Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Trump Focus Is Establishment Focus — PowerLine, the Left, and the “Right”
Trump. Trump, Trump, Trump. There’s a word with a lot behind it. Apparently it has a lot ahead of it too. The use of the word (not even as a name) is increasingly just a brush that the left uses to spread their tar. Calling somebody a Trumpist is like calling them a racist, a fascist, a speciesist, a whatever-ist.
It’s not as though racism, fascism, etc., do not exist. We’re drowning in these things now, courtesy of the racist, fascist left. And these are real evils, which the left does not wish to confront honestly — they would suffer in any realistic assessment of motives and programs. Yet the left has been calling everybody they don’t like racist, fascist, whatever-ist for decades now, with increasing vehemence. Perhaps as their own racism and fascism intensify, they must compensate by accusing ever more stridently, in order to squelch the ceaseless, buzzing cognitive dissonance for their readers — and themselves.
So “Trump” is increasingly just a cudgel to swing. Why confront the issues when you can simply call names? And why confront issues that are important to Trumpists — why on earth would we confront issues important to racists? Focusing on Trump is how to spike a conversation that might not go your way.
Trudeau knows it. Why do you think he tars the truckers as racists, misogynists, fascists, neo-nazis? Because he cannot win if it looks like he’s arguing with truckers about freedom. Instead, he wants it to look like he’s defending civilization itself from the worst barbarian horde to menace our story’d edifice.
Months ago I wrote a post and asked the membership here to vote on the proposition: “The party was split long before Trump, and will remain split if it survives, well past Trump. The split has very little to do with Trump.” The results were (are) 56-2 for the proposition. Taken as a group, overwhelmingly we admit that Trump is not actually the issue. So why is he still the focus?
There are good reasons and bad. Good reasons include the fact that he might indeed run again, or he might just flap about and influence the proceedings, and there’s the as-yet unresolved stolen election, as well as the mutiny of the executive branch, dovetailing with the deep state coup. So there’s a lot to this Trump stuff right?
Except that the whole point of most of this Trump stuff is that the problems indeed pre-date (and predate, even) the Trump administration. Those things which brought Trump down are the exact things that precipitated him from a cloud of right-base fury at the Establishment.
And just a note on terminology: the Establishment is that which is not grassroots. The GOPe is that on the Republican side of things which is more cathedral than bazaar, more coast than flyover, and more paid-to-speak than desperate-to-be-heard. No, supporting the points of view reliably found in the Establishment does not make you “the Establishment”, but whether you admit it or not, it does put you in that camp. The Establishment has its shills, and its mere fans. Perhaps you can’t see it from in there, but from the outside, it’s clear as day.
So here’s post up at PowerLine in which Paul Mirengoff offers his support to the laughably unsupported potty-gate claims, and Steve Hayward takes him to task, complete with a Buckley-esque offer to punch him in the nose. I, like fellow Ricochettian @drewinwisconsin, hopped off the PowerLine fanwagon when they, like Hugh Hewitt (ask Glenn in Dallas!) went all in for Romney. I couldn’t cite chapter and verse — I just know that in general, reading them was no longer worthwhile. The upshot of nearly every podcast or article seemed to turn me off, based almost solely on the purity of Romney-boosting. For all I know, maybe Hinderaker or somebody was stalwartly open about it until after the nomination, but I don’t recall anymore. I remember what I thought about the whole thing at the time. At any rate, off I went.
So why is Paul Mirengoff jumping all over yet another unsourced scatological “intel” leak about Trump? Well, perhaps it has to do with a reluctance to engage with actual documents, findings, filings, in the Mueller/Durham/Godot series of non-events which nonetheless eject valuable nuggets from time to time — and which bear out what Trump has said since before taking office. And which, let us not forget, bear out what the angry rabble have been saying since before Trump descended from Heaven on a solid gold escalator. Or something like that.
How far will the Establishment types go to avoid confronting real issues which just might make Trump less risible to them? Or prove him right about something — anything? Or prove that they have at least some climbing down to do in public? Or prove to their own satisfaction that indeed the election was stolen?
