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Caesarism Comes to the Republican Party
Among a very long list of harms inflicted upon the United States by Barack Obama and his party, perhaps the worst was Caesarism. Obama relished the worship of millions in 2008. From his star turn at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was treated not as a political candidate, but as a savior. Progressives fell into a swoon, typified by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas’ 2008 comment, “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above — above the world; he’s sort of God.”
Now, a similar kind of unreasoning adulation is greeting (improbably enough) Donald Trump. Fred Barnes reports that a focus group of Trump supporters is swept up in a kind of worship, too: “He’s not just their favorite candidate. Their tie to him is almost mystical. He’s a kind of political savior, someone who says what they think.”
If Obama had accepted the reverence of the crowd but governed as a normal president, his sin would have been merely aesthetic. But he did not. Contempt for law and tradition has been the hallmark of his presidency. His lawlessness makes Richard Nixon’s look penny ante.
In addition to his blatantly illegal grant of legal status to 4 million illegal immigrants — a move Obama himself declared he lacked the authority to make — Obama has acted as an autocrat in dozens of other instances. Without any legal basis, he imposed a fine on BP after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and unilaterally suspended offshore drilling. He bypassed the plain language of Obamacare multiple times, whenever enforcing the unpopular or unworkable aspects of the law would be politically inconvenient. (The employer mandate, for example, was supposed to go into effect on January 1, 2014.) He attempted to make recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board when the Senate was not in recess. He waived the work requirements of the 1996 welfare reform law. Earlier this year, the Associated Press reported that the Obama administration “set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.” His administration has ignored repeated congressional subpoenas, while his attorney general was found in contempt of Congress.
Obama perhaps calculated that he could get away with this lawlessness because of his uniqueness. The Constitution provides a remedy for lawless executives — but while Obama has arguably committed acts that merit impeachment, he knows that his status as the first black president gives him immunity. Impeachment would tear the country apart.
The courts have thwarted some of Obama’s power grabs. The Supreme Court has rebuked him several times. The NLRB appointments were reversed, and the immigration waiver has been judicially stayed for now. But much damage remains.
Obama’s legacy is a profound weakening of respect for law and tradition in this country. That Democrats are fine with this isn’t a huge surprise. They’ve long demonstrated that they are ends-justify-the-means types. Since the era of Woodrow Wilson, they’ve decided that if they cannot get their preferred policies through legislatures, they’re happy to see them imposed by courts — and if not by courts, then by executive fiat. They conveniently uphold a “living” Constitution — which is pretty much no Constitution at all but just the raw exercise of power by those in robes.
Conservatives and Republicans, by contrast, have traditionally stood for the rule of law — with all of its frustrations and inefficiencies. Respect for the rule of law is more precious than any given policy outcome. If we are not, as John Adams said, a “government of laws and not of men,” we will soon drift into the kind of despotism that characterizes nations without a strong legal tradition. Putinism is destroying what is best in Russia. Peronism devastated Argentina. Franco crushed liberty in Spain for half a century. The Castro brothers have imposed their tyranny on Cuba for longer than that. The list of countries that succumbed to Caesarism is very, very long.
The appeal of Trump falls into this category. Though one might suppose that his borderline pathological narcissism, his arrested emotional development and his nearly incoherent ramblings would exclude him from consideration for county clerk, he sits atop the GOP field. The message from a segment of the Republican Party is: “Okay, we’re an autocracy now. So let’s have this guy govern by fiat.”
Unless the rest of the Republican Party makes a different case — namely that the answer to Obamaism is a return to law — it may be game over for self-government in the world’s oldest democracy.
Published in General
Prepare for your ordeal after this heretical statement! – (translation of usual trump supporter statements about attacks on their savior)
Your article is dead on though. Donald Trump is being treated by some on the right as an end all be all political candidate that is perfection. They say he isn’t a politician, he’s a businessman that is worth billions of dollars that he earned entirely from business. They like his fighting style and what he made his central plank of political combat, illegal immigration, and they go so far as to say that without him it would never have been mentioned in the campaign cycle.
The issue is that these premises are false. Trump admitted during the debates that he buys politicians for favors. He inherited 250 million dollars from his father who had built up an empire in very heavy regulated sectors. Trump was guaranteed a level of success and his use of buying politicians probably helped him quite a bit. Add in his tactics of declaring bankruptcy to knock out competitors and he is a businessman that FDR would love.
He has supported most left wing positions and even attempted to defend single payer with a relativist quip of it working but in different nations (therefore negating that the free market is best as an objective truth). Illegal immigration had already been brought up by Rick Perry and others and several candidates like Rubio and Fiorina have laid significant punches on Clinton.
