I sure hope the often-wrong Mr. Douthat of the NYT is right when he says this in today’s column:
There is now no possibility that the Republican Party will survive its rendezvous with Donald Trump unbroken.
Douthat believes that if Trump is the nominee, millions of Republicans will stay home on election day or vote for an independent candidate. And if Trump isn’t the nominee, Douthat believes Trump will play spoiler (a pretty safe bet regardless of the source). Either way, a Democrat wins.
But is Douthat giving Republican voters way too much credit here? Why on earth wouldn’t they unite behind Trump? It’s not the open bigotry they’re unable to countenance after decades of trafficking in covert racism to gin up votes. After all, the party elders are recommending Cruz as this week’s Not-Trump, and Cruz just called for anti-jihad patrols in US Muslim neighborhoods.
Sure, Trump is embarrassing. But if the party grandees can just convert Trump to the Church of Austerity, he could continue to peddle the same old shit in a brand new package. No reason to think that couldn’t be done fairly easily. Just prescribe some scripture — Two Rand, perhaps. Trump’s bottomless craving for approval and respectability will do the rest.
Douthat analyzes past party schisms and notes that splitters generally migrate from one party to another in the wake of a dust-up, e.g., the Rockefeller Republicans joining the Democrats and the Dixiecrats becoming Republicans. But he doesn’t see a natural home for today’s splitters:
[T]he Obama-Hillary Democrats don’t want, and more importantly don’t think they need, the votes of either Trump-supporting working class whites who oppose immigration and affirmative action or Trump-hating religious conservatives or libertarians or Jack Kemp disciples. Given present demographic trends, they could be right…But if the party can’t be united under Trump, both his fans and his foes will probably face a stark choice in the aftermath: Rejoin or die.
As I said above, I don’t think the schism is as serious as Douthat thinks it is. But if he is right and I am wrong, I heartily recommend the latter choice.
Southern Beale
I think a large number of Republicans will fall in line, after all, they always do. And I think a large number of “Democrats” will vote for Trump, the stupid ones. But I also think Trump can’t help himself, he will say something belligerent, or stupidly wrong. I think Hillary will win easily. Trump has lost the Hispanics, the immigrants and African Americans, you can’t win with just white voters. And Trump is a national embarrassment.
I’ve always thought Trump would mean a win for Democrats.
LAO
I am never one to claim that Douthat is right, but my Republican father will absolutely stay home if Trump is the nominee. My dad may hate Hillary (and he does) but (1) he has a visceral reaction to Trump and (2) he isn’t a nihilist.
I have to believe, that he is representative of some ( and it maybe smaller than I like) part of the Republican Party.
Baud
Don’t forget, “can’t get.”
Anya
The so called “Trump-supporting working class whites” are, for the most part, supporting him because they don’t like the change they see in the country. They want today’s America to resemble the pre-civil rights America. How can they be in an alliance with immigrants, brown people, religious minority and African Americans? And other than the mormons who are these “Trump-hating religious conservatives”?
bemused
I doubt Douthat’s confidence that “millions” of Trump haters will stay home or vote for an independent candidate.
Feudalism Now!
The GOP establishment believes they have more control and numbers than they actually do. The gig is up. The unwashed masses do not want ersatz racism, they want the real deal. The GOP is not ‘broken’; it is throwing off the control of its id. Doubthat and the rest of the party ‘elders’ have lost control of the monster they courted. They just haven’t realized it yet.
Marc
The discontent with Trump is real – he’s just not a serious candidate, and he’s getting a plurality, not a majority, of the republican votes.
Remember that there is a tribal component to party affiliation – folks here should admit that a Democrat would need to get pretty far off the rails before they’d consider voting for a Republican.
Mustang Bobby
@Southern Beale:
Generalizations are dangerous and blocs don’t always vote as a block, but it’s pretty safe to say that an overwhelming majority of those groups have enough reasons to vote against Trump without any help from the Democrats. You can also add that women voters — at least the ones I know who cover all the bases from left to right — are anti-Trump. And in my tribe, the LGBTQ community, well, we just think he’s tacky.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Trump is not going to bring out new voters. He just appeals to a more concentrated form of Teabagger. Trump will lose every group except for angry white males.
debbie
From your lips, Ross…
Baud
The destruction of the GOP after the disaster that was the Bush adminstration lasted two election cycles.
