So how does Donald Trump do it? Do what, you ask?
Entirely detached from identifiable conservative principles, and almost equally detached from a recognizable conservative record, he nonetheless is filling up venues with enthusiastic people who are responding to what they think is some kind of conservative vibe. What is it that enabled someone like Sarah Palin to go dithyrambic?
It isn’t anything conservative, of course, but it is not just smoke. There is a reason people are thinking what they do, and as a showman and entertainer, Trump knows how to exploit it. And as it happens, the two things he is energetically exploiting are the two things that the Republican establishment has resolutely refused to do for decades.
The first is that he says and does things that are outrageous to the pearl clutchers. They all gasp and get their dresses over their heads, and Trump simply doesn’t care. Whatever else he is not, Trump genuinely is not PC. True conservatism is also not PC, but they are very different kinds of not PC. A dog and a cat are both mammals and quadrupeds, but for all that, however much you might want it to be otherwise, a cat is not a dog.
I leave out of this formulation, of course, as a discussion for another time, any cats that might want to self-identify as dogs. My understanding is that some cool cats are like that. Something to do with their fathers.
The other thing Trump does is that he defends his turf. If you cross his line, you are the enemy and are treated accordingly. I am not saying his lines are in the right place, or that his enemies are the right ones, or that he is anything other than some variety of all screwed up. I am simply saying that he fights for his position (whatever it might happen to be at the moment). In this respect, he is just like the Left. They fight for their turf also. They defend their party, and they don’t even back away from their free-stuff-for-everybody berserkers. Shoot, one of them is doing pretty well in the Democratic primaries even as we speak.
So it is a simple fact that Donald Trump is not a conservative, however much of a conservative vibe he wants currently to exude. But is Donald Trump the first one? Is this the first time? These are simply “conservative principles don’t matter” chickens come home to the “elect-ability” roost. The Republican Party has demanded the inclusion of non-conservatives for a long time now. If Trump gets the Republican nomination as a non-conservative, will he be the first one? Ha. Definitions don’t matter, voting records don’t matter, principles don’t matter, and now, all of sudden, you want them to matter? Because Trump?
The problem that the respectable Republicans have with Trump is not that he is “not conservative.” It is that he is so gauche about it. But if he does well, the RINOs will adapt to it — money, influence and access are the great emollient. If he does not do well, and someone like Cruz gets the nomination, the RINOs will all go back to . . . attacking real conservatives.
A couple of questions. If Trump is not conservative (and I don’t really think he is, though I grant he may have some conservative and some liberal beliefs) why do the liberals despise him so much? Second, he has talked a lot about your borders. So is nationalism a conservative principle or a liberal one? (I suspect it is complicated like wealth). For example the Nazis were nationalists and this was used by the communists (who were globalists) to label them right wing. Of course, save nationalism, Nazi policies were very much left wing. But all the buy locally, or… Read more »
Part of it is simply envy of the mega-rich. But it is also partly a class thing, even though Americans don’t like talking about class. He strikes liberals as brash and boorish and vulgar. Ostentatious. Power-hungry. Not just willing but happy to smite his enemies. All the traits, in fact, that upper middle class kids are taught to conceal beneath a veneer of good manners.
Trump strikes everyone not brash and boorish and vulgar as brash and boorish and vulgar.
Trump is life imitating art: Al Czervik.
https://youtu.be/cMVvTl83gWg
That was hilarious. I was just reading Susan Wright’s article on Red State, titled “Go home, Sarah, you’re drunk.” I don’t like to be gratuitously unkind but Wright’s description of Trump as “the Republicans’ gilded toad” made me spew diet coke onto my keyboard.
Trump’s success in politics has reinforced something I have suspected for quite some time. That is most people who call themselves conservatives are nothing of the sort. They are perfectly happy having a large government when it comes to their children’s education, unchecked foreign policy, and domestic security.
You needed Trump to see that?
We’ve got Republican party filled to the brim with those sorts?
If that’s your standard, you can at most say the Trump is a lateral move, no?
Yanno, sometimes when I read this blog, I feel as if my vocabulary is incredible deficient– kind of like a third-grader at a physics convention. But when I looked up “dithyrambic,” I thought to myself, “Great word, but I will never have to apologize for not knowing what it means.”
