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The Goldberg Rationalizations
“It may be that once Trump is no longer the commander in chief in the war against Blue America, the ardor of his troops will give way to a better understanding of the price the GOP paid on his watch.”
This is the last paragraph of Jonah Goldberg’s latest, edifying us with his crack understanding of history, wholly out-of-context. You can read it here. Most of it is written to advance his rationale for why Republicans are supporting Trump.
He deftly (he is a professional) inserts the idea that Trump is a wartime President, only the enemy this time is Blue America. Why is his popularity so high he asks? It’s because he’s a wartime President! See? You have to read the whole thing to understand, but it makes sense – as long as you don’t think about it too much.
There’s not one mention of the media’s hostile obsessions, their disingenuous – often wholly false – reporting, which is unprecedented in modern history, or Obama/Bush embeds in our intelligence agencies and Department of Justice who have been proven to be liars, leakers, framers, and rank partisans without a smidgeon of professional ethics. Very likely some of these people may be traitors. Certainly, they have worked to undermine the will of the American people. I think that qualifies. All of which predated Trump even taking office. If there’s some kind of war happening, as Jonah asserts, it might be important to mention who started it. (Some FBI agents did something?)
Almost as noteworthy, Goldberg makes no mention of Trump’s accomplishments on behalf of his voting bloc as possible reasons for the strong support, nor is there any reference to likely alternatives which might be animating Trump’s support, all of whom are somewhere on the socialism spectrum.
He’s a wartime President. That’s it.
According to Mr. Goldberg’s account, Trump started this “war” he speaks of. And he never really explains how Trump is warring against “Blue America” or who or what this Blue America is.
Taking issue with Jonah’s conclusion, I would say that Trump is the price the GOP paid for being weak, for being fraudulent, for being the party of perpetual war and globalism, and for misunderstanding and/or taking advantage of their base.
Mr. Goldberg is fantasizing that someday the ardor of his “troops” will better understand how wrong they were. On the contrary. The game Jonah, et al., have been playing is over for good. There will be no going back. It may well get a lot worse for the Nevers after Trump is gone. They will have to take refuge with Democrats. Some already have.
Now, for some real genius, edification and a palate-cleanser, I offer this:
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Published in General
Man this is true. I was running out of space but Dems can’t even face the scandals or 9-0 smack downs from the Supreme Court. It is weird.
Another one is that Obama tried all the time to be “bi-partisan” but the Republicans refused to go along. So I always follow up with, “Ok, I will name two huge bi-partisan things that George Bush did, with links. He nominated two Clinton Judges at the start of his term and his big Education bill with Ted Kennedy. Now you name the bi-partisan efforts that Obama tried….”
Repsonse, is always and every time Crickets….
Then I write: “So you admit that George W. Bush was more bi-partisan than Obama and Trump is no more partisan than Obama was?”
Silence or being de-friended is the usually response. Two liberals would not say I was right but agreed to not call Obama bi-partisan again. At least where I could read or hear it.
We would be wise not to repeat the same mistakes as our Democrat foes in this regard.
Sounds eerily familiar…
It is simple physics. We are human after all. President Trump is the symmetrical response to 0bama’s excesses.
‘Trump’, ‘Never-Trump’, ‘he fights’, ‘he hasn’t the first clue as to what he’s fighting for’, and so on and so forth. Anyone persuaded? Didn’t think so. And so on to the more interesting element of the original post, upon which the Good Doctor has remarked. May I make a suggestion? Think dance. Most of Bach’s music, from the earthbound to the sublimely spiritual is infused with the spirit of dance. He was harmonically advanced and the greatest contrapuntist music has ever seen but next time you hear Bach allow yourself to fall into his rhythms. He capers, waltzes, gavottes and at times he even swings.
