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Is Trump’s Influence Waning?
The title to the post is the question being asked on PowerLine in light of an upset victory in Texas by the candidate not endorsed by President Donald Trump:
Tuesday was election day in a special race to select a successor to Rep. Ron Wright in Texas’ Sixth Congressional District. Wright died from the Wuhan coronavirus.
The candidates were Wright’s widow, Susan Wright, and Texas state Rep. Jake Ellzey. Both are conservative Republicans.
Susan Wright was the favorite and the leader in polls. She won the most votes in the primary, in which Ellzey barely finished second, just 354 votes ahead of the leading Democrat. In addition, Wright had the endorsement of former president Trump.
But Ellzey won the race by a margin of 53-47.
And
Mark Davis, a conservative talk show host in Dallas said:
The Trump base in District 6 paid little attention to the fact that Susan got his endorsement. They know that Trump had no familiarity with her and no familiarity with this race.
When, for whatever reason, the Trump base pays little attention to a Trump endorsement, that’s evidence of a loss of influence.
The Sixth District includes suburbs of Dallas/Fort Worth. Trump’s endorsements probably carry greater value in more rural districts. But any sign of waning Trump influence among Republican voters has some significance and, from my perspective, is good news.
But I think Paul Mirengoff, the author of the PowerLine piece, gets it wrong. Davis hints at what I think is the real answer: Trump supporters in the main are neither stupid nor cult worshippers. They support Trumpism, and not Donald Trump per se. They internalize Trumpism as the issues and policy approaches that Donald Trump identified and adopted in 2016. They see Donald Trump as a champion and leader to promote solutions they value. If someone arises who can be as effective as President Trump in promoting these solutions without the baggage, most Trump supporters would happily shift allegiance. But Progressive and NT (and media and Deep State) antagonisms raise serious questions as to whether someone other than President Trump can take on the mantle of Trumpism. Trump supporters are not stupid — they want Trumpism to succeed (which they identify with a proper republican form of government that focuses on the needs and interests of American citizens) — and therefore will not abandon Trump until there is an acceptable alternative that can win. This also means that when Trump weighs into a local district contest if the voters see A as more appropriate than B they will appropriately understand that the Trump organization may not know as well as they do what is best for the district.
A key point in Mirengoff’s article that confirms my thesis is this:
Although Trump endorsed his opponent, Ellzey did not run as an anti-Trump candidate.
In other words, Ellzey did not reject Trumpism. His opponent’s deceased husband was a Trump supporter and it was natural that the Trump organization endorsed the widow who chose to run for the seat her husband held. In fact, it would have been a bad look had they not endorsed her. But it is hardly an upset that Ellzey won without attacking Trumpism. Had he done so and won — that would have been an upset.
Published in General
I haven’t paid much attention to Powerline since 2012, when they tried to bully everyone into voting for Romney, and insulted any conservative who preferred a different candidate.
The talk of Trump supporters being cultists is pure propaganda. They demonized him so much and believed their own lies and stories, the only way they could imagine anyone supporting him was to believe they were hypnotized into a bizarre personality cult.
We must remember how radically the battleground has shifted in the last 20 years. These labels conservative liberal left right are all meaningless.
The issue today is a growing global corporate fascism, subsidized by both parties. They want to import labor and voters (and consumers) into the USA with abandon. They do not acknowledge the sovereignty of our country themselves, and foreign countries who actually are very nationalist, are happy to watch the US internationalize.
They want the government to , for example, make everyone take a vaccine from which they profit.
The fast food industry freely aided in obesity pushing sugar on the ignorant and children and which is a co-morbidity to Covid, but nothing is said or done.
The media wants people to stay home and binge-watch their stories or their alarmist news programs which advertise cure-all pharmaceuticals to soothe your fears or mitigate your depression or couch potato sloth.
Our politicians are selling our future down the river. Social media, banks, hotels and airlines can ‘disappear’ people. Tyrants used to have to wipe out whole swaths of their enemies, now they can pinpoint offenders and ruin their lives.
Our Intel agencies are turning into Stazi-lite, and will likely get worse.
They exposed themselves completely during the Trump years, Trump was more the cipher through which we were able to see the facade.
I honestly don’t see the battleground as Right vs Left at this point. Liberty versus Tyranny is more accurate. Any discussions ( some here at Ricochet) about “conservatism” and it’s future is meaningless drivel as far as I can see.
Is freedom of speech conservative? I’d rather it be universal. Is violating the fourth Amendment conservative or liberal? Is a surveillance state something left and right should be arguing about? No.
These are the real threats. Once we deal with those things, perhaps we can have the luxury of debating other things.
I agree with this.
I also agree with an observation I saw Tucker Carlson make a couple of years ago in a CSPAN interview that Trump played a critical role in raising the questions no one in politics in either party was willing to do but that his personality, lack of attention to detail, disinterest in learning the details of government, erratic behavior etc meant that it was someone else who would have to take the next step of real change. We’ve now seen the defects, not just in personality, but in substance. The big question is whether he will allow for space for those who agree directionally but understand that Trump personally is a political dead end, or whether he will persist in his personal vendetta above all.
