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From Whence Came Trumpism? Two Takes.
Over the last few months, there have been many attempts to explain why the deepest bench in Republican Party history fizzled when faced down by a man with no political experience, no ideological consistency, and no ties to the party he chose to run in for the presidency. Often hinted at (but never said forthrightly) were the ideas that Trump’s support came from racists or hillbillies. Now these accusations have been addressed by Avik Roy and J.D. Vance.
Roy, who’s worked for Romney, Perry, and Rubio, is considered the go-to healthcare wonk on the Right. He is described in this Vox article/interview as a Republican’s Republican, though they might just as easily have said that he’s an avatar of much of what those who support Trump hate. The editorial style of Vox is probably responsible, but Roy comes off as having a right-back-at-you disdain for those who rejected all the non-Trump candidates this season. He calls out the Republican Party (and even conservatism in general) for suffering from latent racism and white nationalism.
When I first read the Vox piece, I wondered if Roy had lost his mind. He says:
Conservative intellectuals, and conservative politicians, have been in kind of a bubble. We’ve had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.
And:
It’s a common observation on the left, but it’s an observation that a lot of us on the right genuinely believed wasn’t true — which is that conservatism has become, and has been for some time, much more about white identity politics than it has been about conservative political philosophy.
In Roy’s view, Trump proves the Left’s caricature of the right as the party of aggrieved whites pining for the days of racial supremacy.
J.D. Vance is a rather different sort. Though educated at Yale Law School, Vance began life Appalachia and the rust belt of central Ohio. It took one tough Mamaw and the US Marine Corps to aim him toward heights far above his raising. Discussing his book Hillbilly Elegy with with Rod Dreher he sees a different cause for the Trump phenomenon found in the people and problems of Appalachia and flyover country.
Vance offers an alternative view that paints a bleak, but a little less-disheartening picture.
The simple answer is that these people – my people – are really struggling, and there hasn’t been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles in a long time. Donald Trump at least tries.
[…]
The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues, a la Thomas Frank (more on that below). Maybe they get a few handouts, but many don’t want handouts to begin with.
From the Right, they’ve gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, and paeans to the noble businessman and economic growth. Whatever the merits of better tax policy and growth (and I believe there are many), the simple fact is that these policies have done little to address a very real social crisis. More importantly, these policies are culturally tone deaf: nobody from southern Ohio wants to hear about the nobility of the factory owner who just fired their brother.
Trump’s candidacy is music to their ears.
While I think Roy paints the entire Republican party and Trump’s supporters with the colors of the fringest of elements, I don’t think Vance accurately portrays the whole of this year’s electorate either. There is no one-size-fits-all explanation for why Donald Trump is our nominee instead of Walker, or Perry, or Rubio, or Cruz. I do, however, there is some truth in what both men said. The party of Trump often times sounds like a South Park episode with a bunch of men hollering “They took our jerbs!” When I talk to Trump supporters in my workplace, I hear people who don’t want speeches about tax cuts and policy details; rather, they simply want what feels like a meaningful say in the outcome of their own lives. I hear in their voices the same despair with broken promises and jellied spines from Republican politicians that I get from the smart people here who have placed their faith in Trump.
After reading these (and other) theories I still have no full or settled explanation of why Trump. As usual, I find myself with unanswered questions and the “start a conversation” button begging me to search here for answers.
Published in General
It should not be necessary to remind anyone that Trump garnered a mere 40% of the voters in the primary, many of whom may well not have been actual Republicans or in any way conservative. How does one then paint the entire conservative movement with the same brush that one uses to paint the supporters of Donald Trump? As one who began my conservative bona fides with membership in the Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, and as a supporter of Ted Cruz from the beginning of his run, and a #NeverTrump from the beginning as well, I find that categorization to be more than disingenuous. It has about it the same stink as the charge of “racism” which is thrown around with little regard to actual facts.
This kind of thinking is reflective of the belief that worries about wealth gaps and relative, instead of absolute, wealth.
Take it away Maggie:
It’s all very well to maintain your personal intellectual and ideological purity.
White racism is so radioactive that a white judge or politician would have to purge her web presence of links to websites that link with white nationalist views. Maybe even tertiary links. But a judge or Democrat politician can have associational ties with Leftist antisemites, black racists and brown racists, even speak at their events and still be fine. Even with revolutionary groups which are racist and want to destroy our constitutional form of government and/or “recapture” big chunks of the USA. When Trump complained to a judge with just such associational ties was hearing his case he was excoriated. But people and groups that want an Aryan nation in Idaho? Radioactive.
Brilliant!!!
That wonderful speech was given a quarter of a century ago. These developments were only beginning during her time as PM:
RTWT.
I came to Ricochet with that same mindset. Then I realized (I hope my reasoning is reliable) that many republican voters and Republican officeholders who presented themselves as conservative are not. Well, maybe in some very limited categories but not in the sense of what would result if the Constitution were followed in it limited federal government sense. That does not mean you are not conservative, just that the term is corrupted like most other things including the Constitution. I don’t call myself ‘a conservative’ any longer, although I am certainly conservative.
