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Humpty Dumpty – A Postmortem of the Shattered GOP
I love nursery rhymes; subversive as hell, each is a short, pointed, political statement masquerading as a scrap of silly, sing-song verse. And since history tends to repeat, we should not be surprised to find current events that map quite nicely to Mother Goose. For today’s example, consider the crack-up of the GOP in the context of “Humpty Dumpty.”
The GOP has, indeed, “sat on a wall.” And though some might go for the low-hanging fruit and claim that this “wall” is our southern border, I think that that’s too easy. I think of it as it was probably originally intended: The GOP was consistently faced with important decisions and consistently refused, for a variety of reasons — some cowardice, some intrigue — to take a side. And when those decisions had been made for it, the GOP shattered. And now, no one, especially not our self-proclaimed best and brightest, can reassemble it.
Let me make this point clear up front: Donald Trump did not shatter the GOP; the GOP did that themselves. As I have commented in a previous post, the shattering of the GOP is the direct result of twenty-eight years of a preference for globalism over liberty (led by the Bushes), at least thirteen years of Bush/GOPe Play-Nice-With-The-Brass-Knuckle-Marxists policy, and more than seven years of GOPe The-Base-Are-Always-Embarrassing-Reprobates-To-Be-Impugned-And-Ignored policy. Had these policies not been followed, Obama would have been impeached and members of his administration — if not Obama himself — would be in prison. Period. And despite recent protestations to the contrary, the GOP pursued neither of these actions (for the previously cited policy reasons) and now there is no longer any chance of them making it right. Through its cowardice and machinations, the GOP has irreversibly abused and lost our trust all on its own. The Trump campaign was merely the wind that blew the GOP off of its comfortable but precarious wall.
Let me also make this clear, because it is important to some: I am not “for” Trump, though I probably will (as things currently stand) vote for him. This is one of many valid positions with which people are identifying. However, the motivations for identifying with each of these positions differ, and this is where any possible reassembling of the GOP becomes difficult, if not impossible. Each motivation is a piece of shell, and each of these pieces is further divided on position.
The three main motivations, as I see them, are: Establishment, Constitutional, and Disaffected.
The three main positions, as I see them, are: #NeverTrump, Reluctant Trump, and Enthusiastic Trump. Further, the #NeverTrump position has three sub-positions: Abstaining, Voting Third Party, and Voting for Hillary.
Of the varying combinations, I will address a few in detail:
- Reluctant Trump – Constitutional: This is the first of two major positions/motivations to be found among conservatives in general — and here on Ricochet — and it’s the one I hold. I make no claim that this is the more popular of the two positions. A good (but hyperbolic) overview of it can be found in Kurt Schlichter’s recent column.
- #NeverTrump – Constitutional – Abstaining or Voting Third Party: This is the second of the two major positions/motivations. A good overview of it can be found in Jon Gabriel’s recent post. Although I do not (yet) belong to this group, I find no fault with their principled position.
- #NeverTrump – Establishment – Voting Third Party or Voting for Hillary: It is with this group that I personally place the blame for the GOP’s shattering. And the closer someone of this group is with DC, the greater his culpability. If it were up to me to cobble together something new of the remaining shattered pieces of the GOP, I’d leave these pieces out.
- Enthusiastic Trump – Disaffected: These are the legions of Americans who have not, until recently, followed politics closely. All they know is that something is deeply wrong. Just read the comment section of any political article on the Internet and consider how much more frustrated content there is as opposed to even ten years ago. These people see one party that is openly “all in” on destroying this country. They see the other party as pooh-poohing them as reprobates and rubes for thinking so. They are frightened to their bones at what they see occurring, and — being political novices who lack a political rubric to examine our present situation — they don’t necessarily grasp that they are making Ayn Rand’s false choice of taking poison for antidote after being fed poison for food. Some have gone for Trump, some have gone for Sanders, but all have gone enthusiastically because they have nowhere else to go.
Now, whose fault was that?
(Your further examination of these combinations is welcome.)
Published in General
Yes.
Uh… pointing out that their policies are inherently Marxist and then using Venezuela as a cautionary tale, putting forth the propositions of Popper and Crichton that Marxism, especially Eco-Marxism, is a religion (and therefore in question because of the First Amendment), putting American Universities on notice that their anti-free-speech policies run conter to the First Amendment and any continuation of them will lose them all taxpayer funding… in short… fighting
No, they were angry because we didn’t stand up to the Marxists and present our case.
No. He was to defend himself against the Left’s baseless and cynical attacks.