I don’t think it is necessarily a personal vendetta if all Trump does is point out that some future candidate opposed not only his policies, but opposed his efforts to even identify swamp critters, to say nothing of his attempts to “drain the swamp”, and also attacked him personally. I won’t vote for any GOPe candidate who did any of those things, and it won’t take Trump telling me not to vote for such a candidate.
Trump also strongly argued that the Senate should not vote for the Infrastructure Bill. It passed 67-32 on a cloture vote.
/
I agree with Trump on that bill. One reason we got Trump is because the Senate was not listening to us. If they continue to ignore us and make the same mistake, I will gladly support Trump again.
In 2016, we got patriotic Trump. In 2024, we would get vindictive Trump, I kinda like that
Republicans voting in favor:
And it took a later compromise to advance it after initial blockage.
Many of the usual suspects. If the gun grabber stuff was slipped in, many on that list will be toast.
I don’t see it. But who wouldn’t support 66 BILLION for Amtrak and 7.5 BILLION for electric charging stations, and 73 BILLION for “new, resilient transmission lines to facilitate the expansion of renewable energy.”
And a more experienced Trump. But I don’t think he has any intention of running.
I honestly can’t believe any reporting or framing regarding DJT. Could be he was all those things, but I tend to doubt all of it or at least the ‘spin’ of it.
I would venture to say you aren’t a neutral observer. The way the media gave everyone a poor first impression ( or second impression) was masterful. He made fun of handicapped people ( untrue) he claimed white supremisists were “fine people” – he didn’t. There’s plenty more. It’s almost impossible to erase those feelings even after we see them debunked.
As well, he doesn’t exist in a vacuum and there were huge pressures and constant attacks on him, much of it coming from his own party – something no other President of late had to deal with.
I recognize he is ‘damaged goods’ and am resigned to hope he steps aside for another candidate, but I am under no illusions they won’t do the same thing to the new guy or gal. It’s not a new tactic. They even made Romney out to be a villain. It’s pretty easy to get labeled and treated egregiously by the MSM, and there is a shrinking pool of people who can see through this stuff, including many ostensibly on ‘our’ side.
After all, Trump’s father had Alzheimer’s so that could manifest itself in two years. Someone concerned with that would never actively support a candidate demonstrating signs of dementia.
🙋
And now your pal Nancy will poison it.
Unless you acknowledge that government has the power to actively deal with these threats, any concerns about them are worthless.
In other words, The Usual Suspects.
Most of this list will vote no the next time. The House is not on board with this. If House Dems change a bunch of stuff and add even more liberal wishlist items, a number of the 17 yes votes will move to no.
Are you @viruscop suggesting that @franco is advocating some body other than our government should deal with these threats?
I don’t quite understand what Virus Cop is saying. I see the government as co-opted by giant multinationals and becoming a tool for them. So the ‘government’ is part of the problem and has no incentives to fix it. We might have some ability to clean it up over time, but it’s not looking good.
And I’ll take a stab at answering the question of concerns. Concerns and acknowledgment of threats are never “worthless”. We must first identify the causes of the problem accurately so we know what course of action to take.
@Franco has repeatedly acknowledged this threats, both on the site and in AMUs, but it seems to me that he skates around the government actually doing anything about them.
Are you saying that no matter who is elected, the government will be beholden to multinational corporations? Surely GOP voters can find the right people, primary out and investigate their former leaders, and then use government power to solve these issues.
Sigh of relief my senators aren’t on that list. Rubio and Scott may have their issues, but they do know who voted for them.
And $110 Billion for roads and bridges. If we got funding for I-11, that would be very, very good for Arizona and Nevada, and could be very good for Oregon and/or Idaho.
I don’t object to anything that is really infrastructure. I object to calling this an “infrastructure bill” with all of the other junk in it.
EDIT: Please see #69, below.
Yes, but this sounds facetious… ‘surely GOP voters…’
No, not surely at all. And Democrats have the megaphone for corporatism. Look at what the Democrats are doing with government/corporate power. It spells out F.A.S.C.I.S.M.
I am late to this conversation – but what happened in the Ellzey/Wright race had nothing to do with Trump. Jake Ellzey ran against Ron Wright in the primary and ran a very good race. In this runoff he worked really hard in the area and is a young conservative who will very probably vote and act that way in Washington. There were some counterfeits who were easily weeded out in the original vote, leaving two genuine candidates and they voted for the younger one who had established a good base in the district. Simple.
As far as Trump’s influence looking forward – the vote by 17 GOP senators for that so-called infrastructure bill , which will in turn be doctored-up in the House is just the type of thing that will strengthen it.
I think having the widow take over her late husband’s position in Congress is also more of a Democrats thing, isn’t it?
I agree with you as to the so-called “human infrastructure” bill. But this bill dealt with items like rail, water treatment plants, broadband, highways, bridges, airports and even a little bit for electric car charging stations.