Friday, May 07, 2021

Iron Grip? Or Sweaty Grasp On Reality?

Rick Wilson's thesis (I'd say "Mr. Wilson," being a well-reared Southerner; but I'm older than he is, so "Rick" it is. Also a Southern tradition.) in five tweets or less (the best arguments are made in a short tweet thread, right?) is that Trump is the GOP, now and forever, and we must all be very afraid, and very vigilant, pure in thought, word, and deed, as we stand against this scourge.

First, I grew up with this nonsense.  If your American hearts were Americanly pure, we would each of us be warriors against the scourge of International Communism.  So yeah, I'm allergic to the argument, prevalent across the political spectrum on the intertoobs, that we must remain vigilant in our efforts and pure in our political thought if we want to achieve victory over our political opponents, who are not just people who disagree with us about political ends and means, but existential threats who will destroy our very way of life if we waver for a moment.  I heard "reasoning" that attached to communism, to civil rights activists, to advocates of social justice, opponents of the Vietnam War, even people who questioned American consumerism.

Feh.  I discard it.

But now we are to fear a man with no political acumen, no organizational skills, no administrative abilities, a man shorn of access to his beloved social media outlets (which is apparently the only power he had, we are now told; even as we are told he is more powerful than ever), a man in self-exile ranting to tiny crowds of people who pay dearly for the privilege of being at his country club (these things that pass for knowledge I don't understand) about an election he lost decisively, a man who has done literally nothing since leaving office to impress upon the masses that he is still important.  George W. Bush is a more influential political figure; Barack Obama a more exemplary one, Bill Clinton more important to the country (and yes, I list them in order of diminishing returns on their positions as ex-Presidents), and none of those three hold a candle to the example of Jimmy Carter, probably the greatest ex-President, or ex-office holder of any kind (including retired Supreme Court Justices) in American history.

Among that group, Trump is an absolute cipher.

Did he influence the vote in the recent Texas special election?  Not enough to give the widow of the office holder more than the sympathy vote that should have put her over the top, sympathy which undoubtedly won her the 15% she did gain.  Did he rebuke the Democrats there?  They never had a realistic chance in a special election where only the most faithful of the faithful were going to turn out, and even then their contender came in third.  Is he controlling the GOP across the states?  They were this way before Trump came along.  Once elected, they carry out their orders like sleeper agents activated long after the Cold War has ended, or Japanese soldiers in caves on deserted islands still fighting for a vanquished Empire.  Politicians always fight the last war, and always enact the last directives from the last election.  Trump's influence on the country is, at best, a dead hand.  He's been out of office less than four months; did we expect his influence over state politicians to vanish like a haze in the morning?  His racism, his xenophbobia, his hatreds, are still with us; of course they are. He had four years to poison the system, and he poisoned it well.  Joe Biden is the anti-venom, but even anti-venom takes time to work.  This is not the final five minutes of the TV show, where the good guys declare victory and the preferred wounded (i.e., the non-"red shirts") miraculously recover and we know all will be well.  We've just begun our recovery.  It's gonna take awhile.

What has Trump done?  He's convinced the incumbent GOP in D.C. that he's the king-maker.  I'm sure internal polling says he is; but the next election is still a year away, and what will happen then is anybody's guess.  Trump's influence today is because the incumbents in the House won under Trump.  If Trump is not connected to their victories in 2022, he's history.  Ancient history.  And how will he be?  What energy is he going to rally in the next year?  What claim to glory is he going to assert?  He's still licking his wounds at his loss.  If past is prologue, he'll spend rallies complaining about vote fraud and "dumped ballots" found in rivers.  Maybe he'll even mention bamboo!

Political loss is painful; as Dick Nixon, who said he wouldn't be around for the press to kick anymore, exemplified.  But Nixon wasn't the sociopathic narcissist Donald Trump is.  Trump isn't coming back. He simply won't make the effort, because he won't run the risk.  He was the apotheosis of the GOP, but that moment has passed.

For all the incumbents in D.C. still insisting they are Trump stalwarts, Trump's brand has ended.  His supporters wonder what happened, why the predictions of "Q" didn't come true.  The GOP in D.C. insists the seditious insurrection on January 6 didn't even happen, even as ordinary citizens across the country continue to contact the FBI and turn in rioters from that day.  If the FBI has caught so many from Texas and elsewhere, it's not just because each and everyone of them was dumb enough to trumpet their presence on social media.  More and more of the arrests are being made from tips; tips from people who honor the rule of law far more than they honor Donald Trump.