I took Greek, and studied Dionysus in grad school, and I still looked it up. Granted, I’m a bit rusty and I tried to forget my Dionysian work, but still. Don’t feel bad for one second.
One of the reasons I read Wilson is to pick up on words like that. It’s kinda fun to let one just slip out during supper conversation. I will say no more, lest I be accused of being dithyrambic myself.
Dear Doug,
When I watch the slow-motion Trump-wreck I keep hearing echoes of James Polk. Anything in that?
Blessings,
Keith
It doesn’t matter that Trump isn’t a conservative because it’s clear that conservatism has failed. Electing self proclaimed conservatives has failed to reduce the size of government or reverse any of the accomplishments of the left. At some point one realizes it’s time to try a new strategy. Right now Trump has the best shot at dealing with big problems this country is facing such as the insecure border, illegal immigration, mass legal immigration, and a self defeating birthright citizenship law. I don’t see any other candidate who can credibly accomplish any of that.
av wrote: It doesn’t matter that Trump isn’t a conservative because it’s clear that conservatism has failed. I think the term conservative, and even the term liberal, falls short of the reality of what we are trying to capture. If we suppose that liberalism is the progressive view that embraces moral relativism, big government, socialism, secularism, humanism, nanny state, political correctness, homosexual agenda, abortion, feminism, cronyism, pork, pluralism, Keynesian economics, etc, etc, then what we are looking for is simply its opposite. The antithesis of all of those things is much greater than the term “conservative” can embody. In another… Read more »
This. Dead on.
If Republicans had been busy shrinking the state, rolling back Obama, etc. we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Instead, they sold us out, over and over and over …
At some point, it makes sense to decide that if we are going to have a huge state, we may as well have one that serves average Americans, instead of just immigrants and elites and pet wedge constituencies.
Again, why should Christians in 2016 wish to be conservative? What’s left that’s worth conserving in the Washington regime?
The fact that there is generally still a right to free speech. Editors can and do slam Obama without fear of being exiled to the gulag. The fact that, with few exceptions, it is difficult for a rich crook simply to buy a judge. The fact that law enforcement does not normally accept bribes to look the other way in the face of wrongdoing. The fact that, although the welfare system is badly planned and badly run, we don’t have many poor children starving in the streets or dying of treatable diseases. The fact that a very clever poor child… Read more »
All that, and the fact that we have the luxury of taking it so for granted that some of us don’t recognize things that are not a given and ask what is worth preserving.
Free speech? Tell it to Brendan Eich or Jason Richwine. There’s no need for gulags when it’s cheaper and more effective to suppress dissent by having one’s livelihood threatened by the volunteer thought police. I certainly wouldn’t keep my job long if I posted what I actually thought under my real name.
You’re right that the USA looks pretty good with regard to corruption and poverty compared to many of its client states. That’s a pretty low bar, though. Why settle for so little?
(I don’t regard the fact that anyone can end up at Harvard Law a benefit.)
I think what happened to Brendan Eich was all wrong, but it is something entirely outside the government’s control. I think most economic boycotts are wrong, but if one side does it (Million Moms boycotting JC Penney, Southern Baptists boycotting Disney), the other side will as well. The free market at work.
My point is that “free speech” is, in practice, worthless at the moment, so it doesn’t count as a point in favour of American conservatism (which has done much to suppress dissent from the right, itself).
You are right that as a legal right, the Mozilla situation had nothing to do with the right to free speech.
But it’s evidence that for a large portion of society, the principle of free speech is no longer valued. That raises two problems: one, the issue of people not valuing free speech, and the other, the issue of it being much more likely that government will cease to protect a right that no one cares about anymore, except for the ones interested in exercising it against popular opinion. So I think ashv has a point here.
I side with Mrs. Bean regarding the free speech issue. As loathsome as the actions were, they were taken by individuals (corporations), not by the government, which is the entity bound by the first amendment.
