In a timely column given today's Indiana primary election, Eugene Robinson looks at the rapid decline of the Rethuglican political infrastructure in this past year with the ascension of neo-fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump. For decades, up to and including the era of St. Ronnie of Hollywood, the Rethugs have cultivated conservative Democrats (e.g. the Southern Strategy), largely blue collar, rural and Bible-thumping. Using distracting social wedge issues that wingnut Pat Buchanan once summarized as "God, guns and gays," they were successful in selling an agenda that didn't speak to the economic and social needs of their new following. Now the chickens have come home to roost in Rump's xenophobic and bigoted campaign. As Robinson notes,
"Traditional Republican orthodoxy calls for small government, low taxation, tight money, deregulation, free trade and cost-saving reforms to entitlement programs. If I were independently wealthy, that might seem an agreeable set of policies. Ditto if I were one of the “small-business owners” to whom GOP candidates sing hymns of praise.Rump, who was born into wealth as a second-generation one-tenth of 1 percenter, should be anathema to "Reagan Democrats" who say they value wealth through working and meritocracy. But he has tapped into this anger of the duped working-class Rethugs, much to the chagrin of the conservative economic elites who ran the Party until now. Robinson continues:
But most working-class Republicans are, get ready for it, working-class. They are more Sam’s Club than country club. They don’t own the business, they earn wages or a salary; and trickle-down economics has not been kind to them. Their incomes have been stagnant for a good 20 years, they have seen manufacturing jobs move overseas and job security vanish, they have less in retirement savings and home equity than they had hoped, and they see their young-adult children struggling to get a start in life."
"In no way do I minimize the ugly side of Trump’s appeal — the naked chauvinism, the authoritarian streak, the cynical appeal to his supporters’ worst instincts. But it is wrong — and, for the Republican Party, suicidal — to ignore the fact that he is doing more than merely rousing the rabble. Trump is filling a vacuum left by years of inattention to voters who have been patronized and taken for granted. The fissures he exposed in the GOP will not go away." (emphasis added)They've certainly been patronized and taken for granted, but even more so they've been lied to and manipulated into voting for candidates and policies that have ensured their social and economic decline. Sadly these days, they're not only blaming the Rethuglican "establishment," thanks to Rump, they're also blaming the usual scapegoats: minorities, women and immigrants. It's going to be a long campaign.
(hat tip to friend P.E.C. for the column)
