“Something’s happening here,
What it is ain’t exactly clear . . .
Some Boomer Band, “For What It’s Worth”
Introduction
I think we should be frank with one another at this point and just acknowledge that the world is having itself an upheaval. If this is not the Fourth Turning that Howe and Strauss wrote about back in the day, it is bidding fair to approximate some kind of white water turning. As the saying goes, “first they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” But all along that process is a good deal of churn.
Let me put some of the events of the last several months into one paragraph. Read these signs together with me, and then let’s see if we can agree that someone needs to tell those seismologists to get the heck off the side of that volcano.
In the UK, Labor was shellacked in an electoral beat down for the ages. The secessionists of Alberta obtained enough signatures to get secession on the ballot, but some legal challenges have been made, naturally, which should calm everybody down. Albertans are the irate customer at the returns window being told that “terms and conditions may apply.” Trump foe and long-established Republican incumbent Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost to a primary challenger, and then in a hold-my-beer follow-up, establishment Republican John Cornyn lost to Ken Paxton. That race cost almost a hundred million dollars—Paxton was outspent 9 to 1, and won the race anyhow. He won it walking away, whistling, and with his hands in his pockets. Like, by almost 30 points. And then, because this is turning into an annus mirabilis, it is actually looking like a Republican nobody might be elected mayor of Los Angeles, and the same thing at the gubernatorial level is actually conceivable. Please note that I am not saying that California will actually commit such an outrage. But I think that we can reckon it as a miracle that we are even talking about the prospect. And then to top off this year of wonders, the Republicans appear to be taking real advantage of the redistricting window that just opened up for them.
The Base and the Based
The big difference in the Cornyn/Paxton race was the full-throated endorsement that Trump gave to Paxton in the backstretch of the campaign. He had been willing to avoid doing that if the Senate had been willing to pass the SAVE act. But they didn’t, and so Trump said okay then, and endorsed Paxton.
Now when I have seen the talking heads of teevee talking about this, people will say things like “Well, of course Trump still has enormous clout with his base . . .” But, they say, it will be a different story in the general election. “Sure, he’s batting a thousand in his primary endorsements but . . . ” So the argument goes. However, just a short time ago, as in weeks ago, we were being told that Trump was losing his base. The based right was having a civil war, the thing was cracking up, MAGA is divided, and so forth. But this earlier talking point turns out to have been wide of the mark, by yards.
The Cornyn/Paxton race was close until Trump endorsed Paxton, and the fact that there was a stampede in Paxton’s direction should tell us something. And what that has revealed is really pretty straightforward. The podcasting class is not the same thing as the car mechanic class.
Podcasters and congressmen-types who used to be MAGA really are divided, and the defections in that tier have really been remarkable—Tucker, Megan Kelly, Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Green, et al. There is something significant going on there, but I don’t believe it is anything like a civil war. Defections are not the same thing as splits.
Let me put it another way. It is hard for me to believe those people who say that Trump’s influence will be shown to have withered when we get to the general election. That his because these are the same people who were saying that Trump’s influence had withered in MAGA world—the base is divided!—because of the handling of the Epstein files, or the Iran war, etc. But the current explanation for the long series of Trump’s primary endorsement wins is that the base is in the palm of Trump’s hand. Well, which is it?
In short, you can’t be arguing in March that the base has fractured, then argue in May that the base is monolithic and the Republican Party is Trump’s party now, and then go back to saying that the base is divided again in July. You can’t do that, but I fully anticipate that there will be many who go ahead and do it anyhow.
The Iran War and the Base
I have been saying—in a number of different places, whether here, in interviews, etc—that if Trump settled the war, and got clean out well before the midterms, the war wouldn’t be a problem for his base. He campaigned on a rejection of forever wars, and I do believe that his base would really be distressed if he betrayed that commitment, and got us embroiled in one. “Walking away from his promise” would be if this thing turned into Afghanistan. Any attempt at globalist nation building really would divide the base.
But I now believe need to add one additional qualification to all this. I do believe that administration officials need to stop saying just “one or two days” more. That can get old pretty quick, even if you think you understand the strategy being used. But at the same time, the active war-fighting is no longer going on, the war is largely out of the headlines, and America is just standing on Iran’s oxygen hose. Time is only Iran’s friend if the stand-off becomes a wildly unpopular domestic issue back here in the States, and it does not look as though that is happening. That means that time is not Iran’s friend.
What play does Iran have left to them apart from Trump losing the House in the midterms? But that would require the war to become a hot political issue in the States in the months prior, which it does not appear to be doing. The war in Iran has turned into the siege of Iran, and has consequently sidled out of the headlines. So run this thought experiment. What is the Iranian regime’s play if Trump retains the House and the Senate?
Theater Kids and the Chattering Classes
Many observers have noted how the digital revolution has by-passed the gatekeepers of old, and who watches ABC, NBC, or CBS anymore? The vast improvements in Zoom technology within the last ten years have introduced a heavy small-d democratic element into the realm of political commentary. Piles of people did what piles of people do, which was the pile in.
And we have been at it long enough for the telecasting right to develop the inevitable stratification of different types of people. It used to cost a lot of money to become part of the chattering class, but now the barrier to entry is low. Quality microphones are cheap, the technology is readily available, and YouTube is right there. Everybody gets to take their shot, and the right now has its very own chattering class.
Candace is the hardest to describe because she combines three distinct roles—she is the Manchurian Podcaster, she is the Right Wing Theater Kid, and she is the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. So she has those three aspects covered. It has worked thus far, but I believe her doom approacheth.
