Fatal Distraction

Can the GOP survive Trump’s never-ending obsession with himself?

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530

Dear Reader (including whoever put the lime in the coconut and shook it all up),

As Jerome Powell whispered, don’t worry, baby, this will be transitory.

What I mean is that this Friday “news”letter marks the end of third party week. And I’m really not going to jump back into the weeds on that subject anyway. (By the way, I’ve opened up the Wednesday G-File to the masses in case you want to get in on the action.)  

I don’t really mind people thinking I’m wrong about the tactical and strategic stuff. One of the ways you figure out what’s right is by kicking the tires on what’s wrong. I don’t mind people thinking I’m wrong about the philosophical stuff, either. I’m just more willing to stand my ground on principles than I am on prudential questions like, “Will it work?” If it wouldn’t work, why would I want to do it in the first place?

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  1. Enid Carlson

    The more I read about Trump and his effect on people, the more I understand why the GOP and others are reluctant and fearful to stand up for the truth. He incites the pent up anger people have who then threaten people's lives either physically or occupationally. I don't think it's right, but it is pretty sad when you have a small town public health official needing security to save her life because of her desire to keep people in two counties in Washington well (cited by the New York Times in the article Why Public Health Faces a Crisis in the US on 10/18). He is a political Mafia godfather along with his vigilante supporters reeking havoc among people who don't agree with him.

    GOP or Democrats should not have to hire security in order to stay alive if they don't agree with him. This is happening all over the country. It makes people do a double take in considering wanting to serve in this country as a public official. It's scary and a very serious threat to our democracy.

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  2. SomecallmeTim

    “motivational greeting card from Werner Herzog“ made me laugh out loud, then had to try to explain to my 8 year-old why that was funny. I was…unsuccessful.

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    Ben Connelly

    “ make skim almond milk the only legal form of dairy”

    They wouldn’t do that! That’s a bridge too far… for one thing, almond milk isn’t technically dairy. For another skim milk isn’t technically milk.

    “And now Pence is attacking [checks notes] the media for making such a big deal about all this.“

    I’d give even odds to Pence’s main motivation being to get the mob off his back and end the harassments and death threats as to it being politically motivated.

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    BikerChick

    “This can’t last,” “The grown-ups will fix it,” “Trump wouldn’t dare,” “The rank-and-file GOP would never tolerate that,” and “You’re making way too big a deal about this stuff,” etc.” So many Covid parallels, “15 days to flatten the curve; 100 days of masking; once the vaccines are here, the pandemic will be over; etc.

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    Bel Aves

    George S. Patton said or at least the movie did, "America Loves a Winner." Trump lost so we get the stolen election narrative (thanks for the idea Ms. Abrams et al). But there is silence on the SECOND GA election which as Jonah points out, was Trump's fault, and decisive. Manchin and Sinema will fold and it will be $2 Trillion we do not have. Unfortunately Trump's public concern for only himself will not resonate with the Graham's or Vance's of THIS world. The GOP likes Trump because in a world of BLM riots labeled as protests, trans bathrooms, and illegal immigration at record highs they believe only he fights. There is no passivity or compromise (at least in the rallies) to discern. There needs to be an alternative fight to find now and rally behind him (or her). The only thing that will save us from Trump is a Trump 2.0. One that is as much a fighter, but a sane one that wants to fight on issues, not himself. They are out there. There might be one in Florida.

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    James Spiller

    Part 3: Why a third party is a problem:

    Famously, there are no lost causes in American politics because there are no won causes.

    Also pretty famously, that’s not true. Most of the time when an idea gets a third party, the idea dies permanently, or at least for a very long time. WJB killed Free Silver. Teddy Roosevelt killed Republican progressivism (mostly; Hoover was a singular talent). The Klan killed the principle of opposition to Catholics (after they pulled a Jonah and left the Democratic Party in 1924, endorsing Coolidge, promoting candidates, and such, the Democrats nominated an Catholic for President in 1928, and again in 1960). The Dixiecrats killed segregation. George Wallace’s American Party killed the remaining parts of Jim Crow. Perot ushered in three decades of massive expansion of trade.

