GOP Will Shit Itself

[Mongrel]

I cant agree hard enough with that last sentence.

Even were he to quietly disappear tomorrow, someone's going to pick up his mantle now. He's shown that all this is possible and even provided a blueprint for it. Someone who's just as charismatic but who is better able to refine the act may be able to push it that much further.

[Mongrel]

Uh.

Well.

Trump supporters are proposing an organized guard to protect him

With uniforms.

Brown ones.

By Hugo Boss.

(If it goes down, the link is to the original organizing page where Trump supporters are proposing this. Really hoping someone is just trolling Trump supporters. That would be an excellent troll.

Uh, unless it actually wound up creating said organization by accident. >___> )

[Z%rø]

The amount of arguing in that thread and calling it a false flag, but others taking up the idea in earnest should tell you everything you need to know.

[Mongrel]

Well, that's exactly what I meant at the end there. It could have been started as a false flag or lol i trolld u guyz gud, but if they actually take the idea and run with it, it doesn't even matter that it was originally "ironic".

(A friend of mine joked that a headline about it would read "Entire crowd attending Trump rally ironically".)

[Thad]

BoingBoing: Post-Trump, conservatives aren't shy about their contempt for the poor

Quoting the National Review:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

This is how the Republican establishment feels about poor people. It's not that I'm surprised by that (I still don't understand how anyone was shocked by Romney's bitching about handouts four years ago; as The Onion put it, he was just reading the Republican platform verbatim), but I AM a little surprised that they think now's a good time to say it out loud.

"Hey poor people, fuck you! You deserve to be poor!" is not a very good campaign slogan.

I mean, I don't think a Trump presidency is going to be good for the poor -- yes, he's made some noises about economic populism, but I think anyone who seriously believes he would ever raise taxes on himself is delusional -- but it's probably a good idea to try to understand his supporters' grievances instead of just telling them to go fuck themselves.

Well, David Duke notwithstanding, of course. The correct response to David Duke is just telling him to go fuck himself.

[Mongrel]

I am really going to be amazed if the GOP manages to stay a single party over the next five years.

[Thad]

I'm surprised the coalition's held as long as it has. The schism is certainly real, growing, and may be irreconcilable.

But I could see it holding together in 2020 if Trump loses in November. The establishment gets its chance to say, "See? You tried it your way and look what happened. Now you need to vote for a realistic candidate, like our guy." (Hard to say who the hell their guy will be. Rubio's still young and could run again, but what's he going to do to become more appealing in the next four years?)

If Hillary Clinton wins, the Republican coalition is going to do pretty well for itself in the midterms.

And then, come 2020, assuming a Republican establishment candidate gets the nomination, then we're looking at the establishment either beating Clinton or Clinton getting a second term and the Republican coalition looking to the midterms again.

But 2020 is the next census, and I do not see demographics getting better for any part of the Republican coalition except maybe the Libertarian wing.

And but, the coalitions have aligned in some pretty wildly unpredictable ways over the past few years. The Tea Party started as a Libertarian-leaning movement but quickly attracted religious conservatives and social reactionaries. Trump's support among religious conservatives is pretty hard for me to understand, honestly (especially given that it's the demographic that rejected Giuliani 8 years ago).

It's not impossible to foresee a Republican Party that's more economically populist while remaining xenophobic, and a Democratic Party that attracts more fiscal conservatives while remaining socially liberal. But that's basically the opposite of what I was betting on just a few years ago; I expected a Libertarian takeover of the Republican Party, with fiscal policy staying as-is but social policy liberalizing. This shit's not easy to predict; even assuming the tentpoles of the Republican Party (fiscal conservatives, foreign policy hawks, religious fundamentalists) do split, it's hard to predict which one goes where.

It's hard to see xenophobia as a winning strategy on a national level, but it's sure worked out nicely for Republicans at the state level and in the House, and in states where legislatures draw their own districts, it's hard to see demographic changes in the next census making a whole lot of difference in who gets elected to those offices.

There are a lot of very big question marks.

[Mothra]

[Mongrel]

Wowwwwww...

[Bal]

At least I won't be the first Godwin in this thread when I express this sentiment. Trump makes me feel like "Oh, so that's how fascist demagogues get elected right in front of everyone".

[Cait]

I'm surprised the coalition's held as long as it has. The schism is certainly real, growing, and may be irreconcilable.

But I could see it holding together in 2020 if Trump loses in November. The establishment gets its chance to say, "See? You tried it your way and look what happened. Now you need to vote for a realistic candidate, like our guy." (Hard to say who the hell their guy will be. Rubio's still young and could run again, but what's he going to do to become more appealing in the next four years?)

The problem is that you've got the sequence reversed there. 2012 was the 'trust us, a realistic candidate like Romney can win' cycle. And he didn't even come close, which empowered the Trumps and Cruzes of the party.

[pacobird]

BoingBoing: Post-Trump, conservatives aren't shy about their contempt for the poor

Quoting the National Review:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

This is how the Republican establishment feels about poor people. It's not that I'm surprised by that (I still don't understand how anyone was shocked by Romney's bitching about handouts four years ago; as The Onion put it, he was just reading the Republican platform verbatim), but I AM a little surprised that they think now's a good time to say it out loud.

"Hey poor people, assfuck you! You deserve to be poor!" is not a very good campaign slogan.

The hilarious thing about this is it could have been a Chauncey DeVega blog post.

[zaratustra]

Seems what republicans are saying is that if you're poor, you should take all your stuff, pack up and move somewhere with more jobs.

But they're also against immigration.

[Thad]

The problem is that you've got the sequence reversed there. 2012 was the 'trust us, a realistic candidate like Romney can win' cycle. And he didn't even come close, which empowered the Trumps and Cruzes of the party.