With a hyberbolic and hystrionic presentation such as you offered, who am I to argue?
When dealing with the presidential election, there are only two ways it can end: President Trump or President Clinton.
With the other policy stuff, there are far more options. We typically cave, purists want us to never give in, but there are middle options. We could hold firm and actually effectively sell what we’re doing to the American public (instead of just assume the public will be with us or suffer through the blowback). We could lose but make it painful as hell for the Democrats so they’re less likely to try to roll over us again. We could cave on one issue but gain ground on another.
But the next President will be either Clinton or Trump; there’s no purity or middle road to take.
A patently false dichotomy of either destroy them with nukes or just hope tens of millions of people start reading National Review.
Not to toot my own horn again, but here.
Ooooh, we should have “pointed out” that there [sic.] policies are inherently Marxist and used Venezuela as a cautionary tale? Why didn’t you tell me that before? No Republicans ever thought of that. If only someone would have made that point, then Obama wouldn’t have won, the budget would be balanced, spending would be under control, college students would be getting jobs instead of protesting microaggressions, and unicorns would be dancing on rainbows.
Martel, it isn’t that these points haven’t been made. It’s that they don’t have majority support. It is one-person one-vote around here. You don’t get to make your vote count more by getting really, really angry.
Right on! Wait…..you mean you were speaking tongue-in-cheek? Oh well: don’t give up yet; even a stopped clock is right twice a day and a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.
In that post you linked to, you said, “After Harry Reid lied on the Senate floor about Mitt Romney never having paid taxes, every GOP partisan should have should have dedicated themselves to destroying Reid, calling attention to his shady land deals and whatever else might have tarnished his reputation without being dishonest.”
Personally, I prefer the strategy of winning back the Senate and removing Reid from his position. Which we did, and which fact you ignore. If we hadn’t followed your brand of politics and nominated Sharon Angle, we could have been rid of Reid even sooner.
I judge effectiveness by results. You judge by how angry we get and how many of the left’s tactics we adopt. An honest difference of opinion. The problem comes when your side’s opinion gives us someone like Trump.
Winning back the Senate is easier when the entire country knows the Majority Leader is a crook.
But it’s also a question of incentives. If Democrats know that leveling spurious accusations will result in blowback that actually causes harm, they might be less likely to try it in the first place.
I’ll grant that Angle was a bad choice, but the Tea Party wave that gave us Angle also won us a few seats. I also grant that true believers need to learn how to politic and persuade better, but the opposite solution of always picking a milquetoast moderate doesn’t work, either.
Ooooh, I have a typo. Obviously then my entire premise is false. Good catch. I bow to your superior use of ad hominem.
I only advocate sometimes getting angry and sometimes adopting the left’s tactics because they often work. Government grows consistently and cultural defaults have become leftist, and part of the reason for that is their tactics. Some of their tactics are off-limits for moral reasons, but others are perfectly legitimate. The whole “we can’t do it because the left does” is no more valid than altering your tank battle strategies because you can’t act like Rommel and he was a Nazi.
And it’s not my tactics that lead to Trump, it’s the boring ineffectual PR of GOP leaders seeming to get spanked at every turn that led people to want “someone who fights.” Even if the GOP were doing the absolute best they could with the power they have, they seem like wimpy losers compared to their Democrat counterparts. People want to feel like they’re making some kind of progress, that they have somebody competent with some fire leading them. Ignore this very real part of human nature and lose your power.
I certainly am casting aspersions on him. How can you call someone who abandoned Americans to the depredations of the Clinton administration a “good man”?
Yeah, that’s the problem with your analysis. A typo.
Nice! That, almost word for word, is the story of my conversion as well.
And this, ladies and gentlemen is the exact condescension I refer to with my claim to a GOPe The-Base-Are-Always-Embarrassing-Reprobates-To-Be-Impugned-And-Ignored policy.
I’m reminded of that scene from the movie Hitch – “You’re doing it right now!”
Oh, I don’t deny it for a moment. It is embarrassing. But if it makes you feel any better, the crazies on the left feel exactly the same way you do. In 2008 they elected the most leftist President ever, and both houses of Congress including a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. And yet, they didn’t get single-payer health care; they didn’t get even cap and trade, much less a total ban on fossil fuels; they didn’t get even a break-up of the banks, much less dismantling capitalism; they didn’t get 90% tax rates on the rich, or free college, or guaranteed jobs (digging holes and filling them up again); we still spend more on our military than any country in the world; we still have the First Amendment, and the Second Amendment is stronger than ever. They feel betrayed. They are furious. And they are an embarrassment too.
