I read this article back in August when it was current. I think the GOP is flying by the seat of its pants, and has a “strategy” that shifts with the wind. And it all might be moot once Mueller’s investigation is finished.
The point is not new. However, the first article I quoted appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post.
Conservatives have a breathtaking plan for Trump to pack the courts
By Ronald A. Klain November 21 at 7:36 PM
The second piece I quoted from appeared in today’s Washington Post.
This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful Hillary Clinton is not president
By Marc A. Thiessen November 22 at 9:18 AM
Not to make a big deal about it, but the first article you quoted was the first article you linked to, dated Aug 5 from the NYT. As I said, I remember reading it at the time.
Well, one of us is confused.
This.
IMO the Fortune 200 or so do not back an “American Greatness” (=“AG”) agenda. They are already too global for that. They’d loose more in overseas profits than they might gain here.
I can imagine that a lot of the lower tier but still publicly traded US companies would be more amenable to an AG agenda. These are the outfits that sell almost solely domestically, but have to compete with imported products under low tariffs. The folks in charge of those companies aren’t stupid. They know what damage real isolationism would do to the overall US economy. But at the same time it’ll sure look like a game *their *company can win. So they’ll back it. Right into the shitter.
The even smaller entrepreneurs, the “Chamber of Commerce Republicans” will eat this stuff up. The guy who works hard, has 50 or 500 employees, and still owns and runs the whole company. His business concerns are imported products, socially oriented regulation, and he’s probably socially conservative to boot.
The AG sloganeering will be very, ***VERY *** popular with the pickup truck & flag set. But they need to hear it from a suitable spokesman. They will instantly tune out the wrong spokesman.
Trump is such a plausible spokesman. I don’t know anyone of the mainstream Rs who could say that stuff in a way that would ring true to the foot soldiers.
For sure when the Ds have tried to talk about economic justice for the working man somehow they’ve never found a spokesman those folks will listen to. It’s discounted as some stupid suit reading some stupid script. I predict damn near any existing R Senator or Rep would have the same problem.
So look for the AG movement to recruit somebody from media to be the spokeshead. A Sean Hannity or some such.
White nationalism or nativism are better descriptors for it. Trump’s followers could genuinely care less that Trump works for Vladimir putin, they care that Trump treats blacks, Latinos and Muslims like dirt. If their motives was only nationalism, they’d care that Trump is a foreign agent.
They are people who believe America is meant to be a white, Christian heterosexual patriarchy and people who do not fit into that mold are invading and taking over. They feel americas identity and their sense or privilege they get from fitting into that elite mold Is going away.
Any time in US history that minorities became empowered and/or grew in number (the 1860s, the 1920s, the 1960s, etc) there was a backlash of authoritarian white nationalists trying to ‘take their country back’.
It first occurred to me that white nationalism could win when Trump won the southern primaries. Trump out-performed Ted Cruz in Dixie, which is a result I never saw coming until shortly before those elections. It was clear then that voters didn’t care about a family values president at all, but instead longed for the days of a white superman.
The politics of Bannon and Trump - whatever you want to call it - are indeed a reassessment of decades-long Republican political cannon. They won an election because they understood that many white Americans are pessimistic about a more globally-involved America. The global economy nearly collapsed and America’s commitment to global partners has required decades of military service and fruitless intervention in foreign conflicts. There’s great skepticism about America’s role as a global leader and the need to see ourselves in that light. More ominously, they’re skeptical about global cooperation. When Trump tells millions of white voters that global cooperation hasn’t worked out for Americans and that America’s strategic partners don’t pick up their end of the tab for things like defense and that they take advantage of trade deals by stealing jobs, they identify with that. They want an America that’s not a partner, but a fierce competitor, and all nations are potential rivals, even our current “allies”. It’s an extremely paranoid and dangerous worldview, and one that, in time, will spread to other nations, to the point that even if we re-elect our own Macron our Trudeau, other nations might by that point have well moved on and decided, “Fuck America” and had their own “Make Germany/France/Germany/Japan Great Again” movement.
