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The Legions of Brexit, the Legions of Trump
The parallels are too obvious to ignore … and almost too trite to voice. Our cousins of the “special relationship” variety across the pond have seized the torch and plunged off into the gathering gloom. Are we going to follow?
It has happened before.
Resolve in the face of Communism and belief in the Free Market brought Thatcher to the forefront in Britain. Reagan – only a step behind – followed. The thirst for a lean, market-oriented third way produced Tony Blair. And he was followed by his doppelganger Bill Clinton. And now not a candidate but a populist movement swells among the descendants of Albion. A small flame of national identity, a hunger for self-determination and mostly a common-sense recognition of the perils of the invading hordes, be they bureaucrats or barbarians, has taken hold.
And Britain has just said “frankly Brussels, I don’t give a damn.”
So what will the logical coda of this etude be in the Colonies? Is the great wheel of history turning in the direction of … Donald Trump?
Unelected bureaucrats meddling in our way of life – telling us what light bulbs we can use, what bailout funds for profligate socialists we must prop up – and all the while conveying their condescension and disdain of us: do we have to tolerate this?
Invasions of our country by the world’s impoverished and the world’s intolerant; taking our jobs, threatening our citizens and demanding that we display tolerance toward their way of life: don’t we have a choice of who we let in here?
Global trade relations that allow the masters of the universe to ignore borders and treat our workers as broken, dispirited and overpriced units in comparison to the less-educated, cheaper and more pliable units of China, Indonesia and elsewhere: we know how much money they have but how many votes does that entitle them to?
Do you still think that Donald Trump is a huckster – a latter day P.T. Barnum – selling nothing but cheap and worthless snake oil to zombie fans of reality TV? Because consider, when those zombies awoke today to see all of the talking heads in fire alarm mode and the esteemed heads of this or that commission of this or that international ruling body looking like they’d just been informed of some life-changing surgery they would have to undergo, do you think that those zombies – who had only remotely even heard the word “Brexit” before – do you think they reflexively worried about their 401k plans? Hell no! They don’t got no stinking 401k plans. You know what those zombies did? They laughed!
And then what about the polls and the betting markets and the recently buoyant financial markets that are reeling today? No one thought that “remain” was a sure thing, but the smart money was on the jet black colt with the exquisite breeding. The aging chestnut mare (of uncertain parentage) was so easily made the object of ridicule that the educated bettors never bothered to ask whether, after all, she could run or not.
How much are the elites here in America fooling themselves as well? Are they still betting that the Trump phenomenon is a shallow circus act with no relation to the emerging zeitgeist (forgive me Angela)? Because I tell you once and once again: the movement is one.
And so fellow conservatives – fellow Ricochetti – I say that today is a day for unambiguous celebration. Today is a day for the Children of Paradise to dance and for us to dance with them. Let the next few months until, oh, around November be an experiment on what happens when democracy overrules the entrenched interests and dynamism defeats stasis.
And let’s see if the day after election day the zombies who love reality TV will laugh again.
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Published in General
To be fair that is true no matter who you vote for this year.
Closer to reality…
http://theweek.com/articles/631738/dumping-donald-trump-no-longer-coup-just-common-sense
That’s the entire point which underlies the trump meta narrative. Like all those who proclaim to be anarchists wanting to destroy the system, its not really about destroying or changing the actual blue prints of the government but rather who is in power, most specifically not actually the white house but rather the Republican Party. The factions of the Republican Party which support trump are the isolationists, populists, nativists, and other minorities from other factions.
The issue for these factions is that there are obviously other factions in the party and they don’t really care for trump or his “ideology”, hence the free the delegates movement and the like. That and trump is doing a great job of discrediting his own movement by not doing much to empower it by actually campaigning.
Significant differences here.
First, Brexit was a vote on an event, not a person. What Brexit meant was the same throughout the campaign. It couldn’t change its positions or say something controversial. It was a stationary target, and it was up to the surrogates to make the arguments for or against. When Jo Cox was murdered by a Brexit supporter, it was hard to blame that on Brexit, and Brexit couldn’t comment on the issue.
Trump on the other hand is a real, live human being, albeit an orange one. We are voting for him (or not). What he says and does day in, day out, has a real effect on people’s opinions, and that tends to override what his surrogates do. Right now, he is offputting to a significant majority of the population.
