Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/743d91b8-d...#axzz43GZoUrIc
But just in case Sebby doesn't click through.
'Yet, as Robert Kagan, a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.
Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough. This is not about the last seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, they go back all the way to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.
Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.'
TM
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I don't know why the Trumpkins must be labeled exclusively protectionists or bigots. These things aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they often go together, both in terms of groups aligning and individuals holding both mindsets.
Of course he's right that GOP policies have created a class of deluded people who think Obama is an illegitimate President. And most of these people harbor at least some bigoted views. But this author is really lazy, even for a short opinion piece, in dismissing out of hand the argument Trump has grabbed a ton of his voters by appealing to concerns regarding wage stagnation and lack of jobs for lower skilled labor.
He stumbles into a bigger and better point at the end of the piece. Trump is succeeding because, unlike all the other GOP candidates, he's addressing the GOP voters (and Dems crossing over to him) as populists rather than conservatives. Conservatism is on life support. The GOP base, including the tea partiers, loves programs like SS and Medicare. They're not free market sorts, but convenient socialists. The programs that provide for them are great. Those that provide for "others," including things like food stamps and Obamacare, are terrible.
