Republicans are frustrated with the party’s leadership on a range of issues, and want to see more assertiveness and combativeness in general on the Right. Assertiveness and combativeness in general—very general—is roughly what Trump seems to offer. But these Republicans are casting aside the most conservative presidential field in living memory in favor of the least conservative Republican presidential aspirant in living memory above all because he has been particularly forthright in advancing a kind of economic nationalism.
.. Populist-leaning Democrats, meanwhile, are frustrated with their shortage of options, and are not eager to be stuck backing a bungling, power-mad, Wall Street cipher with negative charisma.
Are Republicans For Freedom Or White Identity Politics?
For decades, Republicans have held to the idea that they are unified by a fusionist ideological coalition with a shared belief in limited government, while the Democratic Party was animated by identity politics for the various member groups of its coalition.
.. What Trump represents is the potential for a significant shift in the Republican Party toward white identity politics for the American right, and toward a coalition more in keeping with the European right than with the American.
.. When a government that has pledged to do everything can’t do anything, otherwise sensible people turn to the strongman. This is how the autocrat, the popular dictator, gains power. We are seduced by his success and strength.
.. For those who believe Barack Obama has ruled like an Emperor, Trump offers them their own replacement who has the appeal of a traitor to his class, dispensing entirely with the politeness of the politically correct elites and telling it always and forever like it is. If the president is to be an autocrat, let him be our kind of autocrat, these supporters say. It’s our turn now, and we want a golden-headed billionaire with the restraint of the bar fly and the tastes of Caligula, gliding his helicopter down to the Iowa cornfields like a boss. He’ll show Putin what for.
.. The normal grievance-based white identity politics platform that promises protectionism, tariffs, infrastructure, subsidies, entitlements, and always blames the presence of immigrants for the creative destruction of the global marketplace, has consistently performed best in the GOP prior to any actual Republicans voting. But should his ideas prevail and win – or if, in the most extreme scenario, Trump were to sustain his path and take the Republican nomination – it would set America’s political path on a direction along the lines of what we have seen in democracies in Europe.
.. There is a slim possibility that what’s happening in the GOP primary campaign this summer is actually healthy and salutary, as conservative intellectual Yuval Levin argues here. But it is also possible that it represents one more way America is becoming more European. A classically liberal right is actually fairly uncommon in western democracies, requiring as it does a coalition that synthesizes populist tendencies and directs such frustrations toward the cause of limited government.
What if the populist, nativist bloc of the party turns out to be larger than the intellectual conservative movement?
Back in August, the conservative writer Ben Domenech asked, in a prescient essay, “Are Republicans for freedom or white identity politics?” Trump, he said, threatened to reorient the GOP away from ideological conservatism, along the lines of right-wing European political movements. The divide within the GOP has long been described as the “establishment”—power brokers, donors, elected officials, consultants—versus the “conservative base.” But it’s increasingly clear there are two separate conservative bases within the GOP. There’s the intellectual conservative movement, a decades-long project of institutional actors like the Heritage Foundation and the American Conservative Union, which seeks to push the party toward strict adherence with a set of ideas about limited government, strong national defense, and the traditional family. And then there is the populist, nativist strain, which isn’t really about ideas so much as a raw appeal to emotion. Trump’s dominance of the primary field is forcing the party to confront a frightening prospect: that the populist bloc may be the bigger of the two.
Republicans shouldn’t expect a breakthrough in Jewish support any time soon.
One of those targets can be found on the RJC’s masthead. The casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates in previous elections, and is likely to do so again. Adelson himself was not present. But the forum is widely considered a kind of public audition for his support.
.. Jews are concerned about the resurgence anti-Semitism around the world, so they might be expected to welcome Christians’ sincere opposition to Jew hatred. The problem is that they find effusions of eternal love creepy rather than reassuring.