Trump has already done well and will be emulated whether or not he wins. It’s time for us to deal with reality as it is, and not as we hope. You can sit and pout and lament but that doesn’t change the fact that the electorate is a mass of mindless spoiled children. Cast your votes to the wind if you like but please, only if you’re not in a swing state. After all, it could have made a world of difference if you purists had voted for Romney in the last election. Think about how much different the situation… Read more »
Part of the reason we have any somewhat conservative candidates at all in this race is because so many voters “threw their vote to the wind” in 2012. Republicans lost the election, which sent the establishment a message that they need to provide more conservative candidates. And now, in 2016, we have numerous potential candidates (Cruz, Carson, Paul, maybe Rubio) who are at least somewhat more conservative than what we got last time. My point is, we are not throwing our vote away by refusing to vote for the RINO candidate given to us by the establishment. Rather, our refusal… Read more »
I see what you are saying, but the problem seems to be that the more ideologically pure the Republican nominee becomes, the less likely he is to win the general election. In other words, the closer we get to a true conservative the further we get from the Presidency. What really needs to happen is a cultural paradigm shift, where we have a conservative electorate. That is a multigenerational process, but one of the primary barriers to that shift is political correctness, which you must admit Trump has already started to erode. This is the value that he would bring… Read more »
Another barrier is the continued importation of large numbers of people with a preference for socialist government.
In my experience very young voters also have a preference for socialism. They have no skin in the game at that point. They still believe that the government can print more money to cover the debt. They think that wicked faceless people are demanding the payment of their student loans.
Yes. This is part of the reason I’m opposed to voting as a principle.
Is this anything more than what Plato, in the Gorgias, would’ve thought of as manipulation? Not real rhetoric because this is aimed at mere persuasion with no (little) concern for what is true?
Dithyrambic? Hey, I resemble that remark!
Actually, I had to go look it up. It’s related to dithyrambs, which certainly clarified things considerably. So, wildly erratic dithy ramblings?
Perhaps what we are hearing from Palin is the genuine anxiety attack we should all be feeling. Perhaps we should all be endorsing Trump and walking around muttering to ourselves. ;)
Let’s just hope if they do so, they keep their clothes on and lay off the wine.
“…. and they don’t even back away from their free-stuff-for-everybody berserkers. Shoot, one of them is doing pretty well in the Democratic primaries even as we speak.”?????????
What?
Who in the democratic party is not a “free-stuff-for-everybody berserker”????
Of course they’re all “free stuff for everybody berserkers.” I think the point was that Bernie actually admits to it, whereas many Democrats (and Republicans for that matter) try to not be so open with their socialist views. Remember all the controversy around calling Obama a socialist? He didn’t seem to like the label much, whereas Bernie embraces the label.
Ms. Clinton hasn’t really made herself so much the “free stuff for everybody” candidate. She is more of the “bathe in the blood of my enemies while standing atop a mound of 58 million dead babies and declaring an end to the patriarchal reign of heterosexual men” candidate
Ms. Clinton, the “free B.S. for everybody” candidate.??
BS is technically “stuff”. ; – )
All this “free coruption”, in the form of B.S. or stuff, is death served cold,
glopped with varios rhetorical “condiments”. : – (
“What is so crucial to Trump’s success, even within the Republican Party, is his almost total ditching of conservatism as a governing philosophy. He is doing the very thing Pat Buchanan could not, and would not do. And in this, he is following the advice of Sam Francis to a degree almost unthinkable. Here’s the concluding flourish of Francis’ 1996 essay: ‘I told [Buchanan] privately that he would be better off without all the hangers-on, direct-mail artists, fund-raising whiz kids, marketing and PR czars, and the rest of the crew that today constitutes the backbone of all that remains of… Read more »
-http://theweek.com/articles/599577/how-obscure-adviser-pat-buchanan-predicted-wild-trump-campaign-1996
Thinking out loud here, is there any chance that the Republican party leaders could tank Trump with some primary process chicanery? I have heard of the rare “faithless elector” who casts THE official vote against the winner, but those are in the general election and not the primary.
Let’s hope so. I can think of no quicker way to destroy the Republican party.