Baud
Politico, via LGM
PaulWartenberg2016
The polling on the unfavorable numbers suggest there’s a possibility of a 17 percent drop in Republican voter turnout to avoid Trump (compared to a 6 percent drop in Democratic turnout to avoid Hillary). Considering Democrats won in voter turnout in 2012 (just didn’t win the House due to that damn gerrymandering), this possible 10 percent drop for the GOP still means the Democrats can win – and see greater Electoral results – this November… and if the drop in turnout affects the Congressional voting, improved odds in winning control of the Senate and weakening the Republican lock on the House.
debbie
@Baud:
Actually, I think it began with the certainty following Reagan’s election that a permanent majority was the solution to all problems.
hellslittlestangel
Even if Trump drives away only 5% of Republican voters, that’s millions of them. That’s a big deal. The party will survive, and that’s fine with me — I want the Republican party to live on for decades as a shriveling rump of howling simpletons, powerless to do anything but hinder a functional conservative party from re-forming.
JMG
@Baud: That analysis is exactly backwards. It would be far easier for the Republicans to regroup after a Trump-led disaster, which in retrospect would be seen as a one-off fluke than it would be for them to do so if Cruz is the nominee and he loses. First, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t get smoked as badly as Trump. Second, if Cruz becomes the face of the “establishment” and then loses, who will begin campaigning again on November 9? Donald Trump of course.
Cermet
With tRump running the party of bigots, haters and “woman don’t have a right to control their bodies” party the election will be hard fought, tough and very rough; Hillary very likely wins but it be close and frankly, will be a good bit closer than most of us will feel good about leading up to the election.
The thugs learn two very valuable lessons from this if they lose; first, bigotry sells and needs to be used more often in more direct ways; and most impotent, voter ID laws are their salvation for the foreseeable future and becomes their primary goal.
Betty Cracker
@Marc: Great point about the tribal component.
@Baud: Another excellent observation. The Teabagger rebranding initiative was cobbled together and successfully launched in time for the Obama administration’s first mid-term election.
Baud
@JMG: I agree. It’s hard to see how you could get more “real conservative” than Cruz.
Just One More Canuck
@Mustang Bobby: You mean that taking a picture with your daughter in a really disturbing pose while sitting on top of a statue of two parrots fucking is tacky?
Baud
@Cermet:
My sense as well.
MattF
The WaPo has an article on how the Donor Class is reacting to the prospect of a Trump nomination. They’re planning to fund and promote a national campaign to support local candidates and try to stem the damage. Do you see the problems? 1) The oligarchy hasn’t quite discovered yet that they have no constituency outside the Beltway (actually, outside K Street)– but we inhabitants of M-Street-and-beyond are going to let them know, pretty soon. 2) Former Republican voters who stay home. 3) Also, I should say, Democrats.
rk
I’m wondering what it’ll take for Trump to lose the support of his fans. Today he apparently tweeted an image of Cruz’s wife and Melania Trump side by side. Obviously the image of Heidi Cruz is unflattering (I don’t think Melania looks all that either-but that’s just a personal opinion). But what is this? This is insane beyond belief! Who does that.? At some point I fully expect Trump to pull his pants down on live TV just to prove how large his “hand” is. And when he does that, I won’t be surprised if his supporters love him even more. They remind me of Justin Beiber’s fans. Except those are preteen girls and Trump fans are grown men (supposedly).
JMG
It’s always prudent to assume elections will be close and hard fought, but I am not so sure Trump can make it close no matter how hard he fights. Clinton is very much disliked by her opponents. Trump is loathed by his, and appears to go out of his way to make sure things stay that way.
Let me put it this way. Trump has unprecedented opposition from women and unprecedented support from sports talk radio callers. One of those groups is larger than the other.
Anya
@Marc: I understand what you’re saying about the tribal component but it’s not the same with the republicans. Republicans are very destructive to the country and their policies have real and immediate impact. Just look at what happens at the state level. But if we had Trump as our nominee, I would have stayed home and not voted.
Keith P.
