Cromwell

Trump’s federal cases went to trial during the campaign. To no one’s surprise, he was convicted in both, but he stayed out of prison pending appeals. The base shrugged it off. Whether the electorate as a whole would do so remained an open question.

At this point, Trump was clearly running, not just to run the country, but to stay out of jail. We already knew from 2020 that he recognized no limits. What would he do under these, more extreme circumstances?

Fortunately, this time, he isn’t in charge of the government, and he can’t count on the support of the military. That said, conditions in purple states are about to get very, very hairy, and sporadic violence is more likely than not.

By any reasonable historical standard, the American economy is doing very well right now. The unemployment rate is extremely low; inflation is effectively down to about 3 percent; interest rates are at historically normal levels; and the markets are doing just fine, thank you. And yet, Biden is getting little credit from the voters for this. Reagan had “Morning in America;” for Biden, it’s around 8:00 PM. Why?

Partisanship is a big part of the public relations problem, of course. The MSM haven’t helped, either; at times, NBC sounds a lot like Fox News when its reporters talk about the economy. I think, however, that the biggest problem is timing and expectations. The Reagan boom was sudden and dramatic, and came after years of grinding stagflation; the Biden boom is none of those things. People today take low unemployment and inflation levels for granted, because that is what they enjoyed before the pandemic.

Here are the articles of faith for the American reactionary right:

1. Their ancestors–white Christians, all–made America great.
2. God and the accomplishments of their ancestors gave them the right to rule America in perpetuity.
3. Demographic changes and the ongoing erosion of Christian faith in America have put their right to rule at risk.
4. The left is an unholy alliance of largely overeducated women, minorities, and seculars who hate them and want revenge for their previous powerlessness.
5. As a result, the left threatens real America with political and cultural annihilation.
6. Real America is entitled to fight back to save itself with any tool at its disposal.
7. Donald Trump is the indispensable man in this existential battle. His personality shortcomings are actually an asset in the battle, because they guarantee that he won’t sell out to the establishment. He has no limits–that’s exactly what the base needs.

Is there any evidence on the ground to support the articles of faith? I’ll discuss that tomorrow.

The McConnell Project, based on the filibuster and a compliant Supreme Court, has been a great benefit for the GOP and a huge liability for America. Mitch will have much to answer for when it is all said and done. So why am I rooting for him to recover now?

Because Mitch doesn’t want to burn it down, and he has a record of keeping the crazoids in the Senate under control. His successor, whoever it may be, probably won’t be as successful. Does America really need another version of the GOP House and a second Kevin McCarthy?

You already know the answer to that.

Pitching yourself to the reactionary base as a more competent, less legally encumbered version of Trump never looked like a winning strategy to me. But today, things have gotten even worse for DeSantis, because he has competition in the abjectly pro-Trump lane; Ramaswamy is even Trumpier than Trump in some respects. If the GOP electorate suddenly decides that Trump’s legal problems disqualify him, it may choose Ramaswamy over DeSantis. What is the Hungarian Candidate going to do now?

He can’t very well attack Ramaswamy on substance, since they are both completely aligned with the base, unless he is prepared to jettison his passive-aggressive approach to Trump and put his focus on winning over moderate voters. It is probably way too late for that. My guess is that he will engage in some mild criticism about Ramaswamy’s inexperience and hope that Christie, Haley, and Pence will discredit the guy without much help from him.

In other words, expect more of the same at the next debate.

A note to my readers: I will be on vacation next week. Regular posts will resume no later than next Sunday.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Ramaswamy is running, not as Trump’s competitor, but as his even more extreme reactionary surrogate. To what end? What does he want?

As far as I can tell, here are the possibilities:

1. To increase his profile in an effort to become a reactionary media star;
2. To become Trump’s VP, and inherit the party in 2028; or
3. To become the leading figure in the party in 2028, but from the outside–i.e., to avoid all of Trump’s baggage.

No sane person would want to be Trump’s VP. If you think that’s a great job, talk to Mike Pence. The first and third alternatives are not mutually exclusive. My guess is that it is #3, possibly mixed with #1.

Many commentators have opined that the Pence campaign is nothing more than warmed-over Reaganism, but I don’t agree. I think it is a combination of a Reaganesque view of foreign policy, anti-abortion extremism, and Trump with the adults in the room–the actual product of the first few years of Trump, not his Twitter rantings or January 6.

Pence is hardly the perfect vessel for this approach, since both the right and the left despise him for his actions during the Trump years, and his lack of charisma is painfully apparent every time he opens his mouth. That said, you can see how synthesizing the most popular elements of Trumpism and Reaganism could get you enough votes to win the nomination–pick off the resolute pro-lifers from the base, get lots of undecideds by supporting only the best parts of Trump, and unite the Never Trumpers under the Reagan banner. It’s certainly a better approach than refusing to attack Trump and hoping the base will somehow prefer you to the man on golf cart.

Germany was allied with two tottering autocracies during World War I: the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and the Ottoman Empire, commonly referred to as “the sick man of Europe.” They were almost more trouble than they were worth. If you’re looking for reasons why the Germans lost the war, that is a good place to start.

Assuming that the World War I analogy fits today and that China is the equivalent of the German Empire, who is the best available candidate for the new “sick man of Europe?” Wouldn’t it make sense to pick as your principal ally an unstable, aggressive autocracy whose only real economic asset is about to decline in value over the next decade?