From the OP:
I’m in the middle of a workday so I don’t have time to go to your earlier post to see if you defined what you mean by “globalist.” Your current post would be more persuasive to me if I knew what you mean by “globalist.”
I disagree that an impeachment of Obama would have been good for the Republicans — unless lesser officials were impeached first. I think the failure to impeach officials in the Obama Administration was a costly mistake. Attorney General Eric Holder and the current head of the IRS are two examples of people who needed to be impeached for numerous violations of the law and of their constitutional duties.
A political party that had any gumption would have used such proceedings to make the political case that Obama himself needed to be impeached. You work your way from the bottom to the top when prosecuting a criminal conspiracy (e.g. Watergate in 1973 and the Mafia in NYC). Also see Faithless Execution by Andrew C. McCarthy (2014) for why an impeachment of Obama required a political case being made to the electorate before impeachment and a trial in the Senate.
“Gutless” and not “Globalist” is the one adjective that voters are more likely to use in describing Congressional Republicans. J’accuse them of:
Every single one of your “accusations” is utterly false. None of that happened. You just make this stuff up.
Let’s take, for example, “surrendering the treaty ratification power.” How did they do that? When did they do that? Does it matter to you that there is no “treaty” with Iran in the first place? Nothing to ratify. No such power.
You’re not talking about any “treaty ratification power.” You’re talking about throwing a temper tantrum, shutting down the government, and impeaching the President. Which would have accomplished nothing, except to elect Democrats. Is that your goal? Electing Democrats?
To be clear on what you’re saying:
Thank you. I take your embarrassment as a badge of honor.
I’m waiting for the hashtag #TheEraOfBushIsOver to trend.
I agree, on both counts. But it should have been in the cards.
I hold no illusions that I hold any power what-so-ever other than possibly my vote.
I’m not sure what you consider “my faction” to be. That said, the Marxists are not interested in persuading us or being persuaded by us. They have set the rules. I suggest we start playing by them.
Really? Can you tell me of any Republican which took to the floor of Congress and shouted from the rafters about this?
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01386/obama-chavez_1386798c.jpg
Or perhaps they thought of it and decided that it would be oh-so indecorous to even bring it up.
Which the Republicans did on a specific promise that they would push back on Obama. A promise which was never fulfilled. Just one in a series of broken promises which led to the fracturing of the GOP.
Lensman, please check out my other comments to this post in which I try to, and hopefully succeed at, clarifying what I mean by “globalist.”
If still uncertain, ask a specific question and I will answer.
I’m not so concerned with “good for” as I am concerned with “just.” Yes, lower officials should have been impeached. And yes, if the trail led to the Oval Office, so be it.
There is literally no common ground for us to work toward. Your contributions to this thread have been appreciated.
Go in peace.
I was writing quickly and so my “good for” phrasing was inartful. Impeachment is a political process (see Andrew McCarthy’s book cited earlier) and so it being “just” is somewhat different than “justice” in a court of law. What I should have written is that it might not have been effective — as in effective in preserving constitutional government. Also, I should point out that “political” in this context does not mean partisan or electoral politics. Rather it refers to the political processes of the operation of a constitutional republic.
To the extent that being “just” means the preservation of constitutional government, where the President only acts within the authority granted by Article II of the Constitution, I think we are in agreement.
I agree that it probably would not have succeeded. But I disagree on effect. It would have sent a clear signal that the giddy, bullying, Marxist bulldozer will no longer be tolerated.
Yes.
If you are being sarcastic, then you it would be helpful for you to indicate such with an appropriate notation.
If you are not being sarcastic, then I do not care to engage in any dialogue with you.
I assure you that I am being entirely factual, without a twinge of sarcasm. And as I have often tried to point it out when lefties get their facts wrong, I am used to getting the “I refuse to talk to you” reaction, although you are more polite about it than the lefties.
Excellent analysis Eud. I believe also that the downfall started with Bush 41. A series of weak establishment candidates has led to Nominee Donald Trump. Trump has an interesting mix of politicos on his side right now. Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions and Sarah Palin so I’m not sure what the new GOP will look like. What we do know is the old Humpty won’t be put back together.
Thank you, Rich. And welcome to Ricochet! It’s great to see you here. I hope to see more of your input. You should post an introduction to yourself for the other Ricochetti.
For others reading this comment, Rich Robinson is a friend of mine from another Internet discussion board. He subscribed to Ricochet today.