To Could Be Anyone’s first point…
I can only hope and pray that eventually our brethren (0r alleged brethren) on the right come to their senses and leave this left wing populist demagogue in nativist clothing. We are far better individuals than to support that scum as our nominee for the Republican Party and as President of the USA.
Wilson, FDR, and Obama have proven that the checks-and-balances ostensibly enforced by the three branches of the Federal Government are a sick joke. By definition, playing by the rules when your opponents don’t means losing.
That is indeed why people respond to Trump. They want someone to take the [CoC] gloves off. And when you consider that people on the other side take a Hillary Clinton, a Bernie Sanders, or an Elizabeth Warren seriously, are you really in a position to say they’re wrong to?
This isn’t high school debate club and Marquess of Queensberry rules. This is Chicago or New York brass knuckles over the future of the world’s sole remaining superpower. The Progressive-Lite GOP establishment shows no evidence of grasping that. Why would they? They agree with 90% of the Democratic platform! Trump is a faux-populist who’s tacking right because right is the way to tack right now. Conservatives don’t like him, but the actually conservative (especially fiscally) GOP candidates aren’t considered desirable for other reasons, e.g. Rand Paul’s “isolationism.”
The GOP can’t have it both ways: wanting “electable, adult” but ignoring the frustrations of those seeing the other side go blatantly “[CoC] you!” on them. The brass knuckles are here, like it or not.
“Make America great again” – what about this is hard to understand?
It’s not adulation about Trump – it’s adulation about America.
OK, maybe misguided. But don’t shoot the messenger, who is flawed – err, like America.
Personally, I think Cruz is a better messenger. But I’ll take Trump, at a pinch.
I agree. And the likes of Trump and Obama would be the beginnings of a sad and ignominious end
Wilson’s the great hope of the GOP following Mona’s rules. After Wilson, we had Harding’s return to normalcy. Wilson’s reforms were mostly swept aside, spending went back down, and life was good. Playing by the rules got us everything we wanted. Nearly a century later, we still remember the ensuing Coolidge years with affection, with most Ricochet members choosing him as their patron. Other cycles, we went the Goldwater route, and got Medicare and Medicaid. Some cycles, like ’92 or ’76, they play by the rules and win. Sometimes, like ’68, they don’t and they get pounded (in a landslide, over and over). .
I don’t think so. The issue isn’t that we have fielded good candidates of great moral character and background that can’t beat the left in debates. The issue is a culmination of factors. Poor vetting to a degree due to a lack of candidates fielded (I mean candidates with staying power) and a lack of debates held haven’t properly warmed up our sides nominees for a while. Meanwhile the left’s candidates have enjoyed predominantly positive coverage and support in debates by leftist moderators.
This isn’t even mentioning our lack of defining a conservative message for what America ought to be now and in the future. We need to voice the implications of our world vision to the populace that is habituated to a sizable state (been that way for at least since WWI). When we can make that case and show that it is superior to the state dominating your life then we will win easy. At the same time though its also pretty sad that with such control of the culture the left is too incompetent to win every election and that most presidential wins they get are with only 51% of the population.
As such we should stick to the tradition of Buckley and restrain ourselves from being as brutish in personal attacks as the left is. Americans don’t inherently crave political mud slinging, they crave clarity and while Trump is clear, he is wrong.
It is amazing to me that so many intelligent people seem so willing to trade one tin pot dictator for another. I had said repeatedly on this site that Trump is no different than Obama when it comes to his understanding of and respect for the Constitution. I understand the frustration with Obama. I can’t even listen to short clips of his speeches, my detestation for him is so deep. However, just when Trump starts to look semi reasonable he erupts into one of his adolescent hissy fits over some perceived slight which occurred days before and has left the general consciousness, not the act of a mature statesman.
Unquestionably, Trump does force issues into the forefront, issues which we all want addressed. However, he could do this without being a candidate. If electing a conservative Republican and having him address the issues was as important to Trump as his ego is, then he could be a real impetus to change and reform. However, the issues are of secondary importance to Trump. He is the One, the only one who, in the end, really matters. This is what, I believe, his followers fail to understand. In the final analysis, the issues are vehicles he is using to rise. They are no more important to him than a taxicab driven to station. Once there, the taxi is of no further importance. It served its purpose.
While I share in your positive outlook I have to disagree with your statement about Wilson. Wilson was but getting the foot in for the progressive left. His progressive influence got us the income tax and perhaps the worst of all, the federal reserve and that institution along with other progressive regulations set us up for the Great Depression. That Great Depression got us more heaping big state and gave our enemies power that got a man elected 4 times into the white house in a row (dictatorship for life like Vladimir Putin but with the title of president).