What I'm saying is that, if Trump does worse than Romney, the pendulum may swing back the other way.

Of course, that's reductive. There are a lot more factors that have led to Trump's success than just disaffected Republican primary voters. The size and weakness of the pool of candidates is very important, and Trump is pretty fucking unique as a candidate. There are a lot of factors that could lead to a return to the status quo four years from now; a Trump loss would be one of them, especially if he lost by a significant margin.

But, as I said, I don't think the problem is establishment versus Tea Party, except insofar as the establishment is trying like hell to make the Republican Party look more inclusive. The problem is that demographics are making it increasingly difficult for Republicans to win the Presidency. It's a party that's continued to alienate minorities even as they've grown both as a share of the relative population and of the electorate, and in a race between Trump and Clinton you'd better believe it's going to lose a sizable share of women voters, too.

The Republican Party can go back and forth all it wants about whether it can't win the Presidency because of guys like McCain and Romney, or whether it can't win the Presidency because of guys like Trump. But the answer's a lot bigger than any single candidate. It's George Allen calling a guy "macaca". It's Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J Fox's Parkinson's. It's Kim Davis being feted as a hero for not doing her goddamn job. It's SB1070 and "All lives matter" and "Finish the dang fence" and hell, it's "young buck" and "welfare queens" and Willie Horton. And yeah, it's David fucking Duke.

The party has spent the past forty years systematically alienating everybody who's not a straight cis WASP, and now it's losing women too. There are guys in the establishment who see the writing on the wall and are trying desperately to tone down the exclusionistic rhetoric, and the response to them has been to vote for a guy who says Mexicans are rapists and Megyn Kelly has blood coming out of her wherever.

But Paco cited some pretty interesting stats the other week about the Latino community's priorities and the Republican Party's history with Latino demographics. And those convinced me that, even if the overt racism vanished overnight, Republicans would still have a pretty hard time reaching out to minorities -- because their fiscal policies are racist, their foreign policy is racist, their policies on drugs and crime are racist, etc.

Those are way bigger problems than Romney or Trump's individual appeal as a presidential candidate. And it's hard to see them going away.

But, at the same time, congressional districts still heavily favor Republican demographics. That could start to change after the next census, but there are no guarantees of that; as noted, most states have legislatures that draw their own districts, and the seven states with independent redistricting committees (Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey and Washington) don't seem like states that will see big partisan changes in the next four years. Arizona could swing Democratic in the US House (we've currently got 5 R's and 4 D's, so it would only take one seat shifting), and I expect the Dems to gain some ground in the state legislature, but we're talking about modest changes, not a seismic shift.

And we'll still vote Republican in Presidential elections for the foreseeable future. I've been hearing people call Arizona a swing state for my entire adult life; I'll believe it when I see it. (And maybe not even then. If Clinton beats Trump here in November, I'll be surprised, but I won't see it as a sign of things to come, I'll see it as a rejection of Trump in particular, not Republicans in general.)

[Cait]

I'm idly reminded that Trump had his hat in the ring for 2012 for a while, before dropping out early.

[Thad]

Right; that's part of why so many of us figured he'd go away this time, too.

[Spooky Skeleton]

The Tea Party started as a Libertarian-leaning movement but quickly attracted religious conservatives and social reactionaries. Trump's support among religious conservatives is pretty hard for me to understand, honestly (especially given that it's the demographic that rejected Giuliani 8 years ago).

Trump's entire appeal to religious conservatives seems to be that he constantly talks about undoing a lot of social progress. He's against listening to other voices or looking out for anyone who isn't white and therefore theoretically christian. They want to live in an America where they never have to see people practicing their wrong religions in the workplace or public spaces and where everyone has to see them practicing their right religion in those same places. They want America taken back. They tried tolerating homosexuals and other religions, but then us liberals took it too far and started acting like those things were actually valid and had to be respected, not just tolerated.

Trump has figured out that they don't care if he is religious or not. He just needs to tell them that they are good for being christian and that if anyone is religious, it should be christianity: the correct religion. That is more appealing to a segment of religious republicans than a candidate who is themselves a good christian, but who is too permissive of other religions or homosexuals and other unholy types. Trump has been good at sending this general message in a lot of his rhetoric. When he's not busy threatening people's freedom of speech with beatings from the ignorant and ornery hoodlums he calls supporters.

[Thad]

Maybe. Could be.

Speaking anecdotally, my fundamentalist grandma seems downright distraught about him, and also upset that the other candidates have stooped to his level. I think, ultimately, she'll end up voting for him in November against Hillary Clinton, but she's got some pretty serious reservations. I'm kinda curious if she could be persuaded to vote third-party.

I can't help wondering how many Republicans out there are like my grandma: deeply religious, extremely politically active, and also offended by Trump as a coarse bully who doesn't have the dignity or the temperament to be President. Like I say, I think her demographic will most likely grit its teeth and vote for Trump in the fall, but if candidates like Trump become the norm I'm not sure what they'll do or where they'll go.

Of course, while I'm pretty uncomfortable getting into estimates for when my grandma is going to die, obviously it's going to happen sooner or later. Maybe this will be the last time she votes in a presidential election, or maybe she'll still be around in 2032 -- there's no way of knowing for sure until it happens.

Which is another way of saying, of course, that elderly voters are very important in elections, but the Greatest Generation is on the decline and the Boomers are aging. To make a demographic generalization, I suspect the Boomers are more comfortable with crass candidates like Trump than the GG is.

[Mothra]

I cannot believe this is happening right now.

[Mongrel]

A friend of mine saw that and said "I don't get it... Trump's wife is better than Ted Cruz in a wig?" and as awful as that is I can't unsee it now.