The second difference is demographics. The UK has a much more homogeneous population than the US. The Brexit supporters overlap with the Trump supporters, namely older working class whites, which make up a larger portion of the UK population. 77% of the US is white, 88% of the UK. Take out white Hispanics, and it drops to 63%.
More importantly, there was no gender gap (according to current reports). With 77% of women repulsed by Trump, it puts him in a hole that will be almost impossible to climb out of. He is even losing the married white woman vote that Romney won decisively.
Trump on executive orders:
“I won’t refuse it. I’m going to do a lot of things. I mean, (Obama)’s led the way, to be honest with you, but I’m going to use them much better and they’re going to serve a much better purpose than he’s done.”
I agree that the types of Britons that voted Leave, are the types of Americans open to Trump. Add in parallels of immigration and meddling bureaucracies and the analogy looks nearly complete.
The difference is Trump. I agree with much of what Trump supporters are concerned about, I just don’t agree that Trump is any kind of solution to those problems.
The amount of rationalization, delusion, and cargo cult political science engaged in by Trump supporters is mind-boggling.
The parallels with Harvey the Rabbit are startling, except that Harvey wasn’t orange.
After the convention when Trump is the nominated candidate, what will the #NeverTrump pundits and politicians do, I wonder? Will they openly endorse Hillary? I think that is the only way for them to preserve any relevance. As I have written, “neither Hillary nor Trump” is sanctimonious.
I think their best course would be to write their critiques from the point of view of support for shared policies (tax policy, anyone?) – to recognize the obvious, that Trump is by far the preferred candidate, and to work to push that candidate to be more to their liking in both substance and character.
and honestly, dukenaltum, after 13 million Republicans voters have spoken and 16 Republican candidates have bitten the dust, how can you keep a straight face and call an alternative candidate now “closer to reality?”
They should just continually link to this:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson-5949.html
When are the Trumpers going to face this reality?
Because how dare the elites tell me what sort of light bulbs to buy, but three cheers when they force you to hire me.
Could you please cite that all those 13 million votes cast for trump in the primaries were solely republican? I don’t find the idea of democrats and independents influencing the Republican Party as legitimate.
As if sanctimonious isn’t apposite.
What will the NeverTrumpers do? Two things: The neocons, the Big Government social liberals who perverted the conservative movement in the 80s and who are only concerned with one nation’s borders – Israel’s – with re-unite with their kin who “live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans” – they will vote for Hillary. Max Boot and others are already upfront about this. The Commentary podcast trio are clearly almost there now. Second Amendment, Schmecken Amendment – who cares about stupid guns anyway?
The other NeverTrumpers, those who think they are just better, will do what those other folks who think they are better – Democrats – always do. They’ll sit-down strike, make a lot of noise, name-call and then refuse to vote, just like those liberals in the Wisconsin and Texas legislatures did a few years ago.
A quasi-libertarian aspect to this group’s retreat from the battlefield will be a special added twist: that is, a high-minded declaration of principles justifying inaction coupled with facilely eschewing all responsibility for the real-world results.
Honestly? Have you not paid attention? Broadly speaking, we will not support either Trump or Hillary. I don’t think we could have been more clear on this point.
fair enough. I don’t have strong feelings either way as to whether primaries should be open to independents and Democrats or not. It is easy enough to simply register Republican if what you want to do is influence a race in some perverse fashion, for example.
But the rules have not changed recently and according to those rules Trump has gotten more people to vote for him than any Republican nominee in history. More than anything it is those people that #NeverTrumpers should think long and hard about.
I did not say it was the course they would take…I just said it is the best one.
And that 13 million represented a smaller share (44%) of the Republican primary voters than Bush (61%), Romney (52%), or McCain (47%). The majority of “new”voters weren’t new voters – they were new primary voters who by and large had voted for the GOP in past general elections, which would imply he isn’t growing the party, only the primary base. It is further debatable how many of these voters came to vote for him and how many voted against. What does seem clear is that he has historically high negatives among women, blacks, hispanics, and young people, and looks to win less than 90% of the Republican vote in November. He is not getting support from the donors, is not raising money from the people, is not setting up a ground game in important swing states, but he IS directing a fifth of his campaign money into Trump properties.
You wonder what we will do, and ask if we will support Hillary. That is what I was referring to. There seems to be a stubborn refusal of Trumpers to believe we mean what we say.
So, elections are determined by polls in June now? Especially in this election?