    American conservatism has played an important role in global peace and prosperity. It would be bad, to put it mildly, if Jonah were to persuade Republican primary voters who would vote for Cheney types to surrender their ballots, abandon their donations, and instead devote their energies to a new and… I’m not sure there’s anything to suggest that McMullin 2 will be improved, but a new McMullin.

    Fantasizing about destroying your enemies can be satisfying. Or, sorry, not destroying them, because Jonah uses more moderate language. “Punishing” them. But as the most recent Dispatch podcast notes, American democracy really depends on our dealing with those we disagree as humans. The Freedom Caucus was wrong to treat Obama as beyond the pale. We should all work to see the good in one another, etc. They were mostly talking about not giving up on members of the opposing party, but it is also true of one’s own party.

    We could learn from MTG, who was in this regard more conservative, more grounded, less revolutionary, than Jonah. She didn’t run on a Constitution Party ticket because that wouldn’t have done her or her donors any good at all. She understood that if you want to promote your ideas in the modern American system, you need to win a major party primary. The same is true of all the Trumpy pols we need to fear; they all understood that to influence things you need to turn up. Maintaining one’s purity and emotional wellbeing by separating from the party may be satisfying, and it would certainly be lucrative for a lot of people. But I hope that we can maintain, at a minimum, the maturity and insight of the Freedom Caucus members who got themselves elected and made a difference, thus representing a more efficient return on the donor dollar than McMullin donations.

    The belief that we can become more influential in the party by leaving it, that we’re not adequately represented now, but if we stop supporting our people they will become stronger, has never been true. The GOP did not become more pro-black as their votes shifted to Democrats. Democrats did not become more sympathetic to the distinctive concerns of white Catholics as they stopped voting Democratic. Republicans don’t look at their loss of New York and respond by showering New York in money. Much as the Russians found out after absenting themselves from the Security Council vote that started the Korean War as a UN affair, the failure to turn up is not a way to improve one’s influence.

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    James Spiller

    Part 2: The Mark Levin/ Jacobin hermeneutic.
    “My only objection to this scenario is that it hasn’t worked. Trump cost [various costs]”
    “I’ve been told […] “The grown-ups will fix it,”“

    So, at risk of seeming like a morally bad doctor, while I agree with Jonah that there are battles that we non-Trumpy Republicans have lost, it’s just not true that Trump has been on an endless roll of winning. The grownups have fixed stuff. Republicans have won things despite Trump.

    In terms of Trumpists, e don’t have Kings Peter or Steve to kick around any more. Walter Jones dying wasn’t Trump’s doing or his opponents, but it still leaves us a nationalist fewer in Congress. Dana Rorhabacher was a big get for opponents of Putin. Duncan Hunter was a big deal.

    Meanwhile we do have Young Kim, Mike Gallagher, Dan Crenshaw, Michelle Steel, Michelle Miller-Meeks, Mitt Romney, and a bunch of other new Bush/ Romney style Republicans.

    Jonah was tweeting about Paul Nehlen, but Nehlen is no longer a threat to anyone. Adam Laxalt and Kris Kobach no longer have glittering careers embarrassing Republicans ahead of them.

    It’s not just electorally. Most of Trump’s more controversial legislation ended up not happening. Even things entirely within his control were stymied by grown ups; the Korea-US Trade agreement was not withdrawn from because Cohn took the relevant memo from his desk. Incredibly, even when he read stories about this happening, he did not demand that the memo was returned. Trans exclusions from the military were slow rolled until Biden could end the process. Buckets of stuff was undone by the courts.
    Trump was, for instance, the first President since Carter not to either double the border patrol (Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43), increase it at a pace that would have done so if there’d been a second term (Bush 41), criminalize the employment of illegal immigrants (Reagan), make internal enforcement effective with e-verify (43 created it, Obama expanded it by 500%), build wall that fundamentally changed border hopping (Clinton, 43, Obama)… etc. etc. etc. Trump did almost nothing, because he was stopped. Trump behaved very poorly in Afghanistan, but he didn’t leave it. There were no Trump’s sister on the Court moments.

