“How can you be shocked?” he asked to laughter from the crowd, according to a transcript. “This is the guy, remember, who was sure that I was born in Kenya — who just wouldn’t let it go. And all this same Republican establishment, they weren’t saying nothing. As long as it was directed at me, they were fine with it. They thought it was a hoot, wanted to get his endorsement. And then now, suddenly, we’re shocked that there’s gambling going on in this establishment,” he said in an apparent reference to a famous line from the movie classic “Casablanca.”
.. What is happening in this primary is just a distillation of what’s been happening inside their party for more than a decade. I mean, the reason that many of their voters are responding is because this is what’s been fed through the messages they’ve been sending for a long time — that you just make flat assertions that don’t comport with the facts. That you just deny the evidence of science. That compromise is a betrayal. That the other side isn’t simply wrong, or we just disagree, we want to take a different approach, but the other side is destroying the country, or treasonous. I mean, that’s — look it up. That’s what they’ve been saying.
So they can’t be surprised when somebody suddenly looks and says, you know what, I can do that even better. I can make stuff up better than that. I can be more outrageous than that. I can insult people even better than that. I can be even more uncivil. I mean, conservative outlets have been feeding their base constantly the notion that everything is a disaster, that everybody else is to blame, that Obamacare is destroying the country. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It’s not, we disagree with this program, we think we can do it better — it’s, oh, this is a crisis!
.. But they’ve got to acknowledge why this happened — because some of them have been writing that, “Well, the reason our party is going crazy is because of Obama.” Which is a pretty novel idea. The notion is Obama drove us crazy.
.. I didn’t cause the reaction. The reaction is something that they have to take responsibility for and then figure out how do we make an adjustment.
.. “Paul Ryan denounces Trump but not the Tea Party rhetoric that propelled his own political ascent,” he writes. “John McCain holds Trump in contempt, but selected as his running mate Sarah Palin, the Know-Nothing of Wasilla, one of Trump’s most vivid forerunners and supporters. Mitt Romney last week righteously slammed Trump as a ‘phony’ and a misogynist, and yet in 2012 he embraced Trump’s endorsement and praised his ‘extraordinary’ understanding of economics.”
What Cruz vs. Trump Means
And however imperfect he might be, Cruz would do more to advance the elite plan to remake the GOP for the 21st century than Trump would—especially if Cruz loses in November. His defeat could then be pinned on his being too conventionally right-wing, too Trump-like himself, and on Trump voters bolting the party. That would give the establishment all the more reason to call for a return to the policies associated with Rubio and the 2012 Republican “autopsy.” The failure of Cruz’s Reagan-vintage conservatism would clear the way for a new kind of right in 2020.
.. Trump is not only making promises to American workers that by opposing trade deals he’ll keep good jobs in this country, he’s also bidding for votes by refusing to make cuts to popular government programs. From Social Security to federal funding for Planned Parenthood, voters who want tax dollars to provide services are hearing a pitch from Trump. It’s clear enough where this leads: to a Republican Party that bids with the Democrats to offer voters the most benefits. And if the bidding starts among working-class whites, that doesn’t mean that’s where it will end. If the dream of elite Republicans is to win blacks and Hispanics by appealing to values, the Trump strategy may ultimately be to appeal to their economic interests in much the same way as Democrats have traditionally done.
.. In simple terms, the elite Republican plan is for the GOP to be a multi-ethnic party whose economics are those of the elite itself; the Trump plan is for the GOP to be a party that politically plays ethnic blocs against one another, then bids to bring them together in a winning coalition by offering economic benefits for each group.
.. In a healthy party these factions, Trump and anti-Trump, might learn from one another, the anti-Trump side coming to recognize how it has failed the white working class and the need to provide for it once more; the Trump side acknowledging the demographic realities of the 21st century and the toxicity of strident identity politics.
.. The irony of Cruz’s position is that the party’s future now hinges on how well he can do with an orthodox conservative message drawn from its past.
A Hard Case, For Trump
.. when I read Kevin D. Williamson’s essay, I hear in it the voice of my father. Daddy would take the side of a hard-working man, white or black, in a heartbeat, but a man he judged as lazy, or wanting a handout — they were nothing but trash to him, whatever their race. And if you didn’t live by a code of honor — hard work, self-discipline, respect for self and others — you were no kind of man in his eyes.
.. Life, for him, was about struggle. To win at life was to struggle honorably. That was the main thing. To have to leave your town would be a tragedy, maybe, but better that than to pity yourself and depend on the charity of others. His was a code of honor held by many of the white working class in his day, and he believed in it fiercely.
.. In short, he loved this place and its people, and believed that being a good man meant caring about the common good.
.. There is among a lot of Republicans a contempt for the working poor and working class — a contempt of which that the people who hold it are unaware — that says people not smart enough to be self-contained, successful individualist libertarians kind of deserve what they get. Too stupid to figure out how to invest your Social Security allotment? Sucks to be you.
.. I suspect his view would have been that the best policy is one that makes it easier — not easy, but easier — for people to stay where they were born and raised, and where their family’s roots are. That’s what I think it meant to be conservative, to my dad: to give decent men and women willing to work hard and live honorably — not like common trash, sponging off their neighbors — the opportunity to make a decent life for themselves in their hometowns.
.. He unquestionably shared KDW’s low opinion of “no-count” people whose poverty he saw as largely the result of deficient character. But he reflexively sided with the little guy with the hard work ethic, and he would give people a chance if he thought they were salt of the earth folks doing their best.
.. “I’m glad I’m not going to be around to see much more of this,” he said. The world had long since passed him by. He did not believe America was headed towards greatness, that’s for sure.
Don’t Hate Trump’s Supporters
Reading this, I had a picture of my grandpa in that crowd. I could see him proudly sporting a “Make America Great Again” hat. I could see his troubled face, looking out at a sea of angry young people, none of them willing to listen to his side of the story—none willing to consider the point of view of a man who’s dedicated his entire life to place, family, community, and feels as if his world is slipping away.