There is no problem currently attributed to “globalism” that wouldn’t be fixed by robust growth.
Perfect.
I don’t care about that but I would like to get well.
except that globalism is hampering robust growth.
Is it, can you show me the evidence for this?
“Globalism,” also globalism, which together with corporatism and transnational progressivism (which it overlaps significantly) is, in important ways, hostile to the forces that would lead to robust growth in the USA. We can see the problems with transnational economic systems in the EU. That friction led to Brexit.
One of the chief arguments for the Brexit was that the EU was preventing Britain from engaging in free trade with obvious trade partners like India and Australia.
And another was border control and immigration policy, and another was the Procrustean bed of transnational central planning and regulation. See also under “free trade” and “nationalism vs internationalism:”
We need actual free trade, not the TPP
Speaking of “authoritarian global decision making” this is from the EFF, which is worth listening to on privacy and individual rights:,
What does free trade have to do with border security? I’m a free trader but also very much in favor of getting control of our borders.
What does free trade have to do with transnational government? I’m a free trader but also very much against transnational government.
This is the problem I have with such facile terms as “globalist” – it conflates a bunch of policies together that very few people at Ricochet hold and seeks to make us defend things that we aren’t remotely interested in defending.
Does ‘globalism’ include application of ‘international law’ and a push toward ‘one world government’?
The correct pronunciation is “They terk our jerbs!”, or so my teenage boys keep repeating…
The number of relatively well-educated people on the Trump bandwagon is surprising, though I will note they tend more towards “blue collar” attitudes (a term I hate using, but in this context it works). And it’s regardless of education level.
These people aren’t stupid; they’re just fed the hell up with a two-party system that has given us perhaps the most incompetent and self-interested class of politicians our country has ever known. They see the Democrats as patently unacceptable while the Republicans have become worse than useless (thus ignoring the two or three Republicans who actually might have made a positive difference – sorry, but if you really think Ted Cruz is part of the “establishment” then you’re not paying attention).
They believe no good options are left, so when a third-party-ish protest candidate shows up within a major party, they know what to do…With all being very nearly lost, the whole system needs to be blown up. Trump is human dynamite, pushing the big red button with his stubby middle finger.
Right now our best-case scenario is for Trump to get elected, then commit some blatantly impeachable offense and be removed from office. Sad!
Being for free trade does not mean one has to defend the TPP. The more I hear about it the more I dislike the TPP but I’ll let @jamesofengland handle explaining the ins and outs of the TPP.
Don’t some agreements touted as ‘free trade’ (I guess because there are no explicit tariffs) include provisions regarding labor that would involve border crossings or such labor provisions as relate to hiring and compensation?
I thought that’s all it entailed but around here its used as a cudgel against free traders.
I was responding to your comment about Brexit. All were among the reasons that were cited to support it. As with any important and complex issue, some voters resonated more with some issues than with others.
Please stop trying to discuss things with me. We have nothing to say to each other, Mr Lockett. Since my heritage is unsuitable to you, I have no desire to converse with you.
That’s fine, but to claim that Brexit was entirely a reaction against what around here is called “globalism” is not the full picture. Boris Johnson and Daniel Hanan, two of the leaders of the Brexit movement, are very much free traders.
I’m a little late to a fast-paced conversation.
I agree with EJ Hill’s summary completely.
I will also add that any analysis saying that “Conservatism has been rejected by the American people” is simply false, because Conservatism has not been offered to the American people in any meaningful way by the GOP in the last 20 years. Sure, they’ve promised it…and have been elected overwhelmingly in last few elections based on those promises. But they have delivered next-to-nothing.
My level of trust of GOP politicians has evolved from Suspicious, to Distrustful, to I Fully Expect the GOP to Do The Wrong Thing…On Purpose.
As we started this election cycle, I was of Bill Buckley’s “telephone book” mindset…If some dude named Aaron Aaronson had been on the ticket, I would have voted for him over any established GOP candidate, because I have given up any hope of the GOP actually doing anything they say they will.
Should I put in a word for a “block” feature? Once, long ago, back in 1.0, Ricochet had one, very short-lived, and I do know of a member who left because that feature never came back.
Aside from that, R> conversations feature many people, and someone quoting you may be speaking more to others than to yourself.
How gracefully you put that. The passive denial while thrusting the categorization as veiled insult. Very good.
I also liked the “relatively’ in front of well educated.
Truly a gifted statement.
Indeed, a lesson @fredcole has tried to drill into my brain many times.
Midge, not now. I said my piece. Leave it be.
The lack of robust growth in our current global economy.
We’re in a tightly intertwined global economic network. When growth stops, the network stops. To get the network growing again, someone has to start growing first. But how do you start growing first when the network is jammed?
It will happen eventually but it will happen by accident.
You just ran into something of a pet peeve of mine. Technically, we very much are allowed to avoid voting for that binary choice. We do have the option of sitting this out. And for those of you who think I don’t have the right to complain on Nov. 9 if I don’t vote on Nov. 8, please confirm for me whether or not the exercise of any of my civil and constitutional rights requires me to vote beforehand.