Before the summer is out, that flag will have a ouroboros on it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Can’t get, as in, lost them 35 or more years ago.
Betty Cracker
@rk: I saw that, and it is unbelievably tacky. It was in response to some Cruz-supporting super PAC slut-shaming Trump’s wife with an old nudie pic and the caption “Meet your next first lady.” The whole thing is just so cringe-worthy. I’ve never voted for a Republican in my life, and even I am deeply ashamed by the spectacle.
Princess
@Anya: “Who are these “Trump-hating religious conservatives”?
I think they are conservative Catholics, among whom Douthat counts himself. Most of this group will probably vote for Trump, but I think a measurable number will not. I have a very hard time seeing my in-laws, faithful Republican voters since before the flood, voting for Trump. Abortion is their big issue and they are not going to trust him enough on that to make it worth holding their noses and voting for him. I am sure they are not alone.
Betty Cracker
@LAO: I hope you (and Ross) are right. My father is also a Republican, but he’s a true wingnut, and I suspect he’s thrilled to vote for Trump. I don’t know for sure because we have a long-standing agreement not to talk about politics, LOL!
BlueNC
Another anecdote, from a baby boomer family member who lives in Texas: “I didn’t think it was possible to make me vote for Hillary, but if it’s Hillary versus Trump, I just might have to.”
MattF
@Princess: And what about Hispanic evangelicals? There’s one in my workplace, and he’s something of a wingnut… but I haven’t asked him about Trump. And I’m not going to.
Anya
@rk: On top of that the secret he’s threatening to reveal about Heidi Cruz is mental illness and feeling suicidal at one point in her life. First of all, most women are not models with flashy pictures so that whole comparison is offensive and off putting to most women. Second, a presidential candidate who sees depression as a shameful secret is someone who will not get a lot of support. Trump has no redeemable quality. Aside from bigotry and the tribal aspect of politics he should get no support.
LAO
@Betty Cracker: I have the same agreement with my dad! Unfortunately, my poor liberal mother doesn’t. So all of this has been reported to me second hand.
I’ve said it before, as ridiculous as it seems, I’m way more afraid of Cruz. Nobody grabs defeat from the jaws of victory like the Democrats.
Baud
@Anya:
Well, he’s supposedly good on trade and entitlements if you believe what he says or what people say about him.
bemused
Apparently Mormon Mitt Romney speaking at NRCC dinner repeated the joke about Trump’s “several foreign wives” with the punch line, “There are jobs Americans won’t do.”
Maybe it’s just me but that’s a joke unbefitting of anyone who seeks or has sought to be president though I imagine it went over well with that audience.
MattF
@LAO: I was very worried about Cruz for a while– but the campaign has revealed who he really is. Still a threat, IMO, but a lot more vulnerable than I originally thought.
BGinCHI
Pretty sure this is why Republican primary voters are so catshit crazy.
I wish I was kidding.
MattF
@bemused: I wasn’t offended– McCain has done and said worse. However, the concept of Mitt having a sense of humor is disconcerting.
LAO
@MattF: I hope you’re right. As a female, Jewish , liberal New Yorker, Cruz is actually my political nightmare on every level.
Baud
The whole spectacle on the GOP side is a useful reminder of just how much the Republicans can get away with in the eyes of The Village.
Chris
@Anya:
Agreed, I think. It’s kind of hard to hypothesize, because I can’t imagine any scenario in which the Democratic party deteriorates to the point that Trump or someone like him is the nominee, without having been in a state of extreme deterioration for so long that I would’ve already jumped ship years and maybe decades earlier.
Kay
I think the vast majority of them will line up behind Trump. I think part of what’s happening is we’re recognizing that people like Douthat are less and less relevant.
I just hope Democrats see this as the gift that it is and don’t take the easiest road, which is “whatever you think of us, look at how bad they are!”
The Democratic Party could use some shake-ups, too. They shouldn’t take this as license to just run 2008 and 2012 over again. For one thing I don’t think it will “work” and for another that’s missing an opportunity they have been handed.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: Lefties think they’ve heard him say decent things about those issues, and about war. Of course what he’s basically said is that with him in charge all the same stuff will work out great because he’s just that good at life. On trade/jobs for instance, in his own business career has he ever sacrificed a dollar of profit to protect workers’ jobs? He wants to slash taxes and kick Muslim ass. So even the things where he’s supposed to be decent are actually things where he’s as terrible as any Republican. He has no ideology, just an obnoxious level of self-confidence.
