I don’t think it was staged at all. The House GOP is doing what the tea party wingnut faction of the party has been doing (or attempting to do) in various states across the country. It’s no secret that the republican ideologues are not necessarily neatly aligned with the Steve Bannon sect, which had been quietly pushed to the back of the room and left to watch as the more traditional republicans took seats at the table.
This was Trump’s populism reasserting itself over the interests of the party insiders, and once again, the insiders got publicly rebuked and humiliated by someone they (like their democratic counterparts) have long considered to be a joke. But Trump is no joke. He is still winning, still flogging political insiders who are scared of their own shadow. The public takes some solace in the fact that Trump stood up for the common good this time. It gives us a false sense of security for whatever happens next, but we can confident of one thing: the House GOP just got taken down a notch and they will be only more timid in opposing whatever comes out of The Donald’s White House.
We have many lessons from history on the pitiful human tendency to collaborate with authoritarian regimes. Some rush to kiss the hobnailed boot as it crushes them; some seem to enjoy the submission. Already one can see differences in the way the cable-news people talk about Trump. Some are revoltingly quick to flatter him and put the best possible spin on his antics–and I’m not talking Fox News here.
It is dispiriting for those of us less enthralled by authoritarianism. But we must remember that we are many and they are…well, still many. But fewer. Calling out collaborationism when we see it can help us cope with the “pod people” phenomenon you mention.
It seems to me that Trump is harnessing conservative business interests the way liberals have harnessed liberal business interests. Now businesses are using their clout to protest bigoted social legislation by threatening to move out of a state or curtail investment there, and they are also rewarding what they anticipate as good legislation that will benefit them by making a big deal out of changes of plans about where they’ll be hiring and producing products.
I actually appreciate that the way politics is changing, corporate advocacy is now very public where before it was done primarily in backroom, secret deals. If companie want to basically say, “elect Republicans, and we’ll hire, elect Democrats and we’ll move overseas”, I have no problem with that.
What do you mean, “now”? There is nothing new about this. For example, in 2013, Wal-Mart threatened to shut down DC stores if they passed a living-wage bill (which I presume is the sort of thing you mean by “using their clout to protest bigoted social legislation”), and they did the same thing in Chicago seven years previously.
Companies have been relocating/offshoring their operations to evade environmental and labor regulations, or threatening to do so if new regulations are passed, for decades.