Tim Alberta has a long article describing what he found when he asked Republican operators who worked at the highest levels of the party what it now stood for. What he found was that they could not articulate any coherent message other than being loyal to Trump.
The reason he went on this quest was that despite spending more than a decade studying the Republican party, he found himself completely stumped by a question from a 17-year old high school student who asked in an exasperated voice, “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand. What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?”
The title of this post is the answer Alberta got from Brendan Buck, a longtime senior Republican congressional aide and “imperturbable party veteran if ever there was one”, who then added, “That’s what we believe in now. There’s really not much more to it.”
Alberta decided to ask Frank Luntz, the Republican political pollster and guru who has for decades used focus groups to better frame the party’s message. Luntz kept floundering for an answer.
When I pressed, Luntz sounded as exasperated as the student whose question I was relaying. “Look, I’m the one guy who’s going to give you a straight answer. I don’t give a shit—I had a stroke in January, so there’s nothing anyone can do to me to make my life suck,” he said. “I’ve tried to give you an answer and I can’t do it. You can ask it any different way. But I don’t know the answer. For the first time in my life, I don’t know the answer.”
…It can now safely be said, as his first term in the White House draws toward closure, that Donald Trump’s party is the very definition of a cult of personality. It stands for no special ideal. It possesses no organizing principle. It represents no detailed vision for governing.
After describing some of the craziness that has gone in the last few years, Alberta says:
This is not a party struggling to find its identity. This is a party in the middle of a meltdown.
The verdict I’m rendering here is both observable in plain sight and breathtakingly obvious to anyone who has experienced the carnage up close. Some Republicans don’t want to see the wheels coming off and therefore insist that everything is fine; others are not only comfortable with the chaos but believe it to be their salvation. In either case, these groups are the minority. Most of the party’s governing class sees perfectly well what is going on… Like riders on a derailing roller coaster, they brace for a crash but dare not get off.
…How to process such nihilism? It can be tempting, given that Trump is the fount from which so much of the madness flows, to draw a distinction between the president and his party, between Trumpism and Republicanism. It is also fair to examine the difference between local party politics and national party politics. But these distinctions grow blurrier by the day. At issue is not simply the constant enabling and justifying of the president’s conduct by GOP officials at every level of government, but also the rate at which copycats and clones are emerging.
…There is a place in politics for fighting—and, yes, for culture wars. Some of the great policy debates of this century, from abortion to same-sex marriage to marijuana legalization, were shaped more by social movements than policy debates. The problem for Republicans is that most of the fights they’re picking nowadays are futile at best and foolhardy at worst. NASCAR? Confederate flags? Goya beans? Face masks? To the degree any of these issues move the needle politically, Republicans are on the wrong side of them.
He says that Republican members of Congress realize perfectly well that their party has become a cult devoid on any ideas other than groveling before the Dear Leader and that it will implode, if not this November, then soon after. . So why don’t they speak out? One reason is of course that their primary focus is staying in power and going against Trump and his rabid base is a surefire way for them to get tossed out by their own voters. The other is that they want to be around to pick up the pieces and rebuild the party after the inevitable crash. Or at least, that is how they rationalize away their cravenness.
But that crash may not come this year.
Overlooked is the real possibility that Trump could win. That Biden has not built a runaway lead despite enormous advantages—chief among them, the president’s poor playing of a terrible election-year hand—speaks to the effectiveness of Trump’s slash-and-burn mentality. Even as he has failed to win over a majority of voters, he has succeeded in giving them pause about his opponent. It is no small irony that while Trump’s party has no big ideas of its own to peddle, he relies heavily on the bold progressive plans of the left to caricature Biden—all while the Democratic nominee distances himself from ideas like “Medicare for All” and a “Green New Deal.”
…For Republicans, this might be the only silver lining of the summer of 2020. The meltdown we’re witnessing is foul and frightening. It could result in catastrophic losses up and down the ballot this fall. It could also result in Trump’s reelection. In either case, Republicans would do well to remember that he won’t be president forever, that his grip on the base will come and go, that win or lose there is urgent and essential work to do if the party is to be rescued from itself.
“Healthy parties need to build coalitions around a shared vision that speaks to all Americans,” [Republican senator Ben] Sasse told me. “Our current course is unsustainable. We’ve got a hell of a rebuilding ahead of us, whatever happens in November.”
The sooner the current Republican party crashes and burns the better, for the party, the country, and the world.
Just as long as it takes the Democratic Party with it.
You know what really “owns” me? I can’t stand the sight of blood. If republicans want to “trigger” me and “own” me all they have to do is take a crowbar to their own face and I’ll be suitably freaked at the sight.
hyphenman: “Just as long as it takes the Democratic Party with it.”
Well, that didn’t take long for someone to demonstrate precisely why the Republican party likely won’t crash. 🙁
Most people, throught history and throughout the world, have known in their guts that almost any regime, however tyrannical and exploitive, is preferable to chaos. You’re more likely to survive having one bloodthirsty thug running your county than having a different bunch of bloodthirsty thugs conquering your county every week and in turn being conquered by someone even more bloodthirsty and brutal. A case in point: Somalia.