Tucker has wandered into uncharted territory, and is listening to the wrong people. And I have seen a lot more indications that Tucker is losing his base than I have seen of Trump losing his. I have had way more people asking me “what’s up with Tucker?” than I have heard “what’s up with Trump?” Part of Trump’s “thing” is to keep everyone off balance, and we have all budgeted for that by this point. When other people try it, like Tucker, it comes off as unbalanced. If Tucker hosts some screwball guest, nobody thinks “ah, art of the deal.”
As for the politicians, you always have to assume that such maneuverings are a political move. When they switch horses in the middle of the stream, they are expressing dissatisfaction with the horse they are dismounting. Sure. But what horse are they getting on? Perhaps it is the allure of a presidential nomination from the Libertarians, which is like entering a spavined mule in the Kentucky Derby.
Speaking of horses, there are the third-tier podcasters who have busied themselves with betting on the wrong one. The essential issue of our time is to repeal the 19th Amendment! The essential issue of our time is to free ourselves from Israeli domination! The essential issue of our time is to garner more clicks! Even hate clicks will do! Also fascinated horror clicks! Here a click, there a click, everywhere a click click!
Conservatives Who Pull Their Skirts Away
Tried and true conservatives have long complained about the Uni-party in Washington. The two political parties maintained separate identities in order to keep up appearances, but they were all in cahoots. Republican candidates would run to the right and then govern to the middle. Democratic candidates would run to the left and then govern to the middle. The end result, over time, was that the middle drifted steadily left, meaning that everybody and everything drifted steadily left.
Trump has been a genuine disruption. He is not a Uni-party guy, and that is the central cause of the malevolence directed at him. I applaud the disruption, believing it to have been long overdue. Anyone who does not rejoice over what has happened to the EPA must have a heart of stone. But I also believe that some of Trump’s proposals are bonkers, and that he himself is vulgar, crass, and very funny. All of that is true enough.
So the fastidious complain that Trump has degraded the political process, but if the entire truth were to be told we should acknowledge that the respectable establishment has fought against Trump in the dirtiest and most degraded ways possible. When it comes to grime-crime in politics the shiny establishment has outdone Trump by 10x.
Do you want to know what respectable establishment opposition to Trump has been like? I refer you to Booth Tarkington’s Penrod, and the chapter bearing the title of “Tar.” For those who struggle with allegory, the respectable Washington establishment is Georgie Bassett.
“’Little gentleman’?” said Georgie Bassett, with some evidences of disturbed complacency. “Why, that’s what they call ME!”
“Yes, and you ARE one, too!” shouted the maddened Penrod. “But you better not let anybody call ME that! I’ve stood enough around here for one day, and you can’t run over ME, Georgie Bassett. Just you put that in your gizzard and smoke it!”
“Anybody has a perfect right,” said Georgie, with, dignity, “to call a person a little gentleman. There’s lots of names nobody ought to call, but this one’s a NICE——”
“You better look out!”
Unavenged bruises were distributed all over Penrod, both upon his body and upon his spirit. Driven by subtle forces, he had dipped his hands in catastrophe and disaster: it was not for a Georgie Bassett to beard him. Penrod was about to run amuck.
“I haven’t called you a little gentleman, yet,” said Georgie. “I only said it. Anybody’s got a right to SAY it.”
“Not around ME! You just try it again and——”
“I shall say it,” returned Georgie, “all I please. Anybody in this town has a right to SAY ‘little gentleman’——”
Bellowing insanely, Penrod plunged his right hand into the caldron, rushed upon Georgie and made awful work of his hair and features.
Alas, it was but the beginning! Sam Williams and Maurice Levy screamed with delight, and, simultaneously infected, danced about the struggling pair, shouting frantically:
“Little gentleman! Little gentleman! Sick him, Georgie! Sick him, little gentleman! Little gentleman! Little gentleman!”
The infuriated outlaw turned upon them with blows and more tar, which gave Georgie Bassett his opportunity and later seriously impaired the purity of his fame. Feeling himself hopelessly tarred, he dipped both hands repeatedly into the caldron and applied his gatherings to Penrod. It was bringing coals to Newcastle, but it helped to assuage the just wrath of Georgie.
Penrod, which you may check out here. Read the chapters “Little Gentleman,” and “Tar.” Read them aloud to your family, and try to get through without wheezing.
On the right, there are now two kinds of “conservatives” aligned against Trump. The first would be the Georgie Bassett wing, aka the Mike Pence wing. Their continued connivance with all the dirt that has been thrown at Trump has “seriously impaired the purity of their fame,” but they continue to pretend that there is no tar in their hair, and that they are the party of “civility.” It would seem, in the light of recent primary results, that this group has no real future in the Republican Party, which is now thoroughly Trumpian. My only advice to them would be to hold off joining up with the Democrats . . . wait until after they have finished with their own disintegration. Perhaps a centrist party will take shape and become the new opposition party. Wait until then. The current Democrats are all thrust and no vector, and that is not, to use one of their words, sustainable.
The other kind of conservative opposed to the current administration is made up of those who discovered that being perpetually “in opposition” is way easier than actually trying to govern. Politics is the art of the possible, and governing means doing what you can do in real time. Being just a commenter means that you can sketch out your ideal scenario on the board, and everyone can discuss. But discussion is not governance. Criticism from outside is not governance. Talking into a microphone is not governance. Taking potshots is easy, and if you are in the opposition, opportunities for potshots are always available.
Hard line conservatives have been in the opposition since at least the time of FDR. Our opposition muscles are in really good shape. We know how to do that. But when Trump won in 2024, that moved quite a few conservatives out of their oppositional comfort zone. They actually had to be responsible to do things now, and so confronted with that prospect, they bolted instead. They did this by declaring that Trump had betrayed MAGA, and thus they had the luxury of reverting to their oppositional factory settings.
In the opposition, nobody asks you to do stuff.