I am perfectly willing to believe that some Republicans (or Republican leaners) will support Hillary rather than Trump. For example (and I am not saying this about you Mr. D), those small businessmen who run businesses with illegal alien employees would surely not vote for Trump even if they were otherwise right-leaning.
Conservatives who benefit from open trade agreements (NAFTA, etc) might not vote Trump.
Some people who believe that a certain kind of dignity that Hillary possesses but Trump does not is crucial to their idea of an American President will support Hillary.
Conservatives who think that the Republican Party is their only vehicle for change and who feel that Trump will not use it to make the changes that they want may very rationally believe that it is better to have Hillary win this election so that they can have their party back. Can’t argue with that.
Indeed, anyone for any reason who is clear enough to say that they want to have Hillary elected rather than Trump is fine with me.
It’s the people who don’t back Trump but who insist that they are not thereby helping Hillary that I simply regard as illogical.
The parallels are basically the same the parallels have always been: our body politic has some deep, abiding similarities to our British cousins, and some profound differences; our political fault lines sometimes reflect theirs, and sometimes come out very differently.
If Americans perceived that NAFTA controlled our immigration laws or other affairs that should be controlled in Washington, I have no doubt whatsoever that we would likewise vote to leave. By a rather larger margin, in fact.
As for Trump, the British voted for the one policy in which they felt generally in sympathy with Nigel Farage: they did not make him Prime Minister. (Comparisons between Trump and Boris Johnson go about as deep as the hair.)
Euroskepticism has a long tradition in the very upper levels of the British Conservative party. This is not a new grassroots phenomenon arising out of nowhere to stun the European elite. This has been decades in the making, and should have shocked no one.
There are some winds blowing across the Western world, and some of the winds that helped create Brexit are blowing behind the Trump campaign too. But they are separate phenomena nonetheless. The answer to “what does Brexit mean for November?” is… nothing very much.
By all means go.
The globalism that have you enforced upon the GOP has made it impossible for the party to coalesce into the nationally dominant party it should have become circa 1990.
At this point that may be never be possible, with so many foreigners having been admitted to the country, too often without consent of the public or in obedience to the law.
But let’s find out.
Your true home is with the transnationalist, lawless left.
Go there, and join with your lawless friends.
Gosh, I thought this post was about Trump, not Clinton.
I’m fairly certain that the polls will continue like this for the rest of the election season. Given Trump’s abysmal ability to raise money, sky high unfavorables and the Clinton machine’s electoral efficiency I don’t see a reason for this to change. Trump’s poll numbers have been heading in the wrong direction ever since Bernie gave up on the nomination.
Do you have evidence to the contrary?
Point of order: All American’s benefit from free trade agreements.
There is not a single thing you said here that is even remotely true. You should start treating your fellow members with good faith.
Note:
Moral posturing and virtue-signaling are hardly unique to the #NeverTrump camp; they are to be found among members of all movements.@Freesmith
Well said. This NeverTrump idiocy is just that. It’s moral posturing, virtue signaling, and it shows what a dinosaur the “conservative” movement really is. “Look at how not-racist I am for not voting Trump!” They are only doing this to appease the left. Boy, I wish I could dig up an archive of @DemsRRealRacist’s Twitter account. It was pure gold.
If you want to see the most genius lampoon of the conservative movement, check him out: https://twitter.com/OnMessageForHer. He’s rebranded his Twitter account as the Hillary PR team and it’s hilarious.
I allege no bad faith.
I only suggest that reality be recognized.
The nevertrumpers are very hostile to Trump supporters- often nastily so- and do not hesitate to praise Hillary Clinton for her imagined accomplishments.
This seems an unbridgeable gap to me, and the sooner we recognize it the better.
And I will reiterate that the globalism of the GOP establishment has done serious damage to the rule of law in the US, and likely has destroyed the Republican party so thoroughly that it cannot be held together.
For example, I note that the open refusal of George Bush to enforce US law in response to the illegal immigration crisis was both a betrayal of his oath of office and a terribly stupid political decision that helped clear the way for Donald Trump.
This is an assertion that most Americans do not accept.
Watch Hillary back away from her support of such agreements as fast as she can, and note that the guy who won the GOP nomination campaigned specifically against them.
Oh yes, had the GOP stood up for the people they were supposed to lead and not bankers, consultants, and globalists, we wouldn’t even be talking about Donald Trump right now. Trump is no fool. He sees right through their failures and has capitalized on them.