Of course, you might prefer chaos — if you’re a bloodthirsty thug yourself.
Wishing for both the Democratic and Republican parties to self-destruct is asking for chaos.
@ Leo, No. 3 and Allison, No. 4:
This will be my 12th presidential election and I have reliably voted for the Democratic Party candidate in eight of the past 11 elections. (I voted Green Party in ’96, ’12 and ’16.)
My politics are left-of-center and I consider myself to be a Eugene Victor Debs socialist. I’m the grandson of a suffragette who cast her first vote in a presidential election 100 years ago. She voted for Eugene V. Debs and Seymour Stedman. She taught me to be for the worker and for unions.
I have had enough our our faux two-party system and have zero confidence that the Harris-Biden ticket will not kowtow to Wall Street, further expand America’s military adventurism resulting in the further deaths of thousands of my brother and sisters in arms along with hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and feed our prison-industrial complex.
As for the potential for chaos, I have every confidence in our Constitution and the good women and men in this country who are ready to see the scoundrels of both parties out and re-establish: government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write
Hyphenman, I agree about kowtowing to Wall String and military adventurism, but as I’ve said before in other contexts, I’m hopeful that the Democrats will exhibit a little basic human decency in matters relating to “social issues” (racism and LBGTQ+ issues being the big ones at the moment). I think that presents me with a clear choice.
@billsymour No. 6
I sincerely wish I had that degree of optimism left in me and nothing would please me more than for me to be proven wrong and you correct.
“But I don’t know the answer. For the first time in my life, I don’t know the answer.”
I’ll be generous and give points for honesty.
Jesus Christ, we’re fucked.
Allison@#4:
Of course, you might prefer chaos — if you’re a bloodthirsty thug yourself.
You are standing right on the fulcrum of a justification for subjection: because it’s better than chaos. That’s the lever that authoritarians love to pull.
That the dems and repubs have conspired to control the meaningful political dialogue in the US is undeniable. We can hate both parties accordingly. We should wish for them both to be destroyed -- and in the case of the democrats I mean “changed so much that they would call it destruction” which, to Nancy Pelosi, it would be. But saying one wishes to obliterate the republicans and then destroy/change the democrats is not wishing for chaos -- it’s wishing for orderly, controllable change. Unless you think the dems would also call out the troops with bayonets, which I don’t. The system needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt, but not blown up leaving us with only a crater.
The repubs are threat #1. But if you don’t think the dems are also part of the problem, you don’t understand the situation.
a Eugene Victor Debs socialist
Word.
At this point, it’s too radical for a lot of Dems to say “no wealthy politicians” or “no neoliberals” or anything of the sort. That’s actually just describing what we should do in an ordinary, peaceful, democratic process, which doesn’t substantially harm anyone. Apparently, that’s the scary thing about it! For some, it probably sounds like the apocalypse. (I don’t know … some might even prefer fire and brimstone.)
Just for fun, try to imagine Biden announcing that his cabinet will be full of ordinary people (in the bottom 50% let’s say), not a bunch of “experts” from Wall Street and the Pentagon and so forth. I’m pretty sure that’s when nearly everyone would conclude (if they hadn’t already) that he’s finally lost his fucking mind.
hyphenman:
Why? Neither the Constitution nor “the good women and men in this country” intervened to prevent current circumstances, yet you claim you are utterly confident they will rescind them?
Faith is for the religious, and also, I’m tired of USAnians treating their Constitution as a religious text. Bah.
@John Morales,
That’s true, you’re absolutely correct, if I had mentioned faith, which, of course, I didn’t.
While some might use confidence as a synonym for faith, I do not.
For a better understanding of how confidence works, you might read Mano’s newest book.
If you have no confidence in either our Constitution or our population, then you are indeed in a very dark place.
Jeff
P.S. I have zero confidence in any religious text because I know very little, indeed, often nothing at all, about he authorship or the precise language of writing. Since I know both about our Constitution, my confidence is in the high 90s.
From Ted Rall this morning:
What Ted said.
@4 Allison: “Most people, throught history and throughout the world, have known in their guts that almost any regime, however tyrannical and exploitive, is preferable to chaos.”
So Homo Sapiens has been around for only 12 000 years or so, when the first cities were build? Young Earth Creacrappers will like that.
Because hunters/gatherers typically don’t have any regime.
That or you’re talking nonsense, because you neglect the 190 000 years of human history before the first urbanization.
hyphenman, one of us is confused, that’s for sure. I can only go by what you write.
Not 100?
Um, your Constitution is the very basis of your political system.
Your party system is an emergent property of it; this is all understood.
John, No. 16
1. That’s why we have an amendment system. This is a living document, not scripture.
2. Actually, as written, our Constitution says zip about parties and, as a matter of history, the founders believed they were doing everything possible to avoid the system then present in Great Britain and prevent parties, hence Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, superseded in 1804 (see above);
No worries, hyphenman.
Perhaps your confidence is well-founded, and though I certainly don’t apprehend in what manner, it’s not anything like religious faith.
LOL! Good one!
[reads on…]
Oh. You were serious?