I think his best quality is that he obviously doesn’t give a shit about Christianity.
MattF
@BGinCHI: The really fun thing about the Toxoplasmosis parasite is that it make mice lose their fear of cats! Evolution at work, I guess.
bystander
@Anya:
Trump’s method is to after the other person’s perceived weakness and attack it like a jackal on carrion. (Do jackals eat carrion?) Trump also goes after a target’s supposed strength and make it a vulnerability, as he did when he savaged McCain for getting his bones broken while a guest at the Hanoi Hilton. Cruz did similarly in publishing that softcore porn shot of Malingus but it’s now backfiring if Trump forces him to address how his wife saw her life going down the toilet when she had to give up her career and a reliably large income in order to follow him around the vast wasteland of Texas.
Baud
@Chris:
We’ve had deeply unpopular nominees, but I can’t think of a Democratic nominee that has been as much of a national embarrassment as Trump, at least not in elections since FDR.
The most analogous Dem I can think of to Trump is Andrew Jackson.
craigie
@BlueNC:
“Just might have to” == “won’t”
Chris
@Baud:
Yep. It’s quite telling that things on the Republican side had to have gotten this bad (Donald Trump) before they’d start speaking about a candidate the way they do as a matter of course about center-left moderates like Obama and the Clintons.
Loviatar
First they were called Rebels, then they were called Dixicrats, then you called them Reagan Democrats, now they’re being called working class whites.
Why don’t we call them what they really are, bigots who are a little better at hiding their racism than the previous generation.
Anya
I don’t know if they’re considered Jack Kemp disciples but my in-laws are affluent northeast republicans. They will never EVER vote for Trump. They find him tacky and unworthy to be the standard bearer of the party of Lincoln. My father-in-law views him as nothing more than a crass reality t.v. host. All of them voted for Obama in 08 and 2012 but they still considered Republicans. I’ve never heard them talk about abandoning the party until recently when Trump and Cruz became the party’s face.
I had to laught when Gloria Borger said that Trump might put Pennsylvania and Ohio in play.
Chris
@Baud:
Right. I mean, pre-FDR, sure, of course I can see someone as bad as Trump. But that’s just it, pre-FDR, I probably would not have been a Democrat. For reasons that had much more to do with the party’s general makeup than with the specific candidate they happened to cough up at that point in time – because the candidates ultimately are just representations of their constituencies.
bemused
@MattF:
If a Dem had used this joke, there would be Republican outrage!
Mitt and other Republicans for that matter could take some snark lessons from Obama but snarky humor is lost on Republican voters.
Peale
@Feudalism Now!: yep. I think the votes up for grabs are the Republican establishment…which can be measured in the hundreds.
FlipYrWhig
@Anya: Chris Matthews says that all the time about the Rust Belt too. Pundits are never going to give up on this idea that there are whole states full of smudge-faced hardhats with names ending -wicz and -ski determining the outcome of every election.
raven
whatever
Baud
@bemused: To be fair, it’s not like Trump attended a baseball game in Cuba or danced the tango in Argentina. Talk about outrageous!
Patricia Kayden
@Anya: Douthat and his ilk refuse to acknowledge that the so-called White working class is attracted to Trump’s rhetoric because it echoes their ingrained racism. And no way should the Democratic Partytry to attract such voters.
Kay
@Patricia Kayden:
They don’t have to “attract his voters”. They have their own working class voters. I hope they don’t use this as an excuse to avoid coming up with a coherent, integrated strong position on trade and wages and how their policies benefit the 70% of people who work and don’t have a college degree.
Baud
@Kay: And I hope, if they do this, they don’t get accused of not doing it.
Baud
@Kay: BTW, I saw that DOL has been putting out some new wage regs. Thoughts?
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden: It’s been more than 50 years since the Democratic Party changed from being the labor party to the civil rights party, and the Republicans changed from being the capital party to the bigotry party. There are still vestiges of the former identities that shape what the parties stand for, but, by and large, that’s how they shake out.
satby
@Marc: it’s not tribal when the other party is borderline insane.
