Republicans have breathed political life into their very own Trump-enstein
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Version 0 of 1. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump is little more than a walking, talking conservative blog comment section: he is the seething, narcissistic id of a political class which decries any legitimate claims of unequal or discriminatory treatment by non-white heterosexual men (including rape victims, African Americans and LGBT people) while claiming to be the true victims of, well, everything. Trump is every profane Facebook commenter who calls women “cunts” while denying the existence of sexism; he’s that guy on Twitter who replies to strangers using #BlackLivesMatter to demand they discuss black-on-black crime. But, Republicans, Donald Trump is not a witch – he’s you. Related: Trump makes 'blood' truce with Fox then says he is top candidate for women And about all those things he is pathologically unable to resist saying, of which “there will be no better candidate to women” is only Tuesday’s latest and greatest hit: if you think they will damage the party’s ability to attract women, Latino and centrist voters in this presidential election and those beyond it, you are correct. The problem, though, isn’t just that Trump is saying things like Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists” or that John McCain was “not a war hero” or that Megyn Kelly’s real problem was that she had “blood coming out of her wherever”; it’s that he’s repeating things that some Republicans and plenty of online conservative armchair warriors have been saying with little public repudiation for years. Related: Trump may say misogynist things, but other Republican candidates do them | Jessica Valenti It’s true, like his fans have said, that the turds hurtling out of Trump’s mouth-hole aren’t created by committee and vetted by a campaign operative (though Nixonian dirty trickster Roger Simon says he tried). But what rational people have tried and failed to understand is that Trump’s routine is apparently working (he is somehow up in at least one poll since the Megyn Kelly debate misogyny). His schtick is accurately aggregating what too many people say, often under the cover of anonymity – which has not, until now, been a problem for too many in conservative or Republican leadership. Democrats like to say that Republicans have spent the Obama presidency being the party of “no”; not only has it worked, but it’s worked so well that there is a whole constituency of people who now feel totally aggrieved that the rest of the country hasn’t been listening to the noes they’ve shouted with the volume and coherency of a group of tantrum-having toddlers. No to Obamacare, no to the Iran deal, no to gun control, no to stimulus, no to environmental regulation, no to immigration reform, no, no, no, no – and Republican leaders never offered them much more than the opportunity to say no to things. After the Tea Party revolution, what few Republicans who had bothered with policy-making stopped trying to propose realistic alternatives, knowing that any alternative would just make them enemies and earn them primary opponents. So it’s no wonder that a lot of conservatives are now cheering the guy who is yelling “NO!” the loudest on stage; it’s the only ideology that’s been presented by conservatives for nearly a decade and it feels fun to say. Pragmatic governance, even ideologically-driven, is so boring by comparison. Liberals haven’t helped matters much: while they spent the Obama years obsessively cataloguing the casual racism of conservatives big and small in the hopes that calling it out would stamp it out; we seemingly only created solidarity amongst the nastiest of our neighbors. Racists who had once been convinced that the so-called PC Police had left but a few trusted racists to whom to forward their ugly emails now know that they are legion, and some of them have real power. They’d apparently like more of it – and one of their own back in the White House. Of course, everyone who is not drawn in by the spectacle of a 69-year-old man with hair that clearly telegraphs its owner’s level of self-delusion and casual relationship to the truth is horrified at Trump’s ascendency in the Republican party primary. It’s like listening to your drunk Uncle Ted slurringly explain the taxonomy of his prejudices at a family wedding, just knowing the climax is going to be the n-word. But after years of the right complaining about “political correctness”, using prejudice to support policy, dog-whistling about the first African American president and generally failing to shout down the bigots to their own right, Republicans have breathed political life into their very own Trumpenstein, and can only stand back and watch the carnage – and hope that someone, anyone can strike the fatal blow. [This column was written while the author was ovulating, not menstruating, in case you were wondering – though periods are not an insult.] |