And the Award for Uncanny Prescience Goes To...

[paft.livejournal.com]

Frank Rich, Salon, November 2012: Ever since the days of Barry Goldwater, many liberals have assumed — or naively hoped — that each national defeat would teach Republicans that they had overreached, and pull them back from the extremes. Instead, the opposite has happened: The lesson of every loss, even the routs, has been “we were not conservative enough.”


Hello folks. Yes, it's been awhile, but I've popped in because I think credit is due when someone so accurately predicts the future. I was thumbing through the archives when I came upon a post I wrote almost four years ago.

Times were different, back then. For one thing, Salon still had Joan Walsh and was still sane. We'd just re-elected President Obama and hopeful liberals were once again talking about maybe the GOP learning its lesson, prompting this piece by Frank Rich, which in turn inspired me to come here and ask the question: "So Republicans -- What's Next?" "I have to tell you," I said to the GOP, "you've been marching to the right for so many years you're on the verge of stepping off one hell of an ideological cliff. Are you going to openly embrace the genteel racism of Charles Murray? Are you going to openly work to limit the vote only to people of a certain income level? Is the aim going to be disenfranchising large portions of the public and telling the rest, 'vote for us or we'll fire you?'

Little did I know that the answer was tucked discreetly, like a half-hidden Easter egg among the comments, and it would come from Oportet who would post, on November 11, 2012:

"The next step? When you start seeing Trump 2016 stickers, you'll have your answer."

A hearty round of applause everybody (or at least, everybody who's left)! Disenfranchisement? Threats? Racism? With Trump it's all packed into one dandy package. How could I have missed it?

Anybody else see this coming?

Comments

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Wait, didn't the Republicans win the latest election (the midterms)? Overall, that election resulted in the largest Republican majority in the entire country in nearly a century - how does that constitute a "rout"?

Have I been missing something here?

[paft.livejournal.com]

Yes. I think you're missing the point. Aside from the fact that this post is about Oportet's accurate prediction about Trump, Rich was referring to past "routs:" 'The lesson of every loss, even the routs, has been “we were not conservative enough.'

He wasn't claiming the last midterm had been a "rout."

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I get that (I hope). It's been argued before that midterms are usually won by whoever happens to be the opposition, anyway - so they're not too indicative of the overall trend. Presidential elections might be more indicative. And everyone seems to be either bewailing the GOP's current predicament (in case they lean towards the right) or feeling the Schadenfreude because of it (in case they lean towards the left), and thanking all divine forces imaginable that the Trump disaster didn't opt for befalling the Democrats.

My point is, a large chunk of the electorate (on both sides) seems to be beyond frustrated, as both Sanders and Trump have shown in their respective ways. This has to be addressed, unless the political elites would like to see something unpredictable happening in a few years (like, maybe, nominating - and electing - a donkey for president, just to stick it to the powers-that-be).

[paft.livejournal.com]

Yes, we have a frustrated electorate, but it's hard to imagine a Trump-like disaster affecting the Democrats, who have not been flirting with extremism as the Republicans have. As for schadenfreude -- I might be more inclined to feel that were it not for what the Trump candidacy says about the rise of extremism in American politics.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

That may be true; and yet, as many times as I've heard Trump being underestimated, I've seen those expectations being proven wrong. Same goes for underestimating the frustration among the electorate at both sides of the spectrum. While the left may not seem as irrational and angry as the right, those moods are not to be overlooked, because they could find a vent in places most unpredictable. Sanders has turned out to be a good channel for them, and he was reasonable enough to cooperate with Hillary; any potential successor of his on the left might not be as constructively inclined.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

What makes us assume that Trump's maverick-y assholery and apparent defiance of the GOP establishment and agenda is anything beyond mere posture, designed for tapping into a certain segment for the sake of earning the nomination (which he has done already)? Come general election time, he's bound to start moving into the moderate center, and backpedaling on most of his previous rhetoric. He's not as dumb as to assume that he would stand a chance by boiling it all down to a Tweet-storm of caustic 140-character messages insulting anybody and anything his rambling mind could come across (or isn't he?)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Granted, you never know what to expect from guys with that sort of suntan. Boehner being the other example. ;-)

[paft.livejournal.com]

What makes you think Trump isn't that dumb?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

The way he has exploited low emotions among the electorate to prop himself up to the poll position. It takes a certain amount of cunning to be able to pull that off.

[paft.livejournal.com]

In the United States left wing "venting," has not, as a rule, included waving or shooting guns. Or beating and killing people.

Right wing "venting" has, perhaps because right wingers can often count on the tacit support of law enforcement. And Trump is disturbingly eager to exploit violence.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did say left-wing venting wasn't as bad as right-wing venting. Which doesn't mean a large left-wing-venting segment wasn't there for the taking. It's a factor that the moderate left needs to look into, unless they'd like it to go out of hand just like its mirror opposite on the right wing did.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

So if the 2012 rout caused them to move further to the right, and that, in turn, resulted in a 2014 landslide victory for them... wouldn't that be an incentive to persist into the same direction and move even further to the right in 2016? I'm just trying to follow the logic here.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Yes, they won the midterms. The President they despised however, was soundly re-elected. Rich likely has that in mind, along with the disastrous 1992 election when Pat Buchanan gave a speech at the Republican Convention in prime time.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Yes. Likely.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Applause for Oportet.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Hey, long time no see!

