It’s possible we are at the beginning of another political recalibration based on national identity. Already center-right parties in Japan and Russia and Israel have lurched in a nationalist direction. And where nationalists do not enjoy outright control, as in Hungary and Poland, they split the center-right coalition, as in France, the U.K., and Germany
.. Trump’s nationalism has far more in common with the conservatism of Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, than with the conservatism of Ronald Reagan. Support for a “Muslim ban” is par for the course among European nationalists — by calling for it here all Trump has done is confirm how closely American politics resembles European politics. Reagan was an immigration advocate who signed the 1986 amnesty law.
It’s Time to Worry About Donald Trump
Appearing on Fox on Thursday, Frank Luntz, the G.O.P. pollster who a few days ago conducted a focus group with Trump supporters that received quite a bit of attention, said it is “time for the Republican establishment to accept the fact that Trump is not only a viable candidate, but this lead is real.” Notwithstanding the fate of previous primary front-runners, the same point could be applied to pundits and everybody else. Right now the question isn’t whether Trump could win the Republican nomination; it’s: What is it going to take to stop him?
Empowering the Ugliness
The story is quite different in America, because the Republican Party hasn’t tried to freeze out the kind of people who vote National Front in France. Instead, it has tried to exploit them, mobilizing their resentment via dog whistles to win elections. This was the essence of Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” and explains why the G.O.P. gets the overwhelming majority of Southern white votes.
But there is a strong element of bait-and-switch to this strategy. Whatever dog whistles get sent during the campaign, once in power the G.O.P. has made serving the interests of a small, wealthy economic elite, especially through big tax cuts, its main priority — a priority that remains intact, as you can see if you look at the tax plans of the establishment presidential candidates this cycle.
Sooner or later the angry whites who make up a large fraction, maybe even a majority, of the G.O.P. base were bound to rebel — especially because these days much of the party’s leadership seems inbred and out of touch. They seem, for example, to imagine that the base supports cuts to Social Security and Medicare, an elite priority that has nothing to do with the reasons working-class whites vote Republican.
So along comes Donald Trump, saying bluntly the things establishment candidates try to convey in coded, deniable hints, and sounding as if he really means them. And he shoots to the top of the polls. Shocking, yes, but hardly surprising.
How Republicans Won and Then Lost the Muslim Vote
One of the great ironies is that even as Muslims are portrayed as monolithic by many politicians, they are a politically fractious bunch. More than six in 10 are immigrants, and they come from 80 different nations. They’re spread across the nation, and across tax brackets, and professions. Prior to September 11, they were generally thought to be heavily divided, says Zahid Bukhari, executive director of the Center for Islam and Public Policy. American-born Muslims (a group that includes many African American Muslims) tended to vote Democratic, while immigrant Muslims—a group that included many professionals, especially doctors and businessmen—leaned more Republican. Bukhari noted that Democrats had often been seen as friendly to India and Republicans more friendly to Pakistan.
.. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Georgetown’s Muslims in the American Public Square project polled American Muslims. Almost a quarter identified as Republicans, 40 percent as Democrats, and 28 percent as independents. Three years later, those numbers were 12, 50, and 31, respectively. The 2004 poll, taken on the eve of the election, found three-quarters of Muslims planning to vote for Democrat John Kerry and just 7 percent backing Bush.