Trump Is No Accident by Paul Krugman

[applegrove]

Trump Is No Accident

by Paul Krugman at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/opinion/trump-is-no-accident.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=https:/t.co/nZvueBKfSp&_r=0

"SNIP............

You can see the continuing power of the orthodoxy in the way all of the surviving contenders for the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump included, have dutifully proposed huge tax cuts for the wealthy, even though a large majority of voters, including many Republicans, want to see taxes on the rich increased instead.

But how does a party in thrall to a basically unpopular ideology — or at any rate an ideology voters would dislike if they knew more about it — win elections? Obfuscation helps. But demagogy and appeals to tribalism help more. Racial dog whistles and suggestions that Democrats are un-American if not active traitors aren’t things that happen now and then, they’re an integral part of Republican political strategy.

During the Obama years Republican leaders cranked the volume on that strategy up to 11 (although it was pretty bad during the Clinton years too.) Establishment Republicans generally avoided saying in so many words that the president was a Kenyan Islamic atheist socialist friend of terrorists — although as the quote from Mr. Rubio shows, they came pretty close — but they tacitly encouraged those who did, and accepted their endorsements. And now they’re paying the price.

For the underlying assumption behind the establishment strategy was that voters could be fooled again and again: persuaded to vote Republican out of rage against Those People, then ignored after the election while the party pursued its true, plutocrat-friendly priorities. Now comes Mr. Trump, turning the dog whistles into fully audible shouting, and telling the base that it can have the bait without the switch. And the establishment is being destroyed by the monster it created.



.............SNIP"

[spanone]

1. Thanks! Great read.

[FarPoint]

2. This same rhetoric has spilled into DU.

I feel the slime. Dog whistle and all.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. Now this is interesting...

Indeed, what the Sanders movement, with its demands for purity and contempt for compromise and half-measures, most nearly resembles is not the Trump insurgency but the ideologues who took over the G.O.P., becoming the establishment Mr. Trump is challenging. And yes, we’re starting to see hints from that movement of the ugliness that has long been standard operating procedure on the right: bitter personal attacks on anyone who questions the campaign’s premises, an increasing amount of demagogy from the campaign itself. Compare the Sanders and Clinton Twitter feeds to see what I mean.

[whereisjustice]

4. By capitulationg as "centrists" the DNC has been enabling the right wing for decades. Now we see

the consequences of no strong representation from the left. We have two right wing parties in the US. One is slightly less dickish than the other.

[billhicks76]

5. Clinton Enabled

Clinton pushed the center to the right. So conservatives who have an inherent need to differentiate themselves and set them apart from the left for cultural and religious reasons moved even further away to the extreme right into whackadoodle land. It's that simple. Too bad there is a segment of democrats living in denial who cover their eyes and ears because they just cannot accept simple math.

[applegrove]

6. And the move to the right had nothing to do with movement conservatism.