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Trump Is Now The Establishment
Though I’m not willing to throw-in the towel yet — Lord knows this election has been unpredictable — it’s very nearly certain that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President of the United States. As a once-and-future #NeverTrump and #NeverClinton, I’m going to have to start thinking hard about what options remain to me (short version: they all stink). But that’s not what this post is about: It’s about you, Trump voters.
First, a bit of preemptive congratulations: You did it. You took your candidate from someone snobs like me rolled their eyes at to the presumptive nominee of the GOP. More impressively, you steamrolled over Jeb Bush and Mike Murphy and their donor-class millions, as well as a bench of fifteen other candidates widely described in Trumpian superlatives (The best! The most beautiful! The bigliest!). You even blew-past National Review and the rest of the “respectable” conservative media. Moreover, you moved the national conversation toward your key issues. At least at the moment, you’re winners.
Which brings me to the friendly advice I wanted to offer: You’ve got a problem with a frustrated, demoralized minority whose concerns aren’t being met and who may sit out the election as a result. If you think defeating Hillary Clinton is as important as you’ve said — and I’ve no reason to doubt you — then you need to figure out how to appeal to this group of people. You need to understand them. You need to take their concerns with the kind of gravity you felt the GOP denied you for so long. And you need to figure it out quickly.
Now, again, I’m a lost cause here but libertarian squishes in Massachusetts aren’t going to turn this election (As Trump might say: Sad). But there’s a much larger number of people who have been opposed to Trump so far, but who might reluctantly fall in line if he gets the nomination. You need to figure out how to persuade enough of them to put their misgivings aside so your candidate gets over the line. That won’t be easy, and you should have started yesterday.
For illustration, consider what’s going on in the alternate reality — no, not that one — where Donald Trump tragically died in a meteor strike and Senator Marco Rubio is in the same position as Trump is in our universe. Over there, would-have-been Trump supporters are furious and some Rubio fans are starting to feel buyers’ remorse. “Why on Earth,” they ask each other, “Did we think it was a good idea to support a member of the Gang of Eight amidst a national freak-out over immigration? Romney after ObamaCare was bad enough; this looks even worse.”
Those Rubio supporters are in serious trouble. Their party is breaking apart because they chose one of the two most compromised candidates on the one issue that makes Republican voters reach for their pitchforks and torches and it’s their fault. “If we’re going to beat Hillary,” they say, “We need some real answers and we need them now.”
However, that’s an alternate reality. In this one, Trump supporters are the establishment, or just about to be. You’re not going to convince everyone — again, lost cause here — but you need to start taking #NeverTrump concerns seriously. Don’t tell people that Jon Gabriel, Claire Berlinski, Mona Charen, Kevin Williamson, Robert Zubrin, and I are jerks. That hasn’t worked and it’s probably not going to start working any time soon. You need to show #MaybeTrumps that we’re wrong.
Convince them that Trump gives a damn about the constitution. Demonstrate to them that he’s not going to wreck the economy or get goaded into a war with Vladimir Putin. Persuade them that he’s going to use the powers of the federal government to run vindictive little wars against anyone who insults him, only now with the added threat of guns and the IRS.
It doesn’t matter whether you think those concerns are valid, or if you think they’re a mote compared Hillary Clinton’s log. Their concerns are what they are and you need to grant their worries the attention they feel they deserve.
In short, you need to try to understand non-Trump voters.
Best of luck.
Published in Politics
Would you mind elaborating? How will moving far to the left in this year’s nomination process make it more likely that we will move back to the right in future years?
It seems clear to me that GOP primary voters don’t want a conservative as their nominee? Why will that change going forward?
Are you using a Ouija Board to construct your responses? This makes no sense.
You think the GOP is going to nominate more conservative candidates to appeal to an electorate that has demonstrated that they will reject the most conservative candidate in a generation in favor of the most liberal?
Your Trumpian condescension aside that is just stupid.
Right. He’ll be opposed harder by a GOP Congress than Obama ever was.
I just recently threw away a sign that someone gave me at the Tea Party rally in Chicago. It said “Just Say No To Socialism”
It’s a good thing I threw it away since according to you, that was never what the Tea Party was about.
I believe he uses a random word generator.
How’s that working out for you? You winning lots of fights by waiting for answers?
I am anxious to see how this point will be explained away in the GOP’s 2016 nomination post-mortem.
OK, I’ll go first.
Time to stop whining, wishing, pontificating, posturing and otherwise wasting energy on the Trump choice made by our fellow citizens. We can however try to help him be a better President, but that won’t be accomplished by calling him a buffoon.
Now it is time to use all of our considerable skills defeating Progressivism in November. Nothing else matters now. Our once great nation simply can’t endure even one more term of their socialism. One more and possibly the rot will have gone too deep for effective removal, and we’ll be left thinking about how to create the American Dream from scratch, and falling to our knees in supplication to the only One who can save us.
Sadly the choice will be between two progressives – not much of choice.
And why not? I know you’ll be along shortly to re-define the words of conservatives to fit progressive ends. Just like Reagan, the dirty commie.
You can say whatever you want, but “Keep your hands off my medicare” is every bit the tea party as whatever else it was about. I wrote it off as upper middle class day in the park long ago.
If the tea party was about anything it was about factional ideological projection and solipsism.
I wasn’t aware I was in a fight.
#NeverTrump = Conservative Amnesty Party.
Quitter.
I agree with this. We need help steer him.
And to flip the OP’s post around. The first step needs to be conservatives trying to understand and convince HIM. Not the other way around. We were flat wrong about who the electorate is, and he seems to get it.
Why? That’s where we start.
As I said, it ain’t about us at this point. It’s about you and how you’re going to get #MaybeTrumps over to you.
So the lesson I should take from this is that Trump supporters would have all fallen in line and voted ¡Rubio/Jeb! rather than sitting out the election? Got it.
With both major party nominees being progressives?
Wasn’t what I saw, but your experience may have been different.
I suspect that Guru’s experience with the TEA Party is limited to what he saw on the news.
Why don’t I get a mention here? I’m at least as big a jerk as any of those knuckleheads.
Yeah but you’re not as important.
We still had the fire of the founding burning in our souls. The rest of the nation not so much.
Now every time I hear Thatcher in the podcast intro saying people want more conservatism instead of socialism I recognize how delusional such a statement is.
Tom, we’ve been showing that you’re wrong since “Compassionate Conservatism” blossomed on the scene. And you don’t care. Now that you’ve been grievlously wounded, suddenly you;re full of the Kum-ba-yah about how to mend the party.
Good luck! been broken for over a decade, and you all are ju-u-ust seeing it. Go check out Free Republic from eight years ago, or Little Green Footballs from twelve years ago.
There we were.
Depends on which trump supporters. The traditionally disaffected would probably return to disaffection, and the cross over voters would probably fall off into disaffection. The non-disaffected supporters who traditionally vote Republican would come around yes.
Having a few new kids in the neighborhood over to play doesn’t fundamentally change the dynamic here.
Spin, you’re little people. Oh, and you’re a jerk.
“Very nearly certain”?
He has to win 50% of the remaining delegates. I consider that far from certain.
He just won, by large margins, the six states that you’d predict he’d win by large margins.
The map at this point is tougher for him. It’s far from “very nearly certain.”
Tom never struck me as a member of the Compassionate Conservatism crowd.
Get in line pal.
Amen and order a New York pizza on my tab for the gentleman from the Daily Shot.