The Republican Revolt

 The analysis of this election focused almost exclusively on the demographic groups that voted for Trump and were once solidly in the Democratic camp. The chattering classes are mainly on the Left and are busy examining what went wrong. Much less attention is paid to the political realignment on the "Trump side" than the Republican side. The election was about the country's direction and Trump's promises rather than Republican vs. Democrat.

I believe Republicans are deluding themselves if they think that the increased vote for Trump by blacks, Latinos, and even women meant that these groups were voting for Republicans. This is a grave error on their part.

I believe what is even more important than the votes Trump got from traditional Democrats is the fact that Republicans have become "Woke." I mean, woke in terms of waking up to the fact that Republicans were victimized by their party every bit as much as Democrats victimized their voters.

Democrats victimized their Black core by providing them subsistence income and housing them in crime-ridden inner city ghettos.

Republicans lied to their middle-class voting base by promising them more freedom and frugal government without having the slightest intention of delivering.

Trump's resurgence was amazing. Despite a good governor - Ron DeSantis - as his primary opponent, he was an unstoppable force in the primary election. There was a reason for that. What is happening Is that traditional Republican voters are busy abandoning the Republican Party and forming a new coalition built around the idea that in a representative republic, the governing class should put their countrymen first. Traditional Republican voters are realizing that the conventional Republican candidates lie to their voting base, having no interest in actually implementing the promises that they make.

A great example of this is Mitt Romney, who represents a pole of the old Republican Party that hates Trump and the ideas he stands for. When Romney and Ryan ran they said everything the base expected to hear. They lied to the Republican voters. I was one of them. And it took Trump's 2016 election to open my eyes to the fact that the Republicans colluded with the Democrats to sabotage what was nominally a Republican administration. That was also when the "thought leaders" of the Conservative camp - like the National Review gang - showed they were for sale to the highest bidder and never believed anything they had been selling.

Today, a lot of those voters see the Republican establishment for what they are. Just as the Democrat ruling class lies to their black and Latino base for their votes and doesn't give a damn about what happens to them once they get into office. Republicans have realized that the people they voted for who held themselves out to be on their side didn't give a damn about them. They would say anything to get their base to vote, but once they got to Washington, they joined the Uniparty, got rich, and raided the Treasury.

Once Trump assumes office, it will become evident that he must defeat not only the Left but also the remnants of the Republican RINOS. The Republicans—GOP—are going the way of the Whigs. The new coalition will be built around MAGA. That's a good name for a political party.

The purveyors of the COVID response are merchants of evil

Jack Kerwick in Frontpage writes about The Death of Outrage over COVID

Asking why Republicans have lost the trust of so many of us who called ourselves Republican, he says:  

Frankly, it’s astonishing that, at this date, traditional Republican voters are still willing to vote Republican at all.

It's worth reading the whole thing, and here's the bottom line: 

 The purveyors of the COVID response are merchants of evil, for the incalculable pain, of every conceivable sort, that this response visited upon the Earth was all avoidable. Those who could’ve spoken out but refused to do so are accomplices to these crimes. Republicans and their apologists in the Big Conservative media subscribed to COVID Orthodoxy.

Will they redeem themselves now? After all, the verdict is in. The last two years have been an unmitigated disaster, both in reality and, critically, relative to the tenets of COVID Orthodoxy itself. The “two weeks” that the Experts told us they would need to “flatten the curve” and “save lives” has turned into two years—despite “social distancing,” mask mandates, the interning of society, and a mass vaccination campaign the likes of which the world had never known.

On their own terms, Anthony Fauci and his fellow partisans everywhere have proven themselves to be colossal failures. Whether through incompetence or dishonesty (doubtless a combination of both), they failed.

Unless and until Republicans and Big Conservative media actors spare not a moment to hammer this point home, they deserve the trust of their constituents about as much as the public health officials of places like Israel and America deserve the trust of the public.

There must be a reckoning for this much evil.

The Great Awakening was Donald Trump

 

I’m beginning to fully understand the difference between a Conservative and a Republican.   

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have been fooled for so long by people who I thought were on my side, only to find out that I’ve been scammed.  

I’m not the first person to have been taken by a scam artist.  At least I didn’t fall for the Nigerian Prince game.  But I have subscribed to various “Conservative” publications and given to “Republican” politicians.  

To my embarrassment, I voted for both Bushes, McCain and Mitt Romney, convincing myself that I was voting for the “least bad” choice on the ballot.  

I even supported the disastrous Iraq war and the even more disastrous “peace” that followed as the hapless Bushies blindly believed that the Arab world could, with the passage of a year transform itself from a collection of primitive tribes to a Western Democracy if they only held an election.  I saw that happening and I could not believe that any professional foreign policy establishment was that capable of such blind folly.

But by supporting the Republican Party reflexively I was really encouraging the kind of scam artist who takes your money and disappears.

