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A bit of correspondence from a young friend:
I would like to hope.
I’m kind of OK being in the “un-cool” party. We’re the responsible party so if that becomes cool, great.
I’m not sure about “cool”, or if we even want that moniker (there’s always been a rebellious bent to a certain strain of college-aged conservatives that puts us in defiance of what it is to be ‘cool’ at that age). But I agree that DJT puts a different sense of what it is to be a Republican. It’s certainly different than the previous elite class of politician that always seemed a bit aloof to the average working class American. And the past decade or two, aside from GWB, the chasm has widened. I think it’s part of President Trump’s appeal to the blue collar and working class today. He doesn’t treat the wealthy or political class as a protected group or club, he seems want everyone to join that club, which I suspect makes the political establishment very unhappy. Thanks for sharing this astute youth’s observation!
I’m sure there are places in which Trump is the “cool” one, but I think your correspondent is in a distinct minority.
It’s the theory of relativity…that is, relative to Joe Biden, Trump is very cool.
Um, ok. I suppose. Not by much.
Interesting take. My thinking is that if making conservatism “cool” is what it takes to win more people over, go for it!
My kids, ages 13 and 16, watched the presidential and VP debates this year. They both agree that Trump is way more fun than the other candidates. Maybe not cool, but fun.
Trump put both the happy and the warrior back into the happy warrior.
The internet youth culture around Trump was hilarious.
My teenage grandkids are Trump fans and went to a spontaneous rally in Newport Beach when he was there for a donor lunch. No planned event, just spontaneous and a thousand people lined the coast highway. She took video of him waving.
If the goal is to make conservatives cool, maybe @peterrobinson should go with skinny jeans and an untucked shirt when he films his next Uncommon Knowledge . . . or not.
Polls use likely voter models. They are only as accurate as their model. Trump has pulled people who are unlikely voters by the 2016 models. It is uncertain that the polling organizations have adjusted their models appropriately.
Peter Robinson in skinny jeans + $25 tickets = secure financial future for Ricochet forever.
Make it happen, PTB.
I admit, I don’t understand this at all. Is he saying Trump and Barrett are so un-cool that McConnell and Graham are Fonzie by comparison? Or are McConnell and Graham cool by association with Trump and Barrett’s (entirely undemonstrated and unproven) coolness? Or what? I don’t get it.
I’m not sure “cool” is the right term. However, the last 2 presidents have show that being culturally relevant is more important that having clear policy objectives.
Neither Trump nor Obama outlined any kind of agenda during their campaigns, we went from Hope and Change to MAGA. In the age of social media, how the candidate makes people feel is unfortunately far more important than the candidates ideas
It’s more than that. Its using pillars of the culture to be counter-cultural. Much of “coolness” is, as Jenner Stocker notes, a bit rebellious.
If there’s anything counter-culture right now it is conservatism, traditional christianity, and Trump’s style. They contradict the current societal norms, which are now entrenched, led by old men and women, and seeking to limit free speech now that they have the upper hand in the culture.
People doing the parades and the memes and Zombie commercials are using cultural artifacts to rebel against the zeitgeist and that’s what is “cool”.
Flouting those who have become puritanical in their cultural preservation becomes attractive to the young who like to shock their woke parents and teachers.
How are we 4 years into this and this is still the narrative on Trump.
You guys know his campaign published a platform, right? He had white papers? Is it just that you didn’t like them or that that doesn’t amount to “policy”?
Here’s what I’ve seen from Trump policy-wise:
¹) Remove the stultifying regulations that have stymied business growth in America, create an atmosphere that allows American businesses to compete with other, government subsidized economies around the world, and place some limits on excessive immigration that have led to stagnant wages. <- pro-business policies within his purview as president.
2) Return to a far less interventionist foreign policy that places value on our soldiers’ lives, and seek peace that doesn’t amount to capitulation while still respecting the other country’s sovereignty. And acknowledge Israel as a fully realized state with a proper capital.
I probably won’t be able to put this the way I want to. The very few, consistent, tough plain-speakers representing the Right, like Rumsfeld, like McEnany, like Trump, but especially Rumsfeld, acted like bad a****s. No fear. No nonsense. THAT’S cool. They’re like the action hero fighting the bad guys. They’re Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Gerard Butler. I relished every on air response from Rumsfeld. And oh that look he had. At times boredom, at others, cold disdain.
My comment was not about Trump’s policies. I have been pleasantly surprised by much of what he has enacted. My comment is around the nature of the modern political campaign. I think most voters have lost whatever ability they may have had at one time to think critically about policy questions. During the 2016 campaign the emphasis was not on specific policies, other than “build the wall” We heard a lot of MAGA, and drain the swamp to get rid of the “very stupid people” running he country. I think winning modern campaigns is 90% personality. Democrats have understood this for a long time, and Trump beat them at their own game in 2016. In a few days we will see if he can do it again.