BlueNC
@craigie: I don’t think so. I think he’s trying to say that Trump is unacceptable, so his choices are Hillary or stay home. It works for me.
WereBear
I think you have nailed the Trump demographic.
Percysowner
@BGinCHI:
The only counter to this is that the stereotype of the typical Trump reporter is a manly, man who has dogs, is the alpha leader, and takes them hunting. They wouldn’t be so “wussy” as to own an independent cat that has no gratitude for their care. The other stereotype is those soft old liberals, gay guys and women who can’t get a man own cats. Like I said, it’s the stereotype, but still.
Baud
@Percysowner:
Memories of Pajama Boy!
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Patricia Kayden: Which is amusing, because the white working class used to be a mainstay of Democratic politics, before it became the “white working class”.I remember when strong labor unions and workers in general were reliable voters for Democrats, because those voters were smart enough not to vote against their economic interests. I don’t include the Dixiecrats in that cqtegory, because they were avowed racists who registered as Dems because Lincoln was a Republican, until Nixon and Raygun made it okay for them to call themselves Republicans.
bemused
@Baud:
Ha! I think Republicans are green with jealousy that Obama and his family are grounded, smart, funny, damned attractive and greatly admired. They can only dream of a conservative candidate and family that could compete just on style alone. They wouldn’t ever admit that (they manage to turn their turds into pearls while uglifying the Obama family) but it must be very galling for them.
The Other Bob
I fear you are right and expect Trump will still get 45ish% of the vote.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Matt
@Princess:
Shorter: “We were totally OK with the vulgarity, the bigotry, the love of torture, and the misogyny – but then we heard he might not be 100% committed to enforcing the rules we’ve decided our imaginary friend demands we impose on women’s bodies. NO VOTE!”
Can somebody put a rush order on that meteor?
Anya
@Kay: How do you attract them? In 2012 I was canvasing in poor white areas in Cuyahoga County with some union guys. In some run down houses that had Sherrod Brown signs, I was told things like “I will never vote for the N” and at one time, some angry guy pulled a gun on us and told us to leave his lawn. Granted, these were rare incidents but how do you counter misinformation and bigotry.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I think the Republicans are still the capital party; the bigotry is just how they got the rubes to sign up for the upward transfer of wealth. Trump is upsetting the apple cart by giving the rubes the bigotry straight up. That’s what’s upset the establishment Repubs, but I suspect Trump is very malleable on that score, judging by the tax and healthcare positions he’s cribbed from Paul Ryan.
It would be nice if the Dems could walk and chew gum on civil rights and labor. I think they’re learning to, but it sure took a while.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rk:
Trump acting like a normal politician. Trump is just one of the Right Wing shock jocks turned candidate. The second he stops is his buffoon act and tries to lead it’s over for him.
The bigger problem for the GOP is what comes after Trump. Trump and Cruz have shown by acting like a horses rear end a candidate can blow past everyone else in the primary and then lose the actual election. That’s not a good future for the GOP.
cleek
of course they will fall in line.
given the choice between maybe having to hold their noses while voting for a Republican or voting for a Clinton (or a (eek) SOCIALIST!!!), they’ll have no problem at all voting for Trump.
it’s nice to pretend he’s going to destroy the GOP. but he won’t. rationalization will fix everything.
acallidryas
I’d agree that the Republican party has been the racist confederate party for a long time, but there are a fair number of Republicans who have been able to pretend that it’s not. I know a few who are, “I’m not racist, but….” types who are obviously racist if you talk to them about anything but would swear up and down that they’re not and are very genteel types who aren’t going to vote for someone who won’t let them pretend that they’re not. Remember, a lot of Republican minority outreach over the past few years hasn’t been to minorities, it’s been to those types-the white Republicans who would like to say they’re not voting for a racist party. Then there’s a few very non-racist people I know who voted for the Republicans in spite of the racism, people who are all for Business and maybe were uncomfortable with the racist parts of the party, but could turn away and since that wasn’t the reason they were voting for the party kind of ignore it and sweep it under the rug. They have sworn up and down they are not voting for Trump or Cruz and absolutely do not appreciate that they can’t ignore that part of the party anymore.