Horrors! Better off just to swing that Trump word around. It’s not just the left who have a cognitive dissonance problem when it comes to Trump. So the word Trump must be maintained as a radioactive expletive, scatological, corrupt, uncouth. The Tea Party is still here. We were here before Trump, and will be here after. As a popular Trump meme has it, he (supposedly) says “They’re not really after me. They’re after you. I’m just in the way.” The GOP war on the base has not gone away — neither has the base. I wrote about the GOP wanting to win without the base years before Trump ran. Right or wrong, it wasn’t about Trump. We care about Trump because we voted for him — he literally represented us — not because he matters himself.
The DC Establishment uniparty finds it useful, or funny, or “devastating” to make us into the T-Party, as if we followed Trump around examining the contents of His Royal Chamberpot. Sorry, that’s not us. But somebody sure is.
Published in General
You ever break up with (or divorce) somebody and just ache for the person they used to be, or the person you thought they were?
I opposed Romney in the primaries because I did not think he had it in him to whip the Alinskyite machine that had been assembled. However, as a good Republican (even if a bomb-tosser), I supported him in the general, voted for him, and even caused a stir in my* Gingrich and (later) Cain Facebook groups (back in the day) by urging people to get behind Romney The Nomney. I mean, once your candidate concedes, FFS, get behind the new guy.
Even so, I favored Romney over McCain in 2008, but in 2012, he was too late. When Romney lost to Obama and Crowley, you could see the heart-break in his and Anne’s eyes in famous photograph. Here were two truly decent people just staggered that what had seemed like a slam-dunk for a decent, liberty-minded people was actually a shoo-in for a decadent, petty, grasping commune. Funny story — I thought I was having a heart attack when Obama was re-elected. Long story short — angina, no problem.
So I truly get the Romney angle. Back then, I suppose he was a better person. As it turns out, better than this country would have.
At the same time, there was a lively primary fight, and I was indeed Down For the Shthzhchruggle, as Rush would say, in that fight.
I do think that Romney changed after his defeat, and I wonder if he didn’t blame the base in a way that has metastasized into contempt for anything that doesn’t smell like Goergetown.
To your point directly — I don’t think he actually was a douche until after losing in 2012, but I’m willing to be convinced. I think he took it hard, and it deranged him, like a multimeter that has been zapped — no matter what, it never reads right again reliably.
* I mean MY Facebook groups — I started them, vetted them, built them, and recruited talent to build them further and manage them. Back before I quit FB and the rest. Lesson learned — women are the key to succeeding on Social media. Duh — women are social. Conservative women in particular are fricking AWESOME at making things happen interpersonally even on rarified electronic media.
@edg How so? I don’t want to guess. What’s your take on Contract with America?
Maybe Romney shouldn’t have assumed that the American People didn’t actually vote for him. The cheating machine was likely in effect already back then, but at much lower levels.
I think you give him too much grace. The man has always been an opportunist. That he put himself forward with Romneycare slung around his neck as the Obamacare nation-transforming debacle was happening is unforgiveable.
Romney has always been ambitious, not principled. I knew what a douchebag he is when he made that speech dissing Trump and someone paired it with his ingratiating acceptance of Trump’s endorsement — not to mention his money — in the previous election. But, even before that, he used the Kennedy/Cuomo rule on abortion to get elected in MA.
Scummy DC swamp creature.
Heck, I’ve got a backlog of hundreds of audio dramas to listen to. Who needs a podcast?
That was really one of the reasons I didn’t understand people promoting Romney as the nominee. We were at a moment when the Democrats were talking a lot about wealth inequity and the widening gap between rich and poor, and opposition to Obamacare was a rallying cry of the Tea Party movement . . . , and who do the Republicans put forth? An obscenely rich vulture capitalist who offered the blueprint for Obamacare.
It was monumentally stupid.
And that’s how we got Trump.
I don’t mean that all of PowerLine walks the plank. I mean all of the Paul Mirengoffs, the David Brookseses, the Jonah Goldbergs.
After CWA. Just remembering that I started noticing the timid/incompetent/fakers as long ago as the 90s although I wouldnt have a clear picture until the 2000s.
I really liked the CWA. I had a book (can’t find it now) which was a “ten years after” report card on CWA. It was a huge success. They only promised that in the first 100 days, they would hold up or down votes on ten measures. That they did, and passed eight of ten.
I loved the Contract With America. Gingrich had it run in TV Guide, as they would run an ad with only a little bit of lead time.
They have to create social problems or just lie that there are social problems to make progress politically.
Makes me crazy.
That’s what I think.
Same. I had him pegged as a mere beta.