Wilson's argument is ultimately an inside baseball/under the stitches argument.  The battle between Elise Stefanak and Liz Cheney is completely a Beltway battle.  Who among us really cares?  I've never liked Liz Cheney's politics*, and her push back on Donald Trump doesn't transmute her into a hero, or even the enemy of my enemy.  She did what should have been done, which hardly makes her a profile in courage. Then again the GOP never pushed Tailgunner Joe out of the Senate, though they had good reason to do so.  This is politics:  it's a game of cowards who fear losing their position, their prestige, their power, at any moment.  John McCain didn't; he knew what a real fight was like, what real loss of power and prestige meant.  I didn't always admire John McCain's politics either, but I could still admire John McCain.  And yet his image was as a "maverick," even though his most consequential vote was to refuse to repeal Obamacare.  That was simply the right thing to do, but in D.C., it was an heroic and notable act.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a hero.  John Lewis was a hero.  Politicians in D.C.?  Not so much.

Is Trump actually controlling the party?  Or is the party fearful of its own shadow, of the beast it stirred up to win elections, and which is now intent on devouring it?  Trump has no political skills, no administrative skills, not even any interpersonal skills.  LBJ knew how to cajole, overpower, persuade, convince.  Trump didn't know how to set up a State of the Union address.  If Trump can't control the party, if he can't oversee it, if he can't use the party to set up candidates, establish policies, organize GOTV efforts, direct funds strategically:  what is the party for?  Trump isn't going to hold rallies for the party.  He's going to hold rallies for Trump.  If the party is only a rigid and brittle and one-dimensional identity, if it is only against and is basically for nothing except what it doesn't have or doesn't want the country to have, what power is that?

Joe Biden is offering the country a great deal, and all of it concrete.  Donald Trump promised the country a booming economy (it collapsed under his tenure), an infrastructure plan (that became a political joke), a replacement of Obamacare (which never materialized, in any form), a border wall what was never more than a few miles longer than when he took office, and mostly told everyone who would listen how many great things he did, when he did nothing and what did happen under his watch (the covid vaccine of Pfizer) happened despite his pitiful efforts and wholly apart from them (what, he directed Dolly Parton's donation to the effort, which actually helped directly?).  Now Trump promises to whine like Grandpa after too much sherry about how he was robbed.  Yeah, that's inspirational.

Besides, if I'm going to listen to Wilson and be afraid, why shouldn't I listen to Frank Luntz and chuckle mordantly?

Luntz, who has been critical of Trump for peddling false claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, says his research indicates the former president's messaging is working with the GOP base. 

"More than two-thirds of Republicans believe that the election was stolen,” Luntz reported. “What Donald Trump is saying is actually telling people it's not worth it to vote. Donald Trump single-handedly may cause people not to vote. And he may be the greatest tool in the Democrats' arsenal to keep control of the House and Senate in 2022." 

If Trump controls the GOP, this is the control he has; because the GOP has control of government only to the extent it can get its voters to the polls.  And Trump has absolutely no GOTV charms at all.  If anything, he's the anti-GOTV politician.  

There's also the argument (one I favor, clearly), that Trump doesn't control the GOP because there is no GOP anymore (I'm not sure there's a Democratic party either; my argument here is even handed.  What's the purpose of party conventions now?    Political parties exist in state law as the entities that organize primaries and authorize names on ballots, and do little more any longer.).  Trump controls a handful of GOP office holders, but more truly he's just the godfather of many a nasty GOP politician and a really nasty strain in American politics.  But he didn't invent that; he just brought it into the light.  He just produced the inevitable:  that the GOP would say out loud what Lee Atwater said in the '80's you had to say sotto voce.  Did Rick Wilson warn us about Atwater; or Karl Rove?  Newt Gingrich?  Phyllis Schlafly in the '70's (well, he probably wasn't old enough then, was he?)? His prescience and Cassandra-insights seem a bit late to the party.  I think what he actually fears is that American conservatism has shed it's Bill Buckley facade of Eastern erudition and dignity and gone full white-trash crazy.

But that's on him, and his GOP.  Sorry; that's not a judgment; it's just fact.
Be careful what you wish for; you might get it. You should at least take credit for it.

And besides, there's always a bigger picture, which doesn't include Trump valiantly carrying the banner of the GOP into battle:
Fighting the last fight is really not gonna GOTV in 2022.  Or 2024, for that matter.


*The irony is, this is the control Dick Cheney wanted (and Wilson worked for Cheney).  But Cheney wanted it on his terms.  The problem is, it's easier to set things in motion than it is to control them, and it's more likely you'll get the power ginned up than that you'll be able to control, especially after you leave office, which, inevitably in this system, every office holder must do.  The most ambitious leave the earliest; but they also do the most damage.  So, no, I don't put Liz Cheney on a pedestal, or call her a "hero" because she rounded up former Defense Secretaries to write an open letter in WaPo, or because she opposes Trump.  The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend, because her view of what government is for is just as pernicious as Trump's.   The difference is, Trump is a nihilist.  He doesn't understand what government is for, and he doesn't care; all he cares about is Trump.  That's the essence of nihilism:  everything outside of Trump is nothing, and doesn't matter.  Just because he's worse than Cheney, doesn't make her good.
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