The Great Awakening was Donald Trump.  

Here was a Republican “playboy” who shocked the bipartisan establishment by getting elected President in his first run for office, arriving in Washington facing opposition from both Democrats and Republicans as well as the animus of the united press, the entire bureaucracy plus the FBI, CIA, the DOJ and the Judiciary.

Team Hillary sold the story that the Russians stole the election for him.  

He was accused of being Putin’s puppet as his DOJ appointed a Special Prosecutor to prove he was actually a Russian agent.   

His Attorney General – Jeff Session - publicly neutered himself.  His nominee for National Security Advisor – General Michael Flynn - was accused of colluding with the Russians and forced to resign based on bogus charges of misleading Vice President Pence.  The Republican Speaker of the House – Paul Ryan – publicly denounced Trump as immoral and unfit to hold office.

Yet … despite being a virtual Lone Ranger in Washington DC, Trump accomplished more of the so-called “Republican Agenda” than anyone in my memory and that includes Ronald Reagan. 

Cutting Taxes – check.

Creating new jobs – check

Reducing unemployment - check

Cutting dependence on welfare - check

Reducing government regulations – check

Appointing Conservative Supreme Court Justices – check

Building a Wall on the southern border – check

Reducing Illegal Immigration – check

Peace between Israel and Arabs – check

Negotiating better trade agreements – check

Making America energy independent - check

Putting America First - check

That was until the Chinese unleased the Wuhan virus on the world - a virus which we likely had a hand in funding.  Democrats blamed the epidemic on Trump and laid the death of half-million dead Americans at his feet.  Meanwhile, Trump pushed for the development of a vaccine in record time – Warp Speed – confounding every last critic.  And then lost what many observers believe was a stolen election.

So, I’m done with Republicans.  I have less use for Republicans than I do for honest Democrats.  Democrats are upfront about hating you and stab you in the front, Republicans tell you they’re on your side and stab you in the back. 

Purge her.

 Some thoughts by "Ace" on the Republican Establishment vs. Republican voters; the people who get cheated of their ideals.  

They're joining with the left to brand 75 million Americans Uncharged Terrorists. Every time the neocon liberal Republican establishment people lose a primary contest, they defect to the Democrats to make sure the insurgent loses.

That's what Liz Cheney did. She doesn't like the insurgent politics of Trump, so she followed the neocon/Rockefeller Republican pattern of joining with the far left to defeat an internal party rival.

That's not how coalition politics are supposed to work. How it's supposed to work is this: We argue amongst each other, we even primary each other. But, within our own coalition, we accept the results of majority rule. If an establishment candidate wins, fine, the insurgents' supporters support the establishment candidate -- reluctantly, of course, but they still support him.

And if the insurgent candidate wins, the establishment is required to accept the will of the majority and support that candidate. Again, reluctantly, but again, they still must support their coalition partners.

As many commenters always -- rightly -- point out: We're always accepting the need to put internal party fights aside at the general election, and we always wind up voting for the Shit Sandwich we opposed, based on the promise that if and when our guy ever wins, the Establishment Corporatist Neocons will support our guy.

But this promise is a lie. They never do support our guy.

Go to hell!

A reader, commenting here as Reader, drew my attention to a Ross Douthat article today in the Journal of Mexican billionaires

The piece is a keening lament at the failure of Republican Party elders to quash the Trump candidacy at its spring crest. He views their capitulation to primary results as the fuel that is lighting the party’s self-immolation. That Republicans agreed to field the voters’ preference is something he regards as a stupendous mistake. Douthat deploys the term “compromise” multiple times in describing the party’s concession to its voters. And finding that description wan through overuse, he proceeds to brighten the sentiment by calling the acceptance of Trump’s nomination a “surrender.”

A surrender to whom, motherfucker?

It certainly wasn’t a surrender to Donald Trump. A candidate holds no power beyond the votes he has accumulated. I notice the party didn’t compromise with or surrender to Tom Tancredo in 2008. That they have now done so to Trump is not what is more favorably regarded as sacred democracy when blacks and the dead vote democrat but rather, by Douthat’s implication, a grim example of Republicans’ moral infirmity.

What a statement of cake-eating contempt.

The Republican party’s alleged ‘surrender’ was to its constituents. The people that party exists to serve. This being a relationship enduringly confused by those at the Acela end of it.

Politicians, lobbyists, pundits, and every one of you scavengers and parasites in the Republican ecosystem exist because its base of voters makes the party viable. Not you. A tick rides on the dog’s back for so long it eventually forgets who’s doing the walking.

You Paul Ryan, Ben Sasse, Rick Wilson, and John McCain are apparatchiks. Stewards. Showmen and functionaries. You only have value in the party to the extent you have value to its voters. They don’t serve at your pleasure, and they don’t require your approval of their choices. That choice was made clearly and unequivocally by tens of millions of people who do the actual work in this country that pays for your prostitutes and pomposity.