There are lots of people who could pretend they didn’t hear the racist dogwhistles but absolutely do not appreciate the racist bullhorns.
Marc
@satby: The party hasn’t always been that way, however. I’m in Ohio – I disagree with the Republicans here, but we’re not facing Kansas or Wisconsin (or Southern) level chaos here. That’s the basic picture that a lot of Republicans have of their own party.
In truth, we have seen a lot of migration from the Republicans to the Democrats. 20 years ago central Ohio was a Republican stronghold; Columbus had a republican mayor and city council. There are now no elected county-level Republicans at all. People simply switched to the Dems. But the process took decades (thus the tribal loyalty comment.)
Good news: Trump may be the catalyst that drives the remaining reasonable people out of the party.
Chris
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Even though racism was the chief motivator, it certainly didn’t hurt that the South was a very impoverished part of the country even by the standards of the time, so the New Deal and similar policies were pretty much all gain and no loss for the voters. And switching from Democrat to Republican in the seventies was, also, chiefly motivated by race, but it probably also didn’t hurt that the South was doing a lot better than it had been a couple generations earlier – so a lot more people would’ve felt secure enough to join the Party Of The Rich.
JMG
@Betty Cracker: I actually think that some of the strongest opposition to Trump within the GOP is from the finance side of the 1 percent and the merely affluent who share the values of the 1 percent, executives of smaller banks and such. 1. Those folks hate uncertainty, and nobody including Trump himself has any idea what his economic policies are. 2. Those folks are totally tied into the globalization Trump professes to hate. 3. Deep down, they know Trump would be a disaster if elected, which would destroy one of the most powerful myths in our society — that rich people know what they’re doing or they wouldn’t be rich.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m traveling and mostly offline offline, but I had to get on BJ to read reactions to the wife pics. Trump never fails to amaze.
Chris
@JMG:
4: Trump is the candidate of the rabble, and what good One Percenter and aspiring One Percenter wants to associate with that? Even when it’s “their” rabble.
Percysowner
@Marc:
Chaos, no but if you are a woman, Ohio is a bad place to be. Kasich and the Republican legislature has closed 2/3 of the abortion clinics and have defunded Planned Parenthood. There is a full scale assault on a woman’s right to control her own body in Ohio.
I should also add a full out assault on labor unions. Kasich and the legislature tried to turn Ohio into Right to Work and were beaten only because the unions took it the people and got that overturned. Kasich is trying as hard as he can to make Ohio into a southern state.
Marc
@Percysowner: Yup, no quarrel here; Kasich acts as a brake to the Tea Party faction on some things, but abortion isn’t one of them. Education is also getting starved for funds. But it’s not remotely as radical as other states – Ohio Republicans aren’t Kansas or Texas Republicans.
Betty Cracker
@JMG: Good point about destroying the myth and the gaping hole where Trump’s platform is supposed to be. I suspect they could turn him if they tried, though — make him see the light on globalization. That would entail Trump changing positions, but that’s never been a problem for him before. Basically, this is a narcissistic quest for Trump, and he’ll do whatever he has to do to get the validation he so desperately craves.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: I dunno. In my weaker moments I feel like if the “white working class” wants to vote for Republicans, instead of Democrats spending a lot of energy trying to win them over, they should give up on them. Let them reshape the Republican Party instead. The result would be a lot better than a Republican Party dominated as it is now by pro-lifers, home-schoolers, and car dealers.
Splitting Image
@rk:
Losing.
schrodinger's cat
@rk:
Behaving like a normal human being.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Democrats actually win the demographic making less than 50,000 in most states, and lose the >100,000 making demographic in most states. That can’t happen unless at least a significant minority of working class white people are already voting for the Democrats since white people make up around 70% of the electorate nationally.
ETA: I balk against painting all working class white people as irredeemable bigots. There also may be regional factors that complicate blanket assertions about working class white people.
Lee
I found out why some Republicans will stay home. I spoke with a guy at work who is pretty much the definition of low information voter. Smart enough in other things just doesn’t give a shit when it comes to politics.
He has voted Republican since he cast his first vote for Reagan’s first term. He doesn’t do nuance or depth. He just votes Republican oblivious to all external stimuli.
