Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Then why in the world did the Bush administration impose that light bulb ban? Or not eliminate the endless regulations flowing from the DC bureaucracy? What happened? I have real trouble accepting this idea that the gop is any sort of a freedom party remembering the Bush-era GOP. The gop is the conservative party, right?
The GOP that actually exists is quite fine with regulation, of all sorts, including upon foreign trade- except when it conflicts with the ability of the present political class to make money.
Thus, closing factories, moving the machinery to Mexico, then producing goods for sale here– that’s awesome. Importing cheap prescription drugs from Canada – that’s just not safe, because it’s just not safe, because shut up.
Hence, Trump.
For some reason in this statement you choose to conflate the GOP, which I am not defending, with conservatism, while in other contexts, even in this same paragraph, you correctly point out that the GOP is far from conservative much of the time. The light bulb ban, not conservative. Endless regulations, not conservative.
Blame the GOP for its mistakes, of which there are too many to count, but the conservative position is to mistrust government’s competence and its real goals. That’s why conservatives believe that less government is better, both domestically and when it comes to trade.
Concur.
But still not by extra-constitutional means. When we fight fire with fire (especially in this situation) all we end up with is more fire. That’s been my biggest fear with Trump — that he’ll cement the Obama method of rule by phone and pen as the normal way we do business. We’ll have wild swings of policy every time the party in power trades off. Rather than stability we’ll have ever increasing instability as elections will determine the form of our government rather than merely the people sitting in it.
They are only cheap because the Canadian government buys all their drugs. A monopoly customer can skew prices just as much as a monopoly seller.
And Kaizer Soze wins. I’ll put up a post. Stay tuned.
That should not be your biggest fear. To move back toward what we should be ‘constitutionally’, we must do first things first. We must demonstrate that our people have the will to maintain a sovereign nation. Trump has put forth two objectives that, if accomplished, will show if we have that. Those are controlling immigration and our borders and eliminating the radical Islamist terrorists activity. Then we can see where we are with respect to Trump and the Constitution. We can’t get where we need to be in one fell swoop.
That die is already cast. You can either make peace with it and govern yourself accordingly, or get buried by the left.
I agree 100% with these goals. What I can’t give my assent to is things like ordering the armed forces to commit war crimes (deliberate targeting of civilians) to reach these ends.
This is a false dichotomy. You talk about liberty, but liberty is a fragile thing not accomplished merely by simple resolve. The Founders understood this. They recognized that liberty hung by a thread, a narrow path between opposing dangers.
When I say “carefully crafted,” I do not mean in the technocratic sense. I mean that every government action poses some potential threat to liberty. One who seeks to preserve liberty recognizes that threat and, when the government must act, acts carefully.
OK. Here’s what I think about that. Clinton and Obama have no problem leaving our folks exposed to die when it serves their purpose. This I will call action, or inaction when action is called for. Trumps ‘says’ what he ‘might’ do in some given circumstance. This is talk. I see a big difference. And, nobody has done anything about all the inappropriate and criminal acts of people in the administration over the last eight years. Don’t you already have what you are expressing is your greatest fear regarding Trump? If we have Trump, I’m betting we can deal with inappropriate action.
I didn’t watch, but I understand that President Obama made a lot of claims last night about the nature and performance of his governance for eight years that don’t come close to the observed actions and actual results. Watch what they do, not what they say.
I’m sorry, but you’re missing the point by several hundred light years.
The failure of the US government to use its power as a monopsony buyer to negotiate for lower drug prices is an astonishing example of just how misgoverned the United States has managed to become, and is an astonishing example of the cronyism that is wrecking the country and the free market.
Canada is able to get lower drug prices because the actual cost to produce them are often or usually a trivial fraction of what is charged- to Americans at least. The drug companies are quite happy to sell them for lower prices everywhere else, because it is still profitable, since the actual expensive development costs are paid by us.
And we pay higher prices because of successful lobbying by the drug industry. This made Billy Tauzin very rich when he was able to write into the Medicare part D law that a provision preventing the US government from using its monopsony to get bulk discounts, for example.
This had important political implications- and still does- as the ever-increasing drug costs drove political pressure for the government to do something.
Hence, Obamacare.
Well no, you are defending the GOP. The endless and bottomless cronyism and incompetence from the gop is a key reason why the electorate has walked away from it.
In actual practice if you are really not defending the GOP you should be supporting Donald Trump.
But you aren’t, are you?
Because what I really want is to be dependent on the government for that, too.
I’m not really part of this exchange but Medicare has been around for a half-century and it does seem reasonable, if we accept Medicare’s existence, that Medicare should be able to get drug prices competitive with Canada. We are already dependent on government either way.
The problem as I’ve had it explained is that we pay the development and approval costs while the rest of the world pays none of that. If we stop paying it as well then development goes away. Sure, that’s a great scare tactic, but it may very well be true.
Wait, you think having the government negotiate drug prices with the manufacturers is an example of conservative and small government policy?
The cost to produce does not factor in the cost to develop, market and overhead.
They already negotiate these prices for Medicare, they just don’t go for the best deal. Wait, you are for free trade, so I can buy from Canada, right?
The prices negotiated for Medicare don’t always, nor should they, apply to the rest of the market. Also the side effect of paying similar prices as Canada is that drug development would essentially grind to a halt.
Why do conservatives suddenly feel that government is competent enough to set prices when it comes to drugs?
Negotiating for the best price is not setting the price.
With the power of the government it is.
Why do free traders suddenly not support buying at the best market price (Canada)?
It’s not the market price. The market for drugs is skewed because only one group of buyers (Americans) pay all the development costs. Spread that over the whole world, including Canada, and then you’d have a real market price. Granted, A LOT of the development costs are FDA approval, so there’s that skewing effect as well.
What in the world makes you think this is what we’d prefer, or that this isn’t exactly what happens now?
I want actual competition to set drug prices, not a cartel that pays the government to make sure that there is none.
Because it isn’t really about free trade.
It’s about what puts the most money in the right peoples pockets.
Justification for that preferred policy comes after the fact, if at all.
I know this. That doesn’t make it the right way to do it. If one is for free markets, then if the marketplace won’t develop the product, the demand must not be there. If for some humanitarian or other reason, government is entering the picture, that contribution should be explicit, not priced into domestic pricing.
This doesn’t make sense to me. If I don’t vote for the GOP’s candidate I’m supporting the GOP? If I vote for Hillary is that supporting the GOP even more?
I’m saying that I prefer the conservative position on economic issues, both domestic and pertaining to trade. If the GOP takes a contrary position (as Trump does) I’m not in favor of it.
I don’t know that drugs really fall into the same demand category as iPads.
I provided for that thought in my comment.