As I’ve noted before, three of the four GOP factions oppose Trump’s hard line on immigration, but he’s determined to fight the midterms on that issue, because he sees it as a winner. Is he right?
I doubt it. Yes, it certainly motivates his Reactionary base, but it also triggers a powerful blue backlash, and, in any event, the base represents less than half of GOP voters. He would be wiser to talk about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
When I created the model of the GOP with four factions, I was a bit worried that lumping primarily religious and nationalist Reactionaries in the same group was a mistake. To put the issue in concrete terms, it might be wrong to put Cruz and Trump primary voters in the same faction.
I needn’t have worried. Recent polls indicate that Cruz voters are actually more supportive of Trump at this point than Trump voters.
Scratch a Reactionary of whatever kind, and he’s still a Reactionary.
Theresa May is a dogged centrist politician with no great gifts or vision. She continues in office mostly because she has a talent for self-preservation and because her more flamboyant rivals are less trusted by the majority of the Conservative Party. She is, in a sense, the lowest common denominator.
There are a fair number of British Prime Ministers throughout history who fit this description, but the one who comes to mind first is Stanley Baldwin.
He was never supposed to be king, but when a window of opportunity opened, he grabbed it with both hands. A cynical practitioner of realpolitik, he strengthened his position by distributing money and power to his friends, and stayed in office through extrajudicial violence, judicial murders, and the use of fake news.
Is it Putin or Richard III? One thing is for sure–Putin’s Bosworth Field is nowhere in sight.
Chaotic. Corrupt. Incompetent. Capricious. Incoherent. These are words that we would use to describe Donald Trump’s presidency, and with very good reason.
The point here is that Reactionaries don’t see things this way. To them, what we see as chaos is strength, and a welcome willingness to challenge the status quo. Everyone else who has claimed to represent their interests has sold out, but not him! He does battle with the much-loathed “respectable” establishment every day. That’s what they mean by the swamp–it has nothing to do with money or lobbyists.
Their attitudes will change only if they endure a sustained period of time in which their economic interests are substantially impacted. To be honest, even that might not do the trick.
On the British PM known as May.
She’s meeting with Trump on this day.
He talked to the Sun.
Not much good will was won.
He loves chaos. What more can you say?
Angela Merkel is a cautious, centrist politician with a genius for identifying and implementing consensus within the German public. Her long and mostly tranquil reign as Chancellor is largely due to her ability to appropriate popular ideas of the Social Democrats, who have steadily lost ground in the polls as a result of their inability to stake out clear ideological differences with her. Unfortunately, she has been unable to find an acceptable resolution to the EU’s ongoing difficulties, particularly over immigration, and she is likely to lose power in the near future as a result.
She sounds like her historical twin, Sir Robert Walpole.
So, just in the last week, Trump has made an extremely divisive Supreme Court nomination, threatened to blow up NATO, promised billions of dollars in new and unpopular tariffs, and provoked huge demonstrations in the UK. His next stop is a meeting with Putin, where the two strongmen will mug for the cameras like old friends and probably agree in private on, well, God knows what.
The Summer of Love, it ain’t.
Trump Summer
Hot summer streets
And the internet’s sizzling.
It’s all around.
Trying to smile
But the air is so heavy with dread.
Strange voices are saying
What did he say?
Things no one understands.
It’s too close for comfort.
The b.s. is just out of hand.
(Chorus)
It’s a Trump, Trump summer.
Why can’t he leave us alone?
It’s a Trump, Trump summer
‘Till he’s gone.
Supreme nominations
A big NATO meeting
And Putin, too.
It’s too much to handle
I wish I could get up and go.
It’s a Trump, Trump summer.
Why can’t he leave us alone?
It’s a Trump, Trump summer
‘Till he’s gone.
Hope it’s just two years from now.
(Repeat chorus)
Parody of “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama.
He was a young man in a hurry. Cool and cerebral, he won over the establishment and became his country’s leader at an early age. He then succeeded in weathering an enormous national crisis.
Is it Obama or William Pitt the Younger? You decide.
Judges are not, strictly speaking, politicians, but it is fairly easy to identify Kavanaugh as a PBP, given his overriding interest in striking down regulations. Amy Barrett, on the other hand, clearly was a Reactionary.
The core of the current GOP is the deal in which PBPs support social conservative legislation and judges in exchange for regressive tax cuts. As I’ve noted before, the events of the last several years show that the Reactionaries think they have gotten the short end of the stick. They want more, and they expect Trump to deliver.
Ross Douthat, who is a mixture of CD and Reactionary (but mostly the latter), thinks there will be hell to pay in the GOP if Kavanaugh is just a vote to nibble at the edges of Roe. That makes sense, on its face, but is he right? I think not; the Reactionaries are so committed to Trump that they would learn to live with a “moderate” justice, just as they have learned to love Putin and Kim.
He was a bright, affable, left-wing politician with a great appetite for life. Unfortunately, his love of food made him fat, and his taste for women made him suspect in respectable circles. He had a successful career, but he never truly fulfilled his potential.
Is it Bill Clinton or Charles James Fox? You decide.
I obviously don’t share many political opinions with Kavanaugh, but he is a mainstream conservative thinker with a long and distinguished history of public service. His record is the best insurance we can reasonably request that he won’t turn into a stooge for Trump. If the Democrats somehow managed to defeat his nomination, the next choice would probably be worse.
In a better world, he would be open about his jurisprudential views during the confirmation process, and he would be approved fairly quickly, with few objections. Instead, this will turn into a battle to mobilize both the blue and the red bases, he won’t give any meaningful answers to questions, the blue NGOs will try to destroy him personally, and he will be confirmed in a close vote, anyway.
It’s going to be a miserable few months.
There are three things to remember about Ted Cruz. First, he’s a committed and intense Reactionary, with a few CL ideas about economics thrown in to appeal to the Koch brothers. Second, he’s almost insanely ambitious. Finally, in the service of #1 and #2, his tactics are extremely flexible. One day he supports Trump; the next day he doesn’t. He’s used so many people in Congress for his own purposes that even his ostensible ideological allies don’t like him.
There is something about Cruz that just smells like death. There is a reason why I pitted him against Dracula in a previous post. It is easy to imagine him burning heretics in an earlier era.
That conveniently brings us to his historical twin–Philip II of Spain, who was described as “lugubrious” in a book I read over my vacation. “Lugubrious” is a perfect word for Cruz.