Trump punched through that obliviousness. When he mention how breathtakingly racist Trump is we pointed out that Trump is just explicitly saying what Republicans have been dog-whistling for years.
Something similar with fact free statements. Trump just dials it to 11 instead of keeping at a 5.
He said that if Trump is the nominee he is staying home. I told him if he really wants to make sure the Republicans change their ways and not nominate someone like this again, he needs to vote straight Dem.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I balk at that too and don’t think I did. But it sure is a common trope here at Balloon Juice. I’ve given up pushing back on it.
gvg
There are or were a fair number of Republican voters who really weren’t exactly bigots. Think white privilege blindness not malice. People who missed the dog whistles because they didn’t get wised up by something, life, friends, not observant, whatever. People who were completely missing facts that were easily knowable but they didn’t bother so they actually do think there are special rules for minorities which make them resentful, and who never see the need for protections.
That kind may run away from Trump. There may be a lot of them, I can’t tell, but many people just don’t pay that much attention to the news or politics. I was that way for decades even though I voted mostly Democrat, I didn’t read up on anything until just before an election and that is more work than many do, especially overworked 2 job working class.
My memories may be colored golden but when I was young, most of the religious people I knew tried to be nice to people. The current religious seem to push being mean. It just seems so uninspiring to me. I’d like to see some push back on that. One of the most religious coworkers I have had, always spoke so nicely to everyone and took vacation time to go to Missisippi after Katrina and help shovel mud out of old peoples homes. She made sleeping bags on mud and gloves being eaten away every day by who knows what in that mud sound funny. Cruz and the Falwell inspired types seem like fake religious to me. They have degraded the concept of religion.
Tom Q
I wonder if all the Eeyores who are now saying “Trump will get at least 45 percent” or “The election’ll be a lot closer than people think” are the same ones who were confidently telling us six months ago that Jeb would be the nominee?
Just because disaster didn’t strike last time or the time before doesn’t mean it won’t this time. Like someone said recently, people predicted a financial meltdown due to housing for several years before it actually came. But when it finally came, it was a doozy.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: You were talking about rubes, one doesn’t have to be of limited means to be a rube, there are plenty of well-off idiots. Balloon Juice has its tropes, in addition to what you mentioned:
1. MBAs are responsible for the current financial mess
2. H1-Bs is stealing mah jerbs
3. Engineers and people who major in the sciences are socially challenged.
schrodinger's cat
@gvg: I think the mean ones are more organized and make a lot of noise, I don’t think they are the majority.
TriassicSands
It’s hard to believe that Douthat is a Republican — he has no idea who the other Republicans are. Quite awhile ago I gave up reading Douthat; his columns were just so clueless. But with the campaign in full swing I’ve read several of his columns and I can’t believe how incredibly out of touch with the GOP he is.
And George W. Bush wasn’t?
Thymezone
“There is no possibility that the Republican party will survive ….”
I thought that’s what we were going for.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t get your tangents sometimes, but okay.
muddy
@Percysowner: As this is the stereotype it amazes me that they are in favor of a man who primps and paints like a trollop.
Pat
I cannot thank you enough for reading Douthat so I don’t have to.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Husband kitteh says that sometimes too, so you are in good company.
All I was trying to say was, that as thoughtful and smart BJers are they are, they still have their pet theories, some of which I have listed in my comment.
Turgidson
But this never happened. Because whenever the topic of race is brought to the attention of a Republican, they immediately remind everyone who will listen that Southern Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act. So the Democratic Party and, more importantly the liberals who identify with it, are the real racists. Forever and always.
JaneE
I carpool with an officer in the local GOP women’s club. Her first and second choices have already dropped out. Her husband supports Trump. Even she says that with an eyeroll, but I am afraid to ask her what she will do if he is the nominee. Lifelong Republican support dies hard, and I don’t know if even Trump is enough to make her sit out. Trump used to be way down the list of preferred candidates in our area, but there were a dozen choices then. We usually see yard signs, even for primaries, when the GOP has multiple candidates. This year not a one, but our primary is in June, so they may come out later. And we do have more than our share of bigots.