That would be Russia, of course. Xi looks more like Wilhelm II every day.

In the 1960s, it was the Democrats–JFK and LBJ–who swaggered. JFK’s style, minus the womanizing, would probably still play today. In the 1980s, however, Reagan made the GOP the party of swagger, and the rest is history; the left has preferred cerebral metrosexuals to cowboys. Is there any possibility of reverting to the earlier type?

Fetterman and Eric Adams suggest that the answer is yes. Since most Democratic voters are women, however, it is more complicated than it was in the 1960s. Left-leaning swagger has to come with a side dish of #MeToo.

Trump wasn’t the only thing missing last night; so was the war on wokeness! What does that mean for DeSantis and his chances?

Wokeness was absent because the moderators didn’t think it was a big concern for most GOP voters. They were probably right. But without wokeness, DeSantis is a man without a brand–an angry Demosthenes crying in the wilderness. He has no special foreign policy experience, and no great interest in reshaping the economy for the benefit of reactionary workers, so there is no obvious reason to prefer him to, say, Mike Pence. He is a lost soul.

Poor little guy.

1. The Fox News moderators made little effort to enforce the rules. Since all of the candidates were ignoring them, and the heated exchanges were revealing in their way, I thought that was OK.
2. Whether DeSantis was successful or not depends on your perspective. If his objective was to look like a logical successor to Trump, he failed miserably; he was a weird combination of overly aggressive and evasive. He didn’t in any way command the stage in the way Trump does, and he can’t really appeal to the reactionary base with Ramaswamy in the room. On the other hand, he didn’t take many shots, either, so if simply avoiding trouble was the goal, he was a winner.
3. Ramaswamy was definitely the group lightning rod. While he was consistently Trumpier-than-thou, my guess is that the elderly white base will hate him; he sounds like an extremely reactionary version of the Secretary of Transportation on way too much Red Bull. I think he will go down in the polls after the debate.
4. Tim Scott was a total zero. He doesn’t have the force necessary to win the nomination–not that I ever thought he did.
5. Mike Pence was surprisingly effective. He may turn out to be the most interesting Trump foil at future debates, if Trump shows up for any of them, which is hardly a given.
6. Chris Christie did his thing, but he didn’t really stand out. His attacks on Ramaswamy were more memorable than his attacks on Trump.
7. Nikki Haley, to me, was the most rational and persuasive of the candidates. But I’m not a Republican, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
8. The rest don’t matter.

Trump poked Rupert Murdoch in the eye with a stick by refusing to debate and generating counterprogramming with Tucker Carlson. Will Murdoch retaliate by telling his moderators to toss softball questions to DeSantis? What will Fox do?

Nothing, I suspect, for three reasons. First, Fox has generally played it straight during debates. Second, debates involve multiple characters and are consequently too hard to control. Finally, Murdoch won’t cross the line and permanently alienate Trump. As he sees it, he has too much to lose.

The unification of Germany created a new and unstable balance of power in Europe. Bismarck knew it, and feared it. He did everything he could to keep France isolated and Europe peaceful while he was chancellor. But Wilhelm II sacked him and promoted a policy of aggressive imperialism; Britain and Russia were predictably alienated; and Europe was on the road to World War I.

In a similar vein, Xi’s predecessors did their best to promote peaceful development in China, but Xi decided to throw red meat to the nationalist base, and you can see the results. Europe and China’s neighbors (Russia excepted) are offended and frightened by Chinese provocations; they draw closer to the US; the Chinese whine about containment and lash out at their critics; and the cycle begins again. That makes Xi the new Wilhelm II and the opposite of Bismarck.

Actually, when you think about it, he sounds a lot like Donald Trump interacting with the American left, only on the international stage.

OK, we know that Trump swaggers. How do his opponents match up, based on my six indicators of swagger?

DeSantis meets the man test, and he has an athletic background, although it could be argued that baseball is no substitute for riding a horse and clearing brush on your ranch. He fails the other tests miserably. He exudes anger rather than self-confidence; he lacks an aura of celebrity or success; he seems more interested in policy than in pure exercises of faith and will; and he isn’t as big as Trump. If the two ever appear on a debate stage together, Trump will make every effort to dominate him, and will probably succeed.

With one exception, the rest of the field is no better. Nikki Haley doesn’t even pass the man test. Tim Scott is a black Mr. Rogers, not a force of nature. Ramaswamy is a nerd, and he doesn’t even disagree with Trump on anything. Not much hope there.

Christie is the exception. He meets several of the swagger tests. That’s what gives him a puncher’s chance.

What is commonly called a “debate” is hardly that; the candidates don’t disagree on very much, and there are no meaningful exchanges of ideas. It is more accurately described as a group job interview, and it functions more like a beauty contest–the idea is to stand out. Who looks and sounds the most presidential? Who can dominate the stage? Those are the real questions that will be answered tomorrow night.

Trump’s absence is both a challenge and an opportunity for DeSantis. The Hungarian Candidate will be competing, not just with the other candidates, but with Trump’s ghost. Can he control the stage the way Trump does? Will be look larger than life? Will the base look at him and conclude that they would be safe with him in office? Or will he just come across as an angry, sarcastic little man who likes to drone on about wokeness, to the infinite boredom of his audience?

I’m guessing the latter. If anyone has the ability to stand out in this crowd, it’s Christie. That represents his slight chance to unite the anti-Trumpers and win the nomination.