Donald Trump appears to be getting better advice these days.
Did someone finally figure out why they lost the House, Senate and White House? The electorate is steadily realigning from the conservatism vs. liberalism era back to the populism vs. progressive era. Trump won in 2016 by leaning into the shift and lost in 2020 by hewing toward conservatism.
“In recent years, CPAC has evolved from a family reunion of Republican libertarians, social conservatives and a hawkish foreign policy establishment into Trump-chella. …
Yet, the former president may not end up running again — continuing legal issues could kill his bid — but there’s little question that he leaves the party reshaped in his image. Even though Mr. Trump often failed to articulate a comprehensive policy doctrine, he has fundamentally remade what being a Republican means.
That shift was made strikingly clear in the remarks of politicians who hope to lead their party into the future — with or without Mr. Trump. …
But what was equally striking is how far the speeches differed from traditional Republican ideology. A party that has defined itself as defenders of the free market now believes big technology companies wield too much power and the government needs to put more restrictions in place. Concerns about interventionism abroad have replaced hawkish doctrine as the driving foreign policy force. Nativism has gone mainstream and the politics of cultural grievance, focused heavily around race, dominate among conservatives that once delighted in mocking sensitive liberal “snowflakes.” …
In interviews with Republican voters this week, many showed little interest in returning to the conservative principles of the past — expressing support for policies like stimulus checks, concern about socialism and a desire for less intervention abroad. Many wanted Mr. Trump to run again. But even those who preferred someone new said they wanted to continue pushing his “America first” agenda. …”
These are all the right moves for Trump: focusing on electing a Trumpist Congress in 2022, flexing his muscles as the new “GOP establishment,” throwing out the antiquated Conservatism, Inc. agenda and replacing it with an America First agenda, dumping Kushner and moving away from the conspiracy theories and toward the truth which is that the election actually was “rigged” by the elite cabal who used a combination of censorship and changes to election laws to tilt the race toward Biden.
“Over meals and many Diet Cokes, Trump has already started building his post-White House political operation and cementing his role as the party’s de facto leader. He has begun to formalize a structure of political advisers around him and made plans to start a new super PAC — capable of raising donations of any size — to support candidates he favors. His team is looking to formalize a process for vetting endorsement prospects, assessing what candidates have said and done for Trump in the past. …
He has also discussed drafting a new “America First” agenda — like the 1994 “Contract with America,” but focused on issues such as border security and trade — to steer the party’s direction, according to Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). …
“It’s Donald Trump’s party. It’s the party of [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene,” said Sarah Longwell, a GOP strategist who founded Republican Voters Against Trump. “We are maybe 10 percent. Trump needed to be thoroughly repudiated. Only then could you have a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. That didn’t happen.” …
Trump still tells visitors that the election was “stolen” from him but now claims it is because Democrats changed the rules around absentee and vote by mail — and talks less about false allegations involving voting machines made by Dominion, which has been suing his allies. …
His son Donald Trump Jr. has taken a larger role in the political operation, with son-in-law Jared Kushner receding as an informal chief of staff. Trump has remarked to others that Kushner is a “smart kid,” but said he doesn’t know as much about politics as he believed he did, a person who spoke to Trump recently said. …”
The best way to look at it is that all the metastasizing problems that have festered underneath the elite consensus of the last fifty years of neoliberalism that have led to greater and greater levels of resentment and disaffection are bursting forth now and not for the first time in American history.
What are the new populist issues which are driving this shift? There is mass immigration and sweeping demographic change. There is a Gilded Age level of political corruption. There is political correctness which has intensified into wokeness or hatred of White people and cancel culture. There is modernism which has turned toxic and into a war on everything natural and traditional particularly the concept of two sexes and American history. There is feminism which is an unprecedented social experiment with downstream long term consequences on fertility. There is a media elite which has exiled and pathologized half of the country. There is globalization which has ravaged the country while enriching a bloated and aloof oligarchy. There is the burden of indefinitely maintaining a liberal world empire. There are arrogant elites who feel entitled to silence everyone else in the country who disagrees with them. There is the distribution of wealth and investment which makes no sense and is causing mounting social instability. There is the fading of traditional religion and morality and the consequences of this shift. There is the coming of the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is going to radically change how we think about work.
“Conservatism” vs. “liberalism” no longer captures the real problems. Ignoring the obvious problems in the face of mounting public anger and grievance doesn’t make them go away.
Note: Hopefully, some of our “fascism” scholars will brush up on American history. We’ve had three populist moments in American history: the Jackson era, the Bryan era and now the Trump era.
So now Donald Trump is out of office and you like him again?
No, he obviously failed as president.
He seems to be doing some things which he should have done four years ago though.
CPAC is really based if you want to see Kimberly Guilfoyle doing a striptease act on stage. These people are nothing but attention seeking clowns.
Like Joe Sobran said – professional Conservatism is nothing more than “a game; a way of making a living.”
https://twitter.com/MysterySolvent/status/1365448913247993863
Ideologues never win in a binary options system. Romney, McCain and Trump who broke from orthodoxy in 2016 won nominations. Populists in our system are much about nothing. Trying to create resentment to play on it. Tucker Carlson was trying to excuse the insurrectionists and their sympathizers by telling them, paraphrasing, it was not their fault that they committed a crime. Someone didn’t heard you. —– No. They just believed a power hungry megalomaniac who was willing to do anything to stay in power, and never believed in the democratic process to begin with.
Trump lost the presidency because he lost touch. He wanted to dictate on people what they should feel. He thought if he showed empathy and more care on covid, he will be blamed. Not at all. This a global pandemic. It hurts you nothing if you showed empathy. He kept barking about it disappearing fast. Showed on WH balcony saying don’t let it dictate your life. For many people it already did. But Trump thought it will be weak if he cared.
The old “conservatism” never made sense to me. It’s was a religious ideology except to the foreign policy aspect of it (you can’t escape from the world) which continued with Trump and his ilk but as anti-China (rightfully so). The Free-market & Free-Trade At Any Cost are nonsense. Both needs to be dialled to what’s best for the country as a whole. ? Giving that these ideologues are losing formulas. We are not returning to them in the near future. But we will not continue with a cult leader who was never a team player (two easy GA seats were lost. He never even cared about his legacy, as long he continue the lies to his cult that a red state didn’t flipped because he sucked)
Trump will not run again, because he hates losing and he will lose again if he faces Biden. He just wants to stay relevant and feeds his attention-seeking deprived soul . No TV shows to host. No invitations to any big gala. No businesses deals. Nothing!!! But after his latest hallucinations I can guarantee you, his allure will fade away by next year. No swing state candidate in 2022 will want him to show up. We saw what one of his Trumpians did in Alabama in 2018. He’s toxic who extract a candidate’s dignity in exchange for endorsement. A man who used to insult people who worked under him.
Finally, I thank God Biden won. A 2nd Trumpian term would have been disastrous for the rule of law. Trump was pardoning cronies before they even spend time in jail. That was before the election, no fear of the terrible look to voters. Prosecutors would have been demoralized. Thank god he lost. We wouldn’t recovered from him.
Populists are bankrupt. Conservatism as a religion is ridiculous. In general, we just want power to meter the changes the left want to implement. Most people just want to ride life as smoothly as possible. And they don’t care about purity to an ideology and they hate cults.