Frank Rich: There Was no Republican Establishment After All

[babylonsister]

March 20, 2016 9:00 p.m.
By Frank Rich
There Was no Republican Establishment After All
Can we please retire the notion that Donald Trump is hijacking someone else’s party?


In mid-July of 2015, a month after Donald Trump announced his presidential run, I joined a gaggle of political junkies in a clubby bar four blocks from the White House to hear a legendary campaign strategist expound on the race ahead. Our guest’s long résumé included service to Mitt Romney and two generations of Bushes. Not speaking for attribution, and not having signed on to any 2016 campaign, he could talk freely. The nomination was Jeb Bush’s to lose, he said. Scott Walker, the union-busting Wisconsin governor then considered something of a favorite, had no chance because he was just “too stupid.” And Trump? Please! Trump represented every ugly element that was dragging down the GOP in presidential elections. But our guy wasn’t fazed. The good thing about Trump, he said, is that he would finally “gather together all the people we want to lose” and march them off the Republican reservation — though to what location remained undisclosed.

That same week, I was at a similar gathering with John McCain, then in a mild fury that Trump had just appeared with the nativist Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio at a weekend rally in Phoenix. McCain worried that by activating “the crazies” — the same crazies, it politely went unmentioned, that he helped legitimize by putting Sarah Palin on his ticket in 2008 — Trump could jeopardize both the GOP in general and McCain’s own incumbency if challenged in a primary. The senator soon said the same in public, and not long after that, Trump retaliated by mocking his wartime bravery with the memorable insult “I like people who weren’t captured.”

And that, you may recall, was the end of Trump.

His “surge in the polls has followed the classic pattern of a media-driven surge,” wrote the analyst Nate Cohn in the “Upshot” column of the Times, speaking for nearly every prognosticator. “Now it will follow the classic pattern of a party-backed collapse.” Since “Republican campaigns and elites had quickly moved to condemn” Trump’s slam of McCain, his candidacy had “probably” reached the moment when it would tilt “from boom to bust.” How could it be otherwise? As Cohn reiterated a few weeks later, “the eventual nominee will need wide support from party elites.”

The Republican Elites. The Establishment. The Party Elders. The Donor Class. The Mainstream. The Moderates. Whatever you choose to call them, they, at least, could be counted on to toss the party-­crashing bully out.

To say it didn’t turn out that way would be one of the great understatements of American political history. Even now, many Republican elites, hedging their bets and putting any principles in escrow, have yet to meaningfully condemn Trump. McCain says he would support him if he gets his party’s nomination. The Establishment campaign guru who figured the Trump problem would solve itself moved on to anti-Trump advocacy and is now seeking to unify the party behind Trump, waving the same white flag of surrender as Chris Christie. Every major party leader — Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus, Kevin McCarthy — has followed McCain’s example and vowed to line up behind whoever leads the ticket, Trump included. Even after the recurrent violence at Trump rallies boiled over into chaos in Chicago, none of his surviving presidential rivals would disown their own pledges to support him in November. Trump is not Hitler, but those who think he is, from Glenn Beck to Louis C.K., should note that his Vichy regime is already in place in Washington, D.C.

more...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/frank-rich-trump-didnt-hijack-gop.html

[malaise]

1. An excellent read

Trump is not Hitler, but those who think he is, from Glenn Beck to Louis C.K., should note that his Vichy regime is already in place in Washington, D.C.

Perfect!

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[Fast Walker 52]

3. I figured all along they would line up behind Trump

the GOP has NO FUCKING PRINCIPLES AT ALL.

[HereSince1628]

4. This is rather like science fiction...it allows us to see outside the bias of our own reality

Because we dislike the GOP and all it stands for, when we see the knees of their leaders buckle and then their bow to Trump under the guise of party unity we note how that is a fault.

And then, also like science fiction, we emerge as from a dream-state to our reality, where the same argument is at work, but is seen from the other side.

Clearly the calls to unify around the clearly inevitable candidate is proper for us.

[JackRiddler]

5. Structurally the GOP has always been an easier party to enter...

All you needed was billions to just walk in and if you were a good enough con-man, we see what happens.

[mac56]

6. "the same crazies, it politely went unmentioned, that he helped legitimize

by putting Sarah Palin on his ticket in 2008 —"

Brilliant.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. thanks so much for posting - Wow, I have missed Frank Rich ! He

so poetically lasers in.

The elites now find themselves trapped in a lose-lose cul-de-sac.

(choice between Trump and Cruz)

The Establishment’s prize creation, Marco Rubio — a bot candidate programmed with patriotic Reaganisms, unreconstructed Bush-Cheney foreign-policy truculence, a slick television vibe, and a dash of ethnicity — was the biggest product flop to be marketed by America’s Fortune 500 stratum since New Coke.

While it’s become a commonplace to characterize Trump’s blitzkrieg of the GOP as either a takeover or a hijacking, it is in reality the Establishment that is trying to hijack the party from those who actually do hold power: its own voters.

Most true...

McCain worried that by activating “the crazies” — the same crazies, it politely went unmentioned, that he helped legitimize by putting Sarah Palin on his ticket in 2008 —

That’s why there have been so many recent revisionist histories in conservative publications (not to mention a book by Joe Scarborough) attempting to sanitize the racial animus of the Goldwater-Nixon “Southern strategy” of a half-century ago. As voters went to the polls on Super Tuesday, March 1, Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist at the Journal who loathes Trump, captured the Establishment’s panic that Trump might now be sabotaging that elaborate airbrushing effort. “It would be terrible to think the left was right about the right all these years,” he wrote, and to discover that its “tendentious” accusations of “racial prejudice” were validated by Trump’s success among the Republican electorate of 2016.

[Cosmocat]

8. They have won a LOT of elections with Trump voters

the last 40 or so decades.

Their biggest issue is their arrogance, they feel entitled to these voters obidiently getting behind the candidates who can effectively wink or whistle at them, not out and out say that they subtly promise, because they don't want to actually own in full light what they use to con these votes from these people.

See, the real racists, bigots etc are the people who advocate against racism and bigotry, etc.

I still think they do the math for what is good for the GOP, because THAT is the be all end all, not the country, certainly.

And, in the end, the math is taking whatever bad comes with Trump vs taking the nomination from him at the convention, which would alienate these solidly reliable drone voters for decades vs taking any bad consequences that might come from Trump in the short term.

[WheelWalker]

9. The math has me there... 40 or so decades? Too early. Must go back to sleep.

[oberliner]

10. Probably meant 4 decades

Those 17th century elections were real barn burners though!

[Betty Karlson]

11. VERY telling line here:

"For all their blustery threats of third-party campaigns, defections to Hillary, and other acts of rebellion, Republican elites in the political game are more likely to bend to Trump than the other way around"

In other words: Clinton has very little cross-over appeal at all, and would have to run very far to the right to materialise what little potential she has there. That is a huge liability in the GE, when so many indepependents and Bernie-supporting democrats already consider sitting on their hands for how far right from the middle Clinton is currently running.

[mountain grammy]

12. Trump supporters are 100% true American Republicans

and there are a lot of them. They are the ones who say Obama has caused racism in this country, which, in their tiny pinhead brains, they believe. We're surrounded by them, and they're all praying...

[JHB]

13. This is what happens when you outsource everything...

You turn yourself into the middleman, just begging to be cut out.