Ah. I understand now.
I think that’s largely a consequence of universal suffrage and vote harvesting campaigns (though others here lay it at the feet of education).
Making it easier for uninformed voters to vote makes policy less critical to winning a campaign. Largely left to themselves, the uninformed largely would not vote. Since Democrats were better at ground game with the uninformed, the natural alignment became Democrat. Trump altered that a bit. I don’t know if that tactic will survive him.
If elections came down to substantive policy discussions, Republicans would have a huge advantage. Low taxes, limited regulations, a strong military, and free enterprise all have widespread support. In past campaigns Republicans have tried to outline policies, and Democrats yelled “you’re racist”, or “why do you hate the poor” Trump is the first to yell back. This may not be enough to overcome the COVID narrative in 2020, and it will probably not work for whomever succeeds Trump as the Republican standard bearer.
I’d add Dick Cheney to your list.
Odd that you have not seen Trump’s agenda. Immigration, unfair trade practices by China, conservative judges (over 200 so far). I could go on about regulations and ending wars.
See comment #19 above
It’s an interesting thought…sort of like what Elon Musk did with the Tesla, creating an electric car that was something more than a emitter of Smug (although it was and is that, too), but a signal of coolness.
I don’t think that’s correct at all, in the case of Trump…he very clearly identified a goal of revitalizing American manufacturing, and identified both better trade deals, and more rational regulation & tax policy as key to that goal.
It *is* true that Trump does not do a good job of laying things out in a step-by-step fashion; as I’ve noted before, he has an intuitive pattern-recognizing sort of mind, and connects that mind pretty directly to both mouth and typing fingers.
There are a lot of young people at the rallies, in the caravans and the street and sidewalk parties. If they haven’t been completely indoctrinated – mind, body and soul, through the corrupted progressive professors and Common Core, and understand the manipulation by the social media mafia (see The Social Dilemma on Netflix), then they may have a chance to think for themselves, which is apparently what is happening, and are rejecting it!
Arnold Schwarzenegger was sort of the ultimate cool celebrity politician.
We forget that in 2006 that he was elected by a 17-point margin, keeping the Democrat from even reaching 40% of the vote!
In the 2003 recall, he along with Tom McClintock almost kept the Democrat under 30% of the vote. (Arianna Huffington came in 5th, Peter Ueberroth came in 6th, Larry Flynt came in 7th, Gary Coleman came in 8th, and porn star Mary Carey came in 10th.)
California was the state that almost gave Trump the lowest percentage of the vote in 2016 as its low percentage vote share was slightly beat by the tiny states of Mazie Hirono’s Hawaii and Bernie Sanders’ Vermont.
Arnold was the only Republican governor and just about the only Republican elected statewide since 1994.
Then Arnold buckled under the pressure of being a celebrity in California and upset everyone.
Trump didn’t do that. Even though Washington, DC, makes it look like there are tens of millions of anti-Trump Republicans, no one really challenged him in the primaries this year. His closest challenger was Obama-voter Bill Weld who received 2.35% of the primary vote, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
…
Other celebrity candidacies go nowhere. Lynn Swann had one of the lowest percentage vote tallies every recorded for a gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania.
However, former professional wrestler and mayor Jesse Ventura “shocked the world” in 1998, but then he disappeared. Then there was fellow Minnesotan Al Franken whose image was sort of the opposite of cool.
Sonny Bono was sort of cool, sort of not cool, and sort of vintage square cool.
Fred Thompson was probably more cool than uncool, but he was really just a Southern lawyer who mostly played gruff Southern lawyers as an actor.
Fred Grandy and Nancy Kulp were actor/politicians who played rather uncool TV characters.
John Glenn was rather cool as the first American to orbit the planet and who flew jets along with Ted Williams over Korea. Harrison Schmitt was an astronaut who was also elected to the US Senate, but he was not a household name and wasn’t a military guy. He lost his re-election to Mr. Charisma Jeff Bingaman.
Former mayor Clinton Eastwood was endlessly mocked for his chair monologue at the Republican National Convention 8 years ago, but as Clint was always sort of the opposite of a cultural conservative, like Arnie, nothing can damage that legendary Eastwood Cool.
I guess Obama somehow cultivated the cool by just being young and not being Sharpton, Jackson, or some tired older politician.
Did any cool folk run against Trump in 2016? Doctors Ben Carson and geeky Rand Paul and young-looking Marco Rubio might be the closest examples, I guess, but that’s a tough one. Ted Cruz or his supporters tried a tiny bit, but Beto O’Rourke held Cruz to under 51% of the vote — in Texas! Hmm, maybe like Lincoln, the beard will help…
Beards help double chins.