremists who were going to defund the police and make your kid transgendered. In 2022, the extremist party is pretty clearly the Party of Trump.
No comments:
Post a Comment