I’m actually guessing that the 2024 primaries are going to be the bloodiest nomination fight the Right has ever seen. Any time there is a highly controlling charismatic force of nature personality running any organization, unless they have made clean succession plans, chaos follows when they leave. I’m reminded of a former CEO of Rubbermaid in the 1990s who openly boasted that only he knew how to run the company, and everyone around him was an idiot. He was right, in a way, because by the time he retired the top of the organization no longer knew how to run things, so long had they been centrally controlled. Didn’t help in their case either that anyone who challenged the CEO in any way was quickly fired. With his retirement, the company collapsed into infighting, then bankruptcy, and then acquisition by a rival. That is, of course, a worst case scenario.
But there are plenty of other examples throughout history of companies or nations where succession is unclear after a domineering personality, and a civil war of sorts, or a period of wallowing and malaise follows. 2024 will see a divide between candidates trying to claim the “True Successor” mantle of Trump, and candidates who aim to take the party elsewhere. We’re seeing just that now on the Left – Hillary’s 2016 run and Bernie’s challenge was a foretaste, and now the Dem field this year is a mess because Obama let nobody but him ever share in the “glory”. Trump has been a force of nature, and if (as is still likely) he wins in 2020, he will have been running the show for nearly a decade. That’s a long shadow.
And there won’t be any “curated” candidate because that’s a myth: there never has been one. McCain held out in 2008 because everyone else who ran against him made a poor showing, and because the Vietnam veteran boomers still adored him for his service. I remember a number of them telling me that, whatever his flaws, McCain was “one of their own” in ways that Bush never was (and Kerry sure as heck wasn’t). Romney survived 2012 because, again, the rest of the field was just not that great. No curation involved. The only curation I could possibly see in 2024 is if Trump explicitly endorses someone (which he may well do).
It depends on who both parties put forth. Can the Democrats tack back to the center? Will Republicans put forth another Romney or McCain?
We heard a lot about “Reagan Democrats” but very little has been written about “Trump Democrats” (or perhaps I’m missed it). It’s like nobody wants to acknowledge just how many Democrats walked away from that increasingly crazy party. But they also voted for Donald Trump, not “Generic Technocratic Republican #343.” And I don’t think they’re going to be enthusiastic about #344″ either.
So inability to figure out the magical alchemy that drew in disaffected voters of both parties will result, I believe, in a great sense of apathy.
The notion of a “Flight 93 election” in 2016 was widely mocked by the GOP ruling class, but damned if the Democrat candidates aren’t making it perfectly clear this time around. Will 2024 be the same, or will Democrats stop being completely crazypants Commies? Because if we go back to an election more like 2008, pretty sure the Republicans are toast.
Some will, some won’t. If the GOP tries to revert to Romneyism, there will probably be a third party challenge – a significant one. Trump supporters are not all Republicans. The GOP has been lucky in their enemies, but they haven’t inspired. At this point the Bush/McCain/Romney faction has destroyed much of its credibility. So if they can’t be believed how can they get masses of votes enough to defeat the hard left? It won’t be hypocrisy it will be lack of inspiration.
Moreover, it’s been pretty well proven that this faction doesn’t possess sufficient instincts and commitment to win. Romney and company are good at survival to ‘fight’ another day. They are no good at winning.
If the GOP doesn’t embrace strong border protection, a break from globalism and endless wars, and get some credible candidates not linked to the past, it will lose to a third party.
I think we’re mostly agreeing.
My point wasn’t that the party will revert back to its pre-Trump composition/power balance, but rather that the revolution proclaimed by some is greatly overstated. I think the changes will be incremental.
More specifically, the OP claims that the NeverTrump wing will never return to the right-wing coalition. I highly doubt this. While certain media personalities may never be invited back in (and in the case of Bill Kristol or Jen Rubin it won’t be a day too soon), the types of people who religiously listen to Jonah’s podcast are a) likely numerous enough to be electorally meaningful in at least some key districts, and b) will still be a much better fit for the Republican than the Democrat party. In other words, the suburban soccer moms now shifting to the Democrats aren’t Jonah’s audience.
Bottom line: going forward, many Republican candidates are probably going to need the “Jonah fan, Trump detractor” voters to get to 50+1, meaning their influence will still be felt in the movement.
