The Republicans who support Trump—who disproportionately lack college degrees—are largely what Walter Russell Mead calls “Jacksonians.” Jacksonians—whom Mead distinguishes from democracy-spreading “Wilsonians,” commerce-oriented “Hamiltonians,” and empire-fearing “Jeffersonians”—are hawkish isolationists.
.. They don’t believe that American security depends on democratizing far-off lands, something they suspect is impossible. And when there’s a crisis in some other part of the world, their first reaction is likely to be: Why can’t the countries over there handle it?
.. They’re the kind of people who, during Vietnam, told pollsters that America should either bomb North Vietnam back to the stone age or get the hell out.
.. Another Jacksonian favorite was Joseph McCarthy, who told Americans that battling the Soviet Union did not require costly foreign deployments or complex international alliances. America could keep itself safe simply by rooting out communists at home.
.. Trump has responded to Americans’ fear of foreign threats by arguing that the real menace lies within. Since the Paris attacks, while the “serious” GOP contenders have proposed establishing no-fly zones and arming Kurdish rebels in Syria, Trump has focused on registering Muslims and closing mosques in the U.S. while insisting that he “watched … thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrate 9/11.
.. And among Jacksonians, his message is resonating for the same reason McCarthy’s did: Because if the core problem is treason at home, not geopolitics abroad, then solving it is cheaper and simpler. Instead of solving the world’s pathologies, you simply expel them from your midst.
How to Beat Donald Trump
Trump has captured the support of 51 percent of those overlapping voters, compared with 16 percent among all other Republican voters. Put another way, pro-deportation/anti-refugee voters account for almost three-quarters of Trump’s support.
.. Until he read Ann Coulter’s book this spring, Trump seemed to have been a perfectly conventional business Republican on immigration. In a 2012 interview,in fact, he blamed Romney’s loss on taking a too-tough line on the issue:
.. Romney’s solution of “self deportation” for illegal aliens made no sense and suggested that Republicans do not care about Hispanics in general, Trump says.
“He had a crazy policy of self deportation which was maniacal,” Trump says. “It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote,” Trump notes. “He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”
The GOP has to develop a comprehensive policy “to take care of this incredible problem that we have with respect to immigration, with respect to people wanting to be wonderful productive citizens of this country,” Trump says.
.. Trump’s histrionics—and the criticism he has taken—may seem the ultimate proof of sincerity: When a man walks that far onto a limb, he must mean it, right? The task for Trump’s Republican rivals is to convince Trump followers that this supposed anti-politician is using typical politician’s tricks.
Trumpism has triumphed, whoever wins the Republican nomination
Donald Trump’s invective has disrupted the character of US politics. It will be hard to change.. Meanwhile, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, and ultimate insider, last week said that the US should set up a federal agency to promote Judeo-Christian values. Until Mr Trump, most Republicans rejected the “clash of civilisations” view of the world. Now it is normal.
.. Father Charles Coughlin, the Trump of 1930s America, said: “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” Mr Trump talks of Syria’s huddled refugees as “Trojan horses” for Isis.
Searching for Richard Nixon
The problem for Republicans is that they haven’t found a candidate who can appeal to Trump’s politically-disaffected supporters — whether they’re worried about immigration, jobs, terrorism or an overreaching social liberalism — without trafficking in slurs and empty bluster.
.. No president can deal with that combination without a Nixonian level of ideological flexibility – which is to say, more than President Obama has shown, and more than the demands of Republican orthodoxy allow.
.. We don’t face a single Soviet-style threat or a convenient “axis” of allied evils. We can’t defeat ISIS and contain Iran and push back Russia andrestrain China all at once. So we need a president who can see the strategic chessboard whole, who can instill fear in our rivals but also negotiate boldly in situations where opportunity presents itself. And that sounds much closer to Nixonian realpolitik than it does to the full-spectrum hawkishness most Republicans are running on.