The cognitive dissonance in the GOP is rather alarming, by any measure. It seems they were the ones who were the last to see this coming. Now they're reaping what they've sawed.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's been a while. We had a death in the family, and in the wake of that I gave up political blogging to concentrate on my fiction.

If I'm barely going to be paid for my writing, I might as well write what I want to write.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for your loss.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

If anyone says they had seen the Trump thing coming, they're either fooling themselves, or they're lying.

At least here I can understand what someone who says they were right, was actually right about. Not like in that neighboring post.

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

Even a shot into the dark night sky can occasionally hit a bat who happens to fly over. I guess. :-)

The dance ever further into the right on part of the US right-wing (because that's what the Republican party has become), has been kind of fascinating, really. In an unhealthy, morbid sort of way.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

I'm still not understanding how "not conservative enough" translates into "Trump 2016". If Trump by no mesure is a conservative and there's a large NoTrump movement among the conservative part of GOP.

[paft.livejournal.com]

His attitude towards women and immigrants, his embrace of torture and his rather social Darwinist mindset puts him pretty firmly on the right side of the political equation in the U.S. His candidacy is the inevitable result of Republicans -- including mainstream conservatives -- pandering to their right wing base.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

His candidacy has more to do with the "let's fuck Teh Establishmunt a wee bit" camp than any ideology. He's an opportunist who happens to be capitalizing on a certain mindset, rather than a right-wing guru and direction-setting standard-bearer.

[paft.livejournal.com]

He seems to appeal either to thuddingly dumb folks who believe what he says or to thuddingly dumb folks who imagine voting and electing someone isn't going to affect their lives -- kind of like the folks in England who voted to leave the EU and then got upset when the count was in and they realized they'd voted to leave the EU.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Like I said, he's an opportunist - not an ideolog.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Romney and Cruz being among the more prominent champions of that movement. Cruz, being particularly vocal among the "let's go full right-wing" camp, by the way.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

And the GOP base disagreed with them, hence Trump

[paft.livejournal.com]

The GOP base only "disagreed" because they felt Romney and Cruz were not quite far enough to the right, and just not dumb enough.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Cruz was not far enough to the right? He was so far to the right, at some point the GOP establishment even preferred Trump to Cruz. (That was before it became evident that Trump was getting the nomination).

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

The problem is that Cruz was painted (falsely, I'd argue) as "establishment" and lumped together with folks like Jeb! and Rubio. His conservative bona fides were never in question, but the Tea Party crowd that brought him into power in the first place have long since devolved into a strange obsession with ideological purity, driving themselves farther and farther into a corner and eating those who they have elected who have dared to slacken behind the mad rush to the right. (And it's not surprising. When policy ideas fail, it's easy to blame that failure on politicians failing to be inflexible enough. "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed." It's a lot harder to admit: "Maybe our ideas just aren't good ones." It's impossible to perform the realpolitik required to actually run a nation in that environment, because the first hint of compromise - required, of course, to actually pass bills - brings accusations of collusion and betrayal and the threat of ousting in the next primary.) That's not a universal statement. I know many conservatives who were quick to cast stones at those not ideologically pure enough, who've played the "conservatism cannot fail" game, who are now decrying Trump as "no true conservative." They have, in the past, been absurdly overly rigid in their thinking, but in this case they are correct.

But, we've ended up with a movement that's looking anywhere but inwards to cast blame, and along has come someone willing to play that blame game while spouting off meaningless pabulum that I'd hoped most voters would be too smart to fall for. Apparently, I underestimated the discernment of the majority of Republican voters. So a majority of them have hitched their wagon to Trump, because he says what people want to hear. (He also, of course, says the opposite, but then denies it and refuses to ever apologize or admit to it, and people just eat that up because they think that it shows that he's "strong." Again, I used to think that Republicans were smarter than this, and I'm kind of shocked at how many people actually support this guy.)

When Trump loses in November, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and those who hailed him as the great outsider will be forced to admit that he wasn't a "true" conservative. But, again, the problem won't be that he wasn't conservative enough - it's that the demographics and opinions of the country have changes. A majority of Republican primary voters might still want someone like Trump, but "a majority of Republican primary voters" is no longer even close to representing the majority opinion of voters in the United States, and that's set to change even more over the next several years.

The GOP is either going to have to completely re-invent itself, or it will be replaced by another more moderate party as the second in our two-party system. Whether that new party will be a break-off group from the GOP, or the Democrats themselves splitting in two as the leftists finally get frustrated (and the Democrats again become the more conservative of the two major parties) remains to be seen, but I'd expect it within the next 20 years or so.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Well at least the pundits that I follow all supported Cruz for his policies and ideas not his personality. "I'm for Cruz with my brain, not my heart" kind of thing. All this time I haven't read one positive article about him as a person. And everyone just hated his preaching speech style.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

Good for me!...unless I somehow set this all in motion, in which case - I was hacked!

There's no way I truly believed it at the time though - I'm guessing my prediction meant that the GOP should, and would, pick a big personality in 2016, because that's what it would take to win...looks like it got a little out of hand though

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

Like I said, a shot in the dark, albeit a pretty darn good one. :)

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

While it was only 1 year ago, not 4, Keith Ellison ( (D) US Rep, Minnesota ) was going against the conventional wisdom about Trump on July 26's (2015) "ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHkPadFK34o

Poor Mrs. Haberman is probably regretting that Snort.