National Review just published an issue devoted to preventing Donald Trump from getting the GOP nomination. This was blatantly illegal, as NR recently became a tax exempt 501c3 organization (because they were about to go out of business) and is therefore prohibited from endorsing or opposing candidates for office: The regulations are quite explicit that nonprofit organizations must “not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” I doubt that the Obama administration will take any action against NR for this… Read more »
If elected, Trump might be the best thing to happen to this nation in 50 or even 100 years, and for one reason: People might actually start paying attention to what’s going on in the world. It is my contention that our nation’s problems stem not from the politicians, but the populace who are asleep. If Cruz becomes president, all the conservatives who voted for him will “check out” because their guy won, and they have no worries about what he will do. If, on the other hand, Hillary wins, they’ll also check out because, well, they did their best… Read more »
There may be more to conservatism than a vibe, but not even conservative National Review can decide why Donald Trump is bad. Many of the 22 articles in the current issue attacking Trump contradict each other. Don’t vote for Trump because his insults and name-calling reveal him to be an insecure weakling says one article. Another says don’t vote for Trump because he’s a fascistic, authoritarian type who will ignore the views of the people and impose his will on the nation. One article says don’t vote for Trump because he’s secretly planning to back down on all his tough… Read more »
You had me until “Salon”.
That’s fine. It’s not like I’m referencing the opinion of the author Salon article. The article provides actual quotes from the different articles in NR. I linked to it, because that’s a lot easier than linking to the four different NR articles themselves.
But if you prefer ignorance to knowledge, and if you believe that since these quotes from the National Review articles appeared on Salon.com you can pretend National Review didn’t say say these things, more power to you.
GO USA!!!
One reason I seldom view either Salon or National Review (and often frequent this blog) is precisely because I prefer knowledge to ignorance. Your premise, and that of the Salon article you linked, seems to be that one publication can’t have diverse opinions or something. Every article written by everyone on staff must apparently be in lock-step. One thing I believe makes this country still relatively great (GO USA! in your words) is that our media outlets are still free to have divergent views and voices. Different people can actually have different opinions, or different specific slants and approaches to… Read more »
Thank you for this interesting article Dougals – the media often want a simplistic narrative but Trump is far from simple: he is the complex product of a malaise in US politics and a growing alienation within US culture towards the outside world: https://thereluctantsamizdatwordpresscom.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/the-power-of-a-lie/
Did you know what Donald Trump’s paternal grandmother’s name was?
It was Elizabeth Christ.
Just sayin’…
This article explains why most of the people who support Trump don’t care if he’s “conservative.” http://www.amren.com/news/2016/01/conservatives-blast-trump/
In other words, these people don’t care if he is conservative as long as he is racist?
You could put it that way, I guess. I would say that they’re getting tired of voting for people who never represent their interests, but only care about sending their boys off to die in yet another Middle East war and cutting taxes for billionaires. They’re sick and tired of being demonized as murderous haters of everyone who’s not like themselves by the media, schools, government and churches (both liberal and “conservative”). The GOP and Dems are filling the country up with non-whites and our entire culture tells them 24/7 that white people hate them and are doing everything they… Read more »
I forgot to ask you: your pen name was familiar so I looked it up. Given that Kefauver was a Southern liberal, are you using his name ironically? I thought it was amusing that he campaigned against the pin-up girl Betty Page. There are now high-end vintage stores selling dresses inspired by her! He also tried to ban switchblades. Odd.
Actually, I know nothing about him except that he was once a nominee for VP. I think for the Dems. I just happened to see the name recently and thought it would make a good commenting handle.
He was the old-style Democrat, the kind I liked. Before they started supporting baby-killing. He supported the TVA, and was one of only three Southern senators who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto. Which I am going to go read now. As a Canadian living in the U.S., I have a ton of American history to catch up on.
Here’s another article talking about why so many white people love Trump, and couldn’t care less about “conservatism.” And why more and more white people these days respond to accusations of racism with “So?”
It’s been hilarious to watch hysterical left wing columnists (a very high percentage of them Jewish, BTW) freak out about Trump’s popularity with white people. “Can you believe it?!? These racists that we’ve been continuously denouncing as racists for 50 years are racists!!!”
http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2016/1/25/the-harmless-racket