Paul Ryan had a plan. Sure, it was pretty much the same as all his other mean-spirited, granny-starving plans―massive tax cuts for corporations and the super-wealthy―Social Security and other safety net cuts for the poor, the elderly and debt-poor graduates entering the work force. But, having ridden in on a white horse to save the GOP House in the wake of the John Boehner uprising, he was in a position to set the Republican agenda for the 2016 election. All he had to do was wait for a victor to emerge from the primary scrum and then graft his policy ideas onto that candidate. Pretty slick, right?
Alas, as we all know, something went terribly wrong. That something was Donald Trump and his hostile takeover of the GOP. Trump voters couldn’t care less about Ryan’s neat little Power Point presentations and budgets filled with Fountainhead-inspired funny numbers. They want a big fence to keep out the Mexicans and someone who will Make America White Again, Ryan surely knows that there is zero chance that Trump is going to pay attention to wonkish policy issues. It is particularly telling that although Ryan has officially endorsed Trump, he just warned a group of billionaire donors at the Koch brothers donor conference that “we’re in a fight to retake the soul” of the Republican party.
The story of how a small-time billionaire and actor best known for playing a big-time billionaire on TV, and for being a man with multiple personality disorders and anger management issues, hijacked a major political party and became its nominee for president is one of the most unlikely―yet predictable in retrospect―tales in American history.
Since the much mythologized Reagan years, the GOP establishment has been slavishly committed to a few dubious beliefs that have atrophied into a cult-like orthodoxy ― tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations pay for themselves by creating more jobs and that, in turn, improves life for everybody; free trade may cost a few American jobs but open markets create more growth and net new jobs; all regulation is bad and a drag on growth; the federal government shouldn’t really do much of anything except build a bigger military; and anyone who can’t find a job probably doesn’t want to work anyway and just wants to mooch off people who do. Too sick, too old, too unprepared, too lost in a world in which automation has replaced many manual jobs, too crazy, too poor ― those are failings of character, not a lack of opportunity or a result of a digital revolution at least as disruptive as the coming of the Machine Age.
Throw into this Voodoo Stew a lot of amorphic coded social spices like “family values”, “traditional marriage”, “tough on crime”, “Christian persecution”, “pro-life”, “illegals”, “Second Amendment”, add a dollop or two of outrageous fear mongering (That Mexican rapist under your bed is also a radical Islamic terrorist), a giant bucket of global hubris (”regime change,”) and you have the formula for a big tub of bull butter, albeit one that plays well in the mostly white, globally illiterate, heavily gerrymandered, voter suppressed precincts of the heartland. It works well enough to win state houses and state legislatures but has become a surefire loser in presidential elections where Republicans have to face a far larger, more diverse, better-informed electorate.
The schism between the different elements of the GOP that Donald Trump has now exposed was entirely predictable. The post-Reagan Republican coalition has always been shaky. On the establishment side, which controls the money and the real agenda, there are the elites ― thousands of lawmakers, wealthy donors, lobbyists and “consultants” whose main interest is holding on to power in order to continue to get paid handsomely for promoting tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of industries and unrestricted markets.
On the other side, there is a collection of social conservatives and nut cases who are pissed off about pretty much everything. Working class jobs are disappearing; gay people and black people are demanding that they be treated like they’re real human beings. Women are getting abortions on demand. Obama is coming for our guns. Mexicans are crawling over the fence. Heathen Muslims are cutting off peoples’ heads. America doesn’t win anymore and it’s all the fault of brown people and black people and gay people and women who work and think for themselves. There’s a black family living in the White House, for God’s sake. Don’t underestimate the racism.
Post-Reagan Republicans came essentially in two flavors; those who hate “entitlements” like Social Security, Medicare and welfare because they see them as expensive government encroachments on their right to look after themselves; and those who like Social Security and Medicare but hate welfare because they believe (mistakenly) that it mostly benefits black people.
For years, the elites held on to the loyalty of these unhappy and increasingly dispossessed citizens by stoking their willfully ignorant fears and promising to protect them from the avalanche of change they believed was wrecking their lives and ― by extension, “their country.” Trust us, they said. We’re working on it. It was classic bait-and-switch ― a marriage of convenience and a cynical ploy. Promise a lot and deliver not so much.
The first sign of trouble for the GOP came when the Tea Party , a group of rowdy malcontents, began picking their own candidates for offices and running campaigns that more sober heads knew were too extreme for the general public. After the 2012 election, the establishment moved gingerly to try to lure the disaffected white blue-collar set back into the mainstream by focusing their attention on their shared hated of Obama. What they didn’t seem to get is that the Tea Party voters were just as angry at mainstream Republicans as they were at Obama, and when the GOP regained the Senate in 2014, they expected things to really change this time. They didn’t. Republicans controlled the House and the Senate and Mexicans were still pouring across the border and LBGT folks were still getting married and making good Christians bake wedding cakes for them.
Into this gasoline-soaked tinder box walked Donald Trump carrying a blow torch. He told the increasing alienated and chronically miserable working class things no real “politician” would say aloud. America ― by which he meant white blue collar America ― was going to hell because their political leaders were a bunch of losers who made stupid deals. It wasn’t their own poor choices that had turned their lives into a culture of welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addition, and disintegrating families. White working class men were victims of a political correctness that caused the establishment to avoid making the smart decisions. Hard-working white Americans were losing out to the Mexicans and blacks and the Chinese and the Iranians because their leaders had sold them out. What we needed was a big, beautiful mile-high fence to keep those pesky brown people out. And, by the way, Mexico is going to pay for it.
Every Muslim person on the planet carries a humongous knife with which they almost certainly planned to cut off your head. Smart, rich people (like himself) were gaming the tax system and the bankruptcy rules in cahoots with the very Republicans who were again asking for their votes. George Bush invaded the wrong country and destabilized the Middle East. And, heresy of heresies, Bush did not keep us safe. 9/11 happened on his watch.
In a few short months, Donald Trump, the most disliked person ever to run to for the presidency, burned the Republican Party’s playhouse to the ground. In the process, he unraveled the entire Reagan legacy, mortally wounded the Conservative movement, and left the Republican party with a choice in November between the picture dictionary definitions of “vulgar” and “smarmy.”
As the Republican establishment hack Daniel Henniger lamented: “In early 2015, Republicans were one election away from defeating a weak Democratic opponent and controlling both houses of Congress.” Now, as he goes on to say, they are likely to lose two of those three plus the Supreme Court.
That probable outcome is great news for the planet, the United States and, ultimately, the Republican Party, which has grown too insular and out of touch with the majority of its own supporters. Imagine a country freed once more from the agony of discredited Reaganomics and Ryan’s niggardly, mean-spirited budgets designed to kill whatever hope poor Americans still have. If nothing else, we owe that to Mr. Trump.
Now, God help us, we just have to make sure he doesn’t win.
Before You Go