    We didn’t get our way on everything (particularly not “we” in the sense that I’d have kind of liked to have seen immigration improvements), but the adults fixed a lot.

    Looking at the miracle that is modern imperfect life and saying that it’s not perfect, we didn’t win every race or issue, so we should toss everything into the fire, is the essence of the Mark Levin criticism of the Party. It’s the essence of revolutionary politics. It’s literally the opposite of conservatism.

    Some times we lose a round; there was nothing good about the 1964 election, for instance. Sometimes we lose several; imagine the horror of being an opponent of the New Deal in real time. But attempting to flip the table is not the answer. In terms of political quality, the last years have seen income as well as losses, and there is enormous accumulated capital. As Jonah explained in Suicide of the West, conservatism is gratitude for what we have. It is the understanding that we don’t lose all the time. It’s the repudiation of articles like this latest run as being based on a false premise that revolution makes sense because we have nothing to lose.

    Hopefully this is a good weekend for Jonah to appreciate that we have plenty to lose. Not that the love of his daughter is at risk from political outcomes, but rollercoasters and the rest of the easy, fun, weekend are products of peace and prosperity.

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    James Spiller

    “I’m the one who needs to be a sober-eyed grown-up about politics.“
    “Trump proposes losing the whole country if his ego isn’t stroked. But damn you, Goldberg, be a team player!”

    There’s a bunch of similar lines in this piece. I agree that Trump is extremely bad. I agree that there’s hypocrisy in those who say that Jonah ought to behave nobly while supporting Trump behaving ignobly.

    But we should all behave nobly. Trump tempts us all to roll in the mud with him, but Trump behaving badly does not justify Jonah behaving badly, which appears to be the argument.

    Trump being obsessed with an issue over all others does not justify Jonah thinking it so (although it does raise the prominence).

    There’s almost no one in punditry that I respect as I respect Jonah. I have purchased piles of his books to hand out like Gideon bibles. It is true that it is extremely hard for Trump to shock me because I expect very little from him. It is true that my standards for Jonah are different, not just than for Trump, but for George Will. If Will said this I’d roll my eyes, grumble a little, and add it to the pile of harmful absurdities.

    Because in my decades of reading Jonah I have come up with a long list of disagreements (eg. His roots of modern American religious liberty are in Germany at Westphalia, not where they belong, with Hooker and Locke), but do not have a pile of harmful absurdities, this one stands out.

    You can call it a double standard, but it seems to me to be reasonable to ask more of those to whom more has been given. Morally and intellectually, that means to me that it is reasonable to demand greatness from Jonah while calling for nothing from Trump.
    Analogously, if Jonah were to give $100k of his own money to a charity it would strike me as an astonishing commitment to the relevant good work, but if Trump did it would barely register. If Jonah paid less than that in taxes, I’d think it fine, but Trump would upset me.
    Jonah’s moral and intellectual advantage over Trump seems at least as great as Trump’s financial advantage over Jonah.

    If you want a non-Trump example, just about every game performance on an AFC gridiron that receives harsh criticism would be worse still if they had a roster of 55 Jonah clones. That doesn’t make it unreasonable for Jim Gerarghty to respect Jonah while getting mad at the Jets.

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    Joe Delanis

    I'm sorry, I got distracted by this:

    It would be attorney(ies) general, not attorney general(s).

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    Michael Salardino

    Jonah, this is absolutely one of your very best! I will not vote for any Republican who doesn't disavow Trump. Trumpism must be flushed from the party. A third party headed by someone like Liz Cheney or Ben Sasse is a beautiful idea!

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