Is it the fault of The Republican Party that Trump is the nominee?<\/p>\n
Depends on definitions, I suppose.<\/p>\n
Certainly, the Establishment fought tooth-and-nail against him. \u00a0Well, a faction did, anyway. \u00a0The others, when it came down to it, weren\u2019t keen on anyone else besides Bush, or maybe Rubio, and some were quite ready to make their peace with him.<\/p>\n
Is the Establishment to blame for being a sucky group of people, for running the Republican Party in a manner that left the rank-and-file so dissatisfied that they turned to Trump? \u00a0They may indeed have been a sucky group of people, they may indeed have alienated people, have given the rank-and-file the impression that they cared only about their own enrichment, but I think it\u2019s taking the concept of \u201cblame\u201d or \u201cfault\u201d too far to say that they have caused the Trump phenomenon. \u00a0Likewise, the accusation that Obama is to blame for Trump because of his divisiveness, doesn\u2019t hold water either.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, unlike the Tea Party phenomenon, which drew its support from the Republican base, Trump\u2019s support is coming from new Republicans, or formerly indifferent Republicans. \u00a0Supporters and opponents alike agreed that Trump\u2019s votes came from outside \u2014 it\u2019s just that supporters gleefully pointed to the huge increase in GOP primary voters and drop-offs among Democrats, and statements by Trump voters that they hadn\u2019t voted in a Republican primary as a positive sign, and opponents used those figures to discount him as \u201cnot a real Republican.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conventional wisdom has always been, also, that Trump\u2019s supporters come from the disaffected white working class, who believes their problems to be ignored by both the mainstream Republican and Democratic parties. \u00a0(That is, the Democratic party thinks they\u2019re reaching out to them, but they\u2019re perceived as being more interested in minority groups and the college-educated.) \u00a0But recent surveys report that Trump\u2019s supporters span the spectrum from poor to middle class to wealthy, from poorly- to well-educated.<\/p>\n
And yet: \u00a0do they not listen to the man? \u00a0Can they not hear him saying nonsense like, \u201cTed Cruz\u2019s father was an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald\u201d? \u00a0Do they not comprehend that the man has no clue about policy (his healthcare plan is \u201cI\u2019m going to take care of everybody\u201d, for crying out loud!), and that governing success is not just a matter of \u201cputting America first\u201d or \u201cgetting the right people\u201d or \u201cbeing a good negotiator\u201d but requires a serious, sustained effort to understand the world around you, in terms of things like international affairs, and healthcare and trade and the economy? \u00a0Are they not the teensiest bit concerned about issues such as Trump University and its pending lawsuits?<\/p>\n
The people to blame for Trump are his supporters. \u00a0And, no, it\u2019s not a matter of the GOP being the so-called \u201cstupid party.\u201d \u00a0His voters represent a cross-section of America, and it\u2019s not something you can write off as \u201cthey\u2019re stupid Republicans.\u201d \u00a0They are Americans, and they are not fundamentally defined by their political party, and you can\u2019t just mock them, insult them, tell them that their time is past, they\u2019re lives don\u2019t count, they might as well just die because that\u2019s what we\u2019re all waiting for, so as to usher in a brighter future.<\/p>\n
Most of them are genuinely convinced that Trump is the right choice to govern this country (though a minority are protest voters who are happy to have Trump as the GOP nominee to spite the GOP, not caring that Clinton will win as a result, if it forces the GOP to reform itself in some way in 2020, though they don\u2019t really seem to have a path forward on this point). \u00a0Perhaps they\u2019ve been so politically disconnected in the past that Trump\u2019s outrageous statements don\u2019t trouble them, because they assume this is what every politician does, and they just don\u2019t perceive of his bombast the way the rest of us do.<\/p>\n
I might add, as well, that there\u2019s another growing segment of the American public \u2014 those Sanders supporters who endorse, not just moderate expansions of social welfare programs, figuring Sanders\u2019ll be moderated by the need to deal with Congress and get legislation passed, but a massive transformation of the economy into the sort of Democratic Socialism formerly found in Europe until Europe itself moved away from that model, and those who believe that a generous basic income is the answer to economic woes, those who speak in terms that would fit quite comfortably in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
So what do you do next? \u00a0Not about the Trump v. Clinton fall election (at least I can take comfort in the fact that Illinois is so blue that my vote simply doesn\u2019t matter, and I can sit it out without guilt). \u00a0But about the state of the American electorate?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is it the fault of The Republican Party that Trump is the nominee? Depends on definitions, I suppose. Certainly, the Establishment fought tooth-and-nail against him. \u00a0Well, a faction did, anyway. \u00a0The others, when it came down to it, weren\u2019t keen on anyone else besides Bush, or maybe Rubio, and some were quite ready to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[378,325],"class_list":["post-4457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-republican-party","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n