You’re missing 2 steps:
At least that’s been my experience.
Could you explain why that’s a problem, in your view?
There aren’t nearly as many “Jonah fan, Trump detractor voters” as you might think. Their influence is amplified by media, but . . . they themselves keep telling us they’re a minority of a minority. I think I’ll take them at their word.
They do not matter. What matters are the great swathes of the citizenry (voters from both parties) who took a chance on Donald Trump, liked what they got, and will want that to happen again. And if it doesn’t, they’re not showing up.
I’m not convinced yet, for the very reasons that come later in your post: the election fight is every bit as much about the personalities that show up as the mood among the voters. And it’s hard to predict who will run (and how well they’ll run) 5 years in advance.
For example, I agree completely about McCain and Romney: they weren’t anointed by the GOP elite, they were elected by base voters because the rest of their respective fields sucked [expletive] [expletive]. If you had tried to predict who would be the nominee going into each race based on the mood of the primary electorate you never would have picked those two.
In elections that are often decided by tiny numbers of voters, both groups matter – the broad swath and the marginal voters (on all margins).
Perhaps not “curated” but there was clear filtering out of the unwashed, non-approved, non-country clubbers. First, they kicked him out as their first Speaker of the House in 40 years, and then they prevented him from winning the 2012 GOP POTUS nomination in favor of preferred Mitt Romney. If they had actually wanted to win, they would have propelled Newt Gingrich as their nominee in 2012 right after this debate in the South Carolina primary:
The people who prevented Gingrich from being nominated in 2012 were a) the GOP voters and b) the GOP voters. They watched the debates, listened to their speeches, read the commentary, then made their own decisions on how to pull the lever.
To blame the GOPe/Romney/the media for Gingrich’s (or any other candidate’s) primary loss is scapegoating, pure and simple.
That’s why Jonah and others would be best served by finding a candidate who they can support and who has the potential to also attract a majority of the Trump voters (I would think at the moment, the most likely option would be Nikki Haley after her work as U.N. ambassador, but I don’t know if Jonah’s of the mindset that any person who agreed to work for Trump is disqualified from consideration, or from the other end, if Trump starts believing some his most obsequious supporters’ talk about a “Trump Dynasty” and decides he’s going to support Don Jr. in 2024).
What I’m saying is that if the GOP focuses on winning the beltway pundit class at the expense of the citizen class, they’ll lose.
I agree.
And what I’m saying is that if the GOP continues to actively belittle the types of people who listen to Jonah and subscribe to Commentary, they’re also going to lose.
[And for the record, I don’t subscribe to Commentary and only occasionally listen to Jonah]
Part of Trump’s initial support came from people who in 2008-12 had backed Ron Paul in the primaries, not so much for his libertarian economics, but because he was the angriest guy in the room. And that may be who some people want in 2024, the next angriest guy in the room after Trump.
But Trump was able to win in part because he had been acting the role of angriest guy in the room in public since 1977 — it fit with his personality. A candidate trying to introduce themselves to the public as the angrist guy (or gal) in the room in 2023-24 will face the problem if Trump wins in 2020 of being angry despite Trump having been president for the past eight years, and the fact that they’d define themselves simply as an angry person, as opposed to Trump being an angry rich person with his name all over the place. Swing voters who broke for Trump against Hillary (and might do so again next year based on Trump’s record as president) might decide they want a break from angry, or at least a candidate who doesn’t define themselves as being angry.
There is a problem with some of the hardcore Trump people simply lumping Jonah or John Podhoretz in with people like Jen Rubin, Max Boot or Bill Kristol. They refuse to see a divided between Trump skpetics who’ve retained their overall conservative beliefs, and those for whom Orange Man is so bad they threw their supposed long-held ideological positions out the window, and would now be willing to support even Liz or Bernie in 2020, just to get Trump out of the White House.