A related problem, however, is that white Americans aren’t just souring on global cooperation; they’re also skeptical of the need to get along with non-whites, particularly non-white immigrants and African Americans. After decades of relatively progressive and flexible social attitudes among whites, economic and political anxieties have made a lot of whites (probably a majority, I’d say) skeptical of the need for better race relations. In the same way that whites believe that they’ve sacrificed their own economic security for people abroad, there are many who believe that they’ve sacrificed that security for “others” domestically as well. It’s good to see that a lot of whites (and of course non-whites) are pushing back against this wave of ill sentiment, but the danger is that as policymakers increasingly pull us away from a world based on cooperation into an age of zero-sum competition, differences become more apparent and contrasts become sharper. And it can become awfully tempting for some who belong to the white majority to take advantage of a new status at the expense of others. People with relatively progressive attitudes can be persuaded to change to become more regressive.
It’s not just thump who’s going off the deep end. A large part of the Republican party has followed him off that cliff.
Is that what’s going to happen here?
No. American politics is much different than the multi party mess of Italy. George W Bush is unwelcome at Republican conventions. Bill Clinton, although he has made rousing appearances at every Democratic convention since he left office, is now being ripped apart by many on the left. The only American president who has left office and still retained substantial popularity was Ronald Reagan who left office with Alzheimer’s and had the advantage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, breakup of the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Soviet Union a couple of years after he left office.
It is pretty rare for a president out of office to have much influence. Obama might prove to be an exception as he’s young as well as had a scandal free administration. But, it has usually been proven that American presidents wear out their welcome after 8 years and there’s a major change the following election.
Trumpism, with the constant outrageous behavior, insults, and odd attempts to try to return the USA to the 1950’s will wear out its welcome eventually. The one thing Trump has done has broken the Republicans usual strategy of next in line. The odd 2016 Republican primary season hurt every other candidate besides Trump and there really is no heir apparent.
I really don’t know. Trump ran on white nationalism, but he has governed like a typical GOP plutocrat. His rants and rage against muslims and blacks, and his attempt at tariffs may win him some support among rural whites but for the most part he hasn’t enacted the agenda he ran on. Kicking the immigrants out, banning muslims, letting the police terrorize black people, building a wall, etc. I would hope that would take some air out of the white nationalist movement, but maybe it just created a stronger desire for someone who governs out of white nationalist principles, rather than just using them to get elected and once elected ruling as a plutocrat (The GOP has been using this strategy for 50 years).
I honestly don’t know if things will get better or worse after Trump.
The only way that this is a “movement” is that it’s a naked desire for power. There’s no ideology at play here other than that. And there’s already a name for that: despotism.
Jimmy Carter would be another exception; in fact, he turned his reputation around completely.
I’m curious if once the Vietnam generation dies out, will people finally give up the “good ole days” spiel? I mean, are people going to reflect fondly on the 80’s mess of hard drugs, sexual predator scares, and the AIDS epidemic?
If “Trumpism” is off the table, how about “Know Nothing II”?
In a world divided into “nations” is it surprising that the concept of nations has influence?
That people actually type “thump” or “obummer” strikes me as odd. I see that it’s not in your thread title for whatever reason. It’s not too late to ask a mod to fix that.
Nationalism is about a lot more than the existence of nations. Here’s a good starting point:
IMO, the Trumpian type of nationalism is most heavily influenced by white supremacism. According to Nate Silver, the very best statistical predictor of how much of a specific locality supports Trump is how often they do google searches for racial slurs and racist jokes:
I don’t think that attempting to shame the concept of nationalism is going to make it go away. Nationalism has worked to inspire people to die for flag and territory for a few years now. It might be as effective as religion actually.
In my opinion, “white nationalism” is just a euphemism for bigotry. There are two kinds of people: white Christian American heterosexual males and those that the Republican Party hates. Since Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Republicans have let the bigots and racists know that they are more than welcome in their party. That isn’t going to change. The misogyny doesn’t change either, wars on abortion and equal pay will continue long after the Republicans killed the ERA. They want us to believe that a wall will keep those brown Mexicans from coming in, taking our jobs, and raping our white women. As a matter of fact, that’s what Donald led the campaign with. That anti-immigrant fervor has always been there, it’s just now out in the open. For the past 16+ years, Republicans have made fear of Muslims a subtle part of their appeal, from the unjustified wars to the demonization of a Gold Star family. That isn’t going to change with their next nominee or the next one or the one after that. Nor will their worship of guns nor their obsession with cutting taxes for the rich and gutting environmental regulations. Basically every policy that is evil is now the Republican identity, it’s just out in the open more.
I’m fine with shaming bigotry/racism/white supremacism and their advocates (as well as those who tolerate them).