There is a supposed “Chinese curse” which translates as “May you live in interesting times.” Well, we’re living through them, in part because of our contemporary “Chinese curse,” the COVID-19 pandemic, and the destructive ‘immune response” of national governments. But there’s another interesting phenomenon from which the repercussions are still sounding, shaking the foundations of American politics, like trucks rolling across a dilapidated bridge in Pittsburgh. The MAGA movement galvanized by President Donald Trump is still strong.
When the Trump campaign started, it was pretty confusing to me, because I consider myself a "conservative Republican." And I had the same concerns as many, about whether Donald Trump was merely trying to pose as a conservative, or was a "stalking horse for Hillary Clinton." (I recall a prominent meme from back then: "This man [Trump] is running only to get this woman elected [Hillary]".)
I was a Ted Cruz supporter, but when Donald Trump won the nomination, I fell in line like a good party loyalist. But I still didn't understand Trump's ideology, because it wasn't "conservatism" as I understood it, and as promulgated by the conservative "movement" going back to Reagan (when I'd first become politically aware). Some "movement" conservatives still can't get over that, and have effectively been driven insane by this.
These few media figures and elected officials have hung on as the remnant "Never Trump" people, and many have proven by their actions to have been opportunistic "conservatives," even as President Donald Trump proved by his actions that he wasn't kidding about the policies he wanted to enact, many of which were conservative policies. But unlike the "movement" conservatives who opposed Trump, I eventually figured out what Donald Trump's ideology is ...by listening to him.
Donald Trump is not a conservative, though his ideology implements some of what "movement" conservatives advocated for over the decades. President Trump's ideology doesn't fit into the "liberal" vs. "conservative" paradigm that had existed for so long, which was why it was so hard for me to figure out at first, since it's orthogonal to that traditional axis.
The best description for it that I could come up with is "national greatness." I first wrote about this back when I commented at University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds’ "Instapundit." Really, it was staring me right in the face back then, but I was concerned with the debate over whether or not Donald Trump was a "conservative." He makes it even more obvious now with his rally speech line "it's time to start talking about greatness for our country again." President Trump's "national greatness" ideology is functionally conservative in many respects, because it's pragmatic. The policies of the political left are rejected not because they don't fit with conservative ideology, but because they're proven to not achieve the objective. They don't work.
No question that Donald Trump's becoming standard bearer of the Republican Party was a "hostile takeover," because his MAGA movement was a reaction of the base to the fact that the party wasn't doing what voters, especially conservative voters, wanted.
At the same time, it’s a reaction to the increasing ivory-tower radicalization of the Democrats, who moved away from Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" center left radicalism, to the academic racial radicalism of Barack Obama's Chicago machine. The corruption of nearly all our major institutions which Donald Trump's candidacy exposed, and which has been even further exposed by the stress of the COVID pandemic, has shattered the traditional allegiances of many voters.
We don't yet know what the result will be, but American politics are going to be different going forward, because of the "national greatness" ideology of Donald Trump and the insane reaction to it.
Let's see what happens.
(H/T to @PonySoldier@social.quodverum.com for inspiring the original version of this column, first published as a thread on SQV )
Insightful. I would have written the first three paragraphs exactly the same. It was hard at first to put a finger on where Trump was going, because he wasn't conservative in the same sense we are used to. But he was better: he actually did the things conservatives had only talked about. He communicated conservative ideas and complaints (lying media, anti-American leftists) to non-conservatives (better than the conservatives ever did) and brought them onto the Trump Train.
Harb, long time follower, just not signed up. I thought part of DJT plan was following Caddell's polling. BB had a follow up in March 2016.
Veteran pollster Pat Caddell’s Armada group has spent the past several years charting the alienation of the American electorate. Here are some of the many highlights from the poll, which is attached below:
- 70% agree that the federal government today no longer has the consent of the people
- 79% want to recruit and support more candidates who are ordinary citizens rather than professional politicians and lawyer
- A majority of voters would join a third party if it had a chance of success
- 77% prefer candidates who “take on the political elites and special interests” to those who conform to a set ideology
Then a little history - "Louis XVI was in Versailles and [Nicolas], his finance minister, came to him, who was supposed to solve all the problems, and told the king about the fact that the Bastille had fallen, and Necker told him that. And the king responded --is this a revolt? And Necker sighed and said -- no, Sire, I fear this is a REVOLUTION.
What was one of The Donald's theme songs again?