I understand if you disagree with the selection. Keep your goddamned mouth shut. Your fiduciary responsibility as a party hack is to lubricate the political machine. If unable to perform even that menial task, then you are merely worthless. Yet so many of you have aspired to be worse. You have actively sabotaged your constituents’ choice. The people who made that choice have every right to their candidate receiving a fair hearing in the general election. But with that possibility foreclosed by a uniformly corrupt media, they at least expect their own party apparatus to sulk when it will not help.

But that was asking too much. No, a phalanx of you leap on 11 year-old pretext to withdraw support and demand the nominee step down a month from the election. You could have observed the obvious: that far greater concerns are at issue in this election than antique machismo. Or you could have simply said “no comment.” Instead you unsheathed the knives.

But you didn’t stab Trump in the back. Just as it wasn’t him you originally surrendered to. It was millions of republican voters who took your blade. Win or lose, Donald will remain an aging playboy plutocrat fully-insulated from the malign globalism he was nominated to combat. Your constituents–unlike your donors and patrons–do not enjoy that felicitous buffer of 10-figure wealth. They are who you have betrayed, not him. It is their values you have defecated upon while sententiously droning about your own. And if God grants man memory beyond the end of his nose, I pray they never forget.

Some neocon pundits, politicians, and pilotfish have announced to the interest of absolutely no one that they can not share a party with Trump’s plurality base. I imagine more will follow. None of you will be missed.

Go to hell.

An Open Letter to the Conservative Media Explaining Why I Have Left the Movement

Let me say up front that I am a life-long Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement. I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why....

Second, it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a “conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was. Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously-driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the Left.

Lost in all of this is the older strain of conservatism. The one I grew up with and thought was reflective of the movement. This strain of conservatism believed in the free market and capitalism but did not fetishize them the way so many libertarians do. This strain understood that a situation where every country in the world but the US acts in its own interests on matters of international trade and engages in all kinds of skulduggery in support of their interests is not free trade by any rational definition. This strain understood that a government’s first loyalty was to its citizens and the national interest. And also understood that the preservation of our culture and our civil institutions was a necessity.

All of this seems to have been lost. Conservatives have become some sort of schizophrenic sect of libertarians who love freedom (but hate potheads and abortion) and feel the US should be the policeman of the world. The same people who daily fret over the effects of leaving our society to the mercy of Hollywood and the mass culture have somehow decided leaving it to the mercies of the international markets is required.

Read the whole thing. 

Can we elect people who won’t fold to the Democrats and vote for more pork?

Forget about what the Republican Establishment creeps want.  Focus on what Americans want.

TOM TANCREDO: I’M QUITTING GOP

This decision has been incubating over the past 17 years, years of watching the downward spiral of the Party of Lincoln and Reagan into the Party of Democrat Lite.

As a Member of Congress for ten years (1998-2008), I was subjected to threats and pressures from the Congressional Leadership and President George W. Bush to support the creation of an expensive Medicare prescription drug program–even though creating a new government spending program financed by massive debt flies in the face of the Republican Party’s core principles.

Our most powerful and influential “leaders” were shoving this down our throats in a crass political effort to use taxpayer money to buy the votes of senior citizens–particularly in the state of Florida in the next presidential election.

I was incredulous about the fact that the most intense lobbying I had ever seen undertaken by our “leadership” was not an effort to limit government or the dollars it spends; it was to do just the opposite.

That incident came just months after I was told by President Bush’s top political operative, Karl Rove, “never to darken the door of the White House again” because of my criticism of the administration’s dangerously lax immigration policies in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

When I first arrived in the U.S. House of Representatives, I naively believed that it was primarily the Democrats who were committed to open borders. But I quickly learned the entire Republican establishment also supported a policy of immigration non-enforcement.

I was repeatedly pulled into the office of the then-Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, and threatened with dire consequences if I continued to speak out publicly for common-sense immigration policies and true border security – particularly if I was doing so in the districts of other Republican Members of Congress.

For most of those years after 2000, we had a Republican President and a Republican-controlled Congress, but the conservative agenda was largely ridiculed and abandoned.

Across America, in every state, countless hardworking Americans have taken time away from their families and their jobs to volunteer on political campaigns– knocking on doors, making phone calls and talking to neighbors – all to support the effort to beat back the Obama agenda. In 2010, that grassroots effort resulted in the Republican takeover in the House. In 2014, it resulted in Republicans sweeping to power in the U.S. Senate – and the largest House majority since Herbert Hoover was President.

Yet, despite these historic gains, nothing changed. The GOP neither advanced a conservative agenda nor checked the radical “transformative” agenda of Barack Obama. We got condescending lip service, and nothing more.

Read the whole thing.