Making lists and attempting to write out of the political conversation on the right anyone who doesn’t pledge total fealty to Trump is just as bad as those on the left who want to write everyone but themselves out of the political conversation (and the latest reports about Trump considering easing sanctions on Iran means if you go all-in on him, you’re now required to revise and extend your remarks about various political situations as he adjusts his, which then leaves you open to the same situational ideology problem that people like Boot, Rubin and Kristol have run into).
I’m really not sure if I’m not being clear or haven’t quoted Goldberg extensively enough.
So according to Jonah, it starts with Trump, and there are no other actors or forces involved in this conflict. As I said, no mention…
I suppose we just one day decided to invade Afghanistan 18 years ago unprovoked.
And his attribution for the source of conflict is …..Trump’s flaws.
In re-reading I think he gets another thing wrong. It’s not partisanship in terms of Republican/Democrat as he strongly implies. It’s people who basically support Trumps policies, believe he is being unfairly maligned in the media and is under attack from forces inside our corrupted government agencies versus everyone else.
His personal flaws are trivial in the face of this existential threat. Having to continually stipulate and acknowledge these things debases the very real, very ominous reality. If it’s wartime, or more like a public raping, it’s not because we are wearing a provocative outfit and have a history of promiscuity.
I keep thinking Bill Kristol as kind of like collapsing star – just falling further and further into himself.
Remember that Newt was a compromised candidate – spectacular rhetorician, but dodgy personal life. He lost his speakership in no small part because of his own extramarital issue. It had nothing to do any alleged “non-country-clubber” nonsense.
Thanks SkipSul. A sad commentary about where we are now.
Bill Kristol and Trump have a quality in common, the tendency to double down or and over again.
Fantastic point.
Rather mirrored too in that one of the few criticisms leveled at Obama now (not then) is that he wasn’t angry enough. So now the Dems are partly vying on who can be the most perpetually outraged.
There are definitely degrees that apply to everyone. That goes for Trump supporters too, I hope they can concede. You yourself cite hardcore Trump people, itself a subset.
But there is nevertheless a fundamental disagreement on approach and strategy that remains. JPod and Jonah are dismissive of basic elements of Trumps support. They do not understand it. They demonstrate that with every utterance and column. They literally can’t see it. They may well very much disagree with it if they did come to understand it.
Okay, whatever.
They have lost more of their credibility from being out of touch than their actual opinions.
But the difference between a small minority of pundits, with ( in reality) minor influence, and hordes of voters is a difference in kind. It’s votes that elect candidates and the number of never trump voters who would otherwise vote Republican is very small. (6%?…20%?)And many of them live in overwhelmingly blue states:New York, Maryland, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts.
But this is what they used against him, pitting religious conservatives against candidates that threatened the status quo. Newts personal life was no dodgier than any number of other politicians. Actually quite tame…They couldn’t get him on his policies, because so many Republican leaning voters agreed with him!
Ultimately a guy like Romney emerges as the squeaky-clean candidate with malleable resolve and we get a game-theory iterative fail.
I see it as a naked exploitation of the religious faction for cynical purposes. Now even they have caught onto this ploy.
I read the Goldberg piece the other day and it just further cemented my impression that TDS has ruined him for me. He confuses being clever with being right.
Thank you very much for the link to the video – it was very interesting. I don’t play any instruments ( I played at 5-string banjo and dulcimer, but that doesn’t count), but Bach has always interested me. What he does reminds me of some of the real-time software I have been involved in over my career. Both have to get things done while dealing with time and other constraints. When it works, it is a real joy.
It makes me want to go back and try to get through “Godel, Escher Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter. It is on my “read before I die” shelf – which might also be called the “finish if it kills me” shelf.
I don’t have any problem with the disagreements — I got irked with Jonah during his podcast on Trump’s court nominees, when he seemed to get irked because Trump was nominating the right people without being able to explain why he was nominating them. But some people refuse to brook any criticism of the president, and seem to relish chasing away potential 2020 Trump supporters. That’s the mirror image of the left marking anyone who opposed Obama for eight years on anything as an Enemy of the State.