Thank God that FDR died as I fret what would have been if he had lived longer. Calvin Coolidge was indeed a great president but he didn’t undo the underlying evil done by Wilson although he didn’t have the sole power to do so (but like Wilson he had the influence to do so). What we need is to prevent further progressive intervention and begin the slow march towards reversing the progressive ills. Dismantling their massive state piece by piece.
Chris Muir nails it:
The hysterical reactions to Donald Trump remind me of those to Ross Perot 23 years ago. Like Trump today, I recall Perot then being described as a “tin-pot dictator” who would somehow bring about the end of democracy in America. I presume those making the accusation have proof of Trump’s alleged treason against the Republic?
By the way, I was not a Perot supporter in 1992. I actually volunteered my time to work for George H.W. Bush’s re-election.
The 16th Amendment was ratified under Taft. You can’t blame Wilson for that. Similarly, the Federal Reserve Act was the overwhelming bipartisan product of the National Monetary Commission, set up by Roosevelt to produce something like the thing that it produced. It’s more reasonable to blame Wilson here, but the Fed wasn’t really Wilson’s baby, either.
Trump is in it for …. Trump. Liberals , Democrats & nihilists that support Trump — that I can understand , and respect. They hate America. However, Trump’s appeal to Libertarians, Conservatives, Moderates, or Republicans is beyond rational understanding. I observe that some intelligent people of good will do support Trump. However, it reflects poorly on America that he is a viable candidate. The only good that comes out of Trump is that he may well force one of the actual Conservative candidates to up their game to beat Trump, becoming a more formidable general election candidate in the process. In an Election between Trump and a Democrat — America loses either way.
Off by a month I am. I never memorized the dates as I just remembered that in the case of the income tax it was enacted in 1913 and that was the same year that Woodrow took office but Woodrow Wilson made the income tax graduated (progressive as the left calls it) and he had some substantial influence in the passing of Federal Reserve which he did back and as I stated it was the reserve that was the worst.
When the Federal Reserve Act was passed it was done so by a Progressively Democrat Majority Congress and he supported it. He may not have had to pull hairs but he was a contributor in it.
I could not agree more – Trump is speaking the people’s language and he’s good at it – he has talent – he could be useful in politics, a good negotiator and has vision – but lacks sensitivity and humility, which is needed in a president in my opinion. People want to be heard – they’ve been left behind by the Republican (pathetic) establishment in DC. So he is riding the wave of speaking for the unheard. Keep your eyes on Cruz, Carly, Dr. Ben Carlson and Scott Walker – that group can do it. If the run is against Biden, he is also a master at selling a good line. Beware.
PS My favorite from the beginning is Ted Cruz – I believe he would stare down the devil himself and win.
I think Trump offers a great explanation for his own popularity so far. “We don’t win anything anymore.” That is what frustrates people and animates them. They look out on to the world and they see us loosing ground internationally, and domestically every issue they care most about they are loosing ground on. Now maybe this impression is misguided, but I think that is how many Trump supporters see it. Trump offers them a chance to win one, though it is most likely just a chance to win one against the Republican Establishment. Still a win is better than nothing.
If the Republican establishment really wanted to pacify the base and maybe deflate Trump (I say maybe because honestly I don’t believe I can predict anything about Trump anymore) they need to offer up a sacrifice. I believe someone on this site has offered a suggestion of a sacrificial offering to the mob, his name starts with “J” and ends in “!”.
I think this is a fair analysis as the legislative branch has worked very hard to make itself irrelevant. Many of us believe we now need our own autocrat in the executive branch to offset the power of John Roberts & Co.
I’m not much for Caesar. But if we must have one, can we not do better than Trump?
Caesar at least won wars and brought back loot and slaves for the Republic.
Exactly. As I commented in another thread over the weekend, if the Left doesn’t have to follow the Constitution, then neither do we.
Unlike Obama who truly believes his mission in life is to destroy capitalism, I surmise that the Don’s super-ego couldn’t tolerate this scenario. A decline in Western influence and affluence would make him appear impotent.
Narcissism and ego are not bad things at all; it is only necessary to understand the motivations behind them.
Trump looks ready for tennis. Your serve.
Caesar was popular because the political classes were so corrupt. They did not care what was happening to the average Roman citizen any more, or what was best for Rome, it was only for themselves.
The GOP has mostly itself to blame for this, because they have not fought back.
When the ruling class ignores the peons, this is what you get.
It would be so easy for someone to steal Trumps thunder, but no one seems able to do it.
I have figured the USA was ripe for a Caesar for some time. I always figured it would be a war hero, but hey, this is 2015.
Double post because the first time It said it did not post
Thanks for the advice!
Just so.
Why, that would be Calvin Coolidge. Pretty much.
And me.