Turgidson
@Feudalism Now!:
I think they realize now that they’ve lost control. What they don’t and won’t ever acknowledge is that Trump is the logical conclusion of the decades of race baiting, post-truth electioneering the GOP has gleeful pursued. To wannabe intellectual twits like DoucheHat, the GOP is a led by a bunch of high-minded, entrepreneurial, God-fearing men and women who know what’s best for its equally God-fearing base. The election-year tradition of ginning up fear, resentment and hate either never happened or was just an unpleasant side effect of a hard-fought campaign, and no one really meant it or believed it anyway.
And the “establishment” GOP and Village hangers-on will believe until they’re pushing up daisies that Trump was a one-off fluke who in no way represents the party or confirms everything we stupid hippie liberals have been saying about the GOP’s intellectual and emotional descent into braindead madness. Just like they still believe, more than 7 years later, that Obama getting elected was a fluke and that he’s an empty suit. They’ll go to their graves believing that nonsense too.
And, given how inept (by design) the Village media is, these GOP fake intellectuals will suffer no harm to their careers or credibility with their peers for allowing Trump to happen or refusing to admit that they had any part in it.
And while I think Trump is quite likely to throw the election convincingly to Hillary, I predict the GOP will find a way to dust itself off and stagger on in more or less its current state. It always has before. And they’ll probably find some bullshit scandal to hang on Hillary in the first 2 years and win another fucking wave midterm election and the cycle will go on.
Turgidson
@Marc:
Sure, but this is not a fair comparison since the parties are completely asymmetrical in temperament and grip on sanity right now. The entire national GOP is barking mad. Kasich is the closest thing to a sane person who ran this year and he’s still a raging asshole and a rightwing nutjob on almost every topic. If the Democrats were about to nominate their own version of Donald Trump (say, someone flirting with violence in ginning up a class war, who knows nothing except that he is a Great Man) and the GOP ran the same candidates but didn’t have to deal with Trump, I honestly don’t think I could vote for either. Cyanide might be the best option in that scenario.
But if the GOP ran a center-right mirror image of Hillary Clinton (I’m thinking of someone like former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, former Virginia Senator John Warner maybe, I dunno. Someone sane and open to evidence, at the very least), I could probably hold my nose and vote for that person if the Democrats ran a crazy person. But the GOP is about as likely to nominate someone like that as I am to become the King of England.
Chris
@Turgidson:
From their point of view, the belief makes a certain sense. In every election since Reagan, the majority of GOP primary voters have supported the establishment candidate – Bush, Bob Dole, Bush, McCain, Romney. Sure, they express some vague interest in the Pat Robertsons and Mike Huckabees, but ultimately they always fall in line with the elites. It was easy for the media and elites to convince themselves that they did this because they recognized that these wise elite men were simply the best qualified to run the country (especially since it’s what they wanted to believe). And not because, say, these establishment candidates were going out of their way to pander to the voters’ racial and cultural prejudices.
Trump is the first thing in a very long time that’s hit them hard enough to make them blink. They’d gotten so comfortable closing their eyes to the racism, they don’t know what to say right now. And they’re still wildly grasping at any explanation other than the R word.
Grung_e_Gene
Family Anecdote: My sister who loathed W, because I was in the USMC at the time, has been voting straight Republican since 2008, and more fervently in 2012 and 2014. She is the quintessential Republican woman voter; white working class female with two children, little in savings and moderate debt.
She absorbed the right-wing lies that Obama would never help her and went so far as to vote for Governor Ruiner here in Illinois (despite my pleas).
However, having seen the way Ruiner is fanatically trying to destroy unions and the the mother of two girls she is absolutely disgusted by the Republicans, Trump and their outright buffoonish misygony and in the Illinois March Primary voted for HRC, Tammy Duckworth and will vote for every Democratic woman candidate in the general.
Based on this one lone example; I do think Trump is going to burn down the Republican Party.
mclaren
I hole-hardedly agree, but allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive porpoises I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there.
Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this, I am here to bring you back into the reel world. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost
spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn’t take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It’s clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts.
You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother’s mating name that when you put the petal to the medal, you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.
fuckwit
@Anya: Troll’s campign slogan is really “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN”
Ain’t gonna happen. A white America is long-dead. The new America is multicultural, multi-racial.