Where Does "Getting the Base" Get Us?
The "there go the people, I am their leader and must follow them" instinct may garner an enthusiastic following, but then what?
As an observer of our nation’s political and cultural phenomena whose observations are driven by shoulds and oughts, I find purely objective political analysis to be of limited usefulness.
I have the most profound respect for the field’s deep divers and crunchers of arcane sets of numbers. Their work is essential for making sure one’s take on a given development is grounded in fact, but its conclusions are of limited depth in the absence of a lodestar. Purely objective analysis can even wind up giving people in positions of influence bum advice. A recent column by Sean Trende illustrates my point.
Trende is a Senior Elections Analyst at Real Clear Politics and has co-authored the Almanac of American Politics, the go-to resource for data about the nation’s voters. But his piece published February 18 at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled “Republican Elites Don’t Understand Why Their Voters Like Trump (And Not Them),” while framed as a friendly heads-up to this so-called elite class, could steer Republican campaign operations onto morally perilous paths.
He is surely onto something when he frames 1992 as an inflection point for the GOP. It was the election in which Democrats and Republicans switched places regarding their education-based demographic makeup. That was the year when “Bill Clinton began a full-frontal assault on Republican hegemony among the ‘winners,’” after decades when Republican candidates had generally had a “patrician” appeal to the college-educated, while Democrats had been more of an aggregation of “outsiders” and of a more populist orientation. A reversal was underway, and it increased in degree in the ensuing years.
Trende is also not wrong that “Trump succeeded where the old GOP had failed: by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin” in 2016, nor in his assertion that the George W. Bush era proved to be a frustrating dilution of the conservative vision, with such fruits as foreign policy missteps, “No Child Left Behind, TARP, and an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs.”
Trende doesn’t mention such issues as immigration (except when he briefly mentions Jeb Bush), race, and sexuality, but during the Obama years, these all added to the sense among Republican voters that they were now the outsiders.
Along came the “Very Stable Genius,” whose “appeal is fundamentally different than previous Republican candidates” but “not narrower.” His message to the “elite” (a term whose usage I find unfortunate) is that “the point of politics is that you must appeal to a broader polity which may not always desire the ‘best’ policies.”
This amounts to advice one can hear from less erudite corners that engaged Americans of a conservative bent need to hold their noses in order to drag their brand across the finish line. Isn’t that settling for outcomes that bear little to no resemblance to the conservative vision?
How seriously can we take ourselves if we accept the ascendancy of a charlatan who has just been fined $355 million dollars for inflating the value of his real estate assets, who has been found guilty in a civil case of rape and defamation, awaits four criminal trials, and hawks pieces of his suit and gold sneakers?
How much of a repository is the 2024 Republican Party for the conservative vision when this figurehead is as wedded to tax-cut-eroding tariffs as he was when in office and when he has seduced such formerly solidly fusionist institutions as CPAC and the Heritage Foundation into enforcing his insistence on unwavering personal loyalty?
Help us to continue to provide a platform for writers like Barney Quick.
How much more conservative has his foreign policy been than Barack Obama’s? Would voters of any degree of conservative inclination have stood for useless summits with Kim Jong-Un and resulting “beautiful letters” prior to the Trump presidency? Is this any less an appeasement than Obama’s apology tour or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action?
As far as any kind of “establishment” (a term I also find unfortunate since it no longer seems to reflect the reality on the ground) ability to sway the right-leaning populace, it seems that ship has already sailed. The Chicago Council Survey has found that a majority of Republicans now think that the United States ought to withdraw from involvement on the world stage.
It’s a fine time for that to be the prevailing sentiment, what with Ukraine running out of ammunition in its quest to defeat an invading neighbor, Houthis using Iran-supplied missiles to molest Red Sea commercial shipping (and attempt to do so to US military vessels), North Korea changing its constitution to explicitly state the eradication of South Korea as a national mission, and China having built its military prowess to be the world’s third strongest.
Another sense in which the Clinton era was an inflection point was the jettisoning of character as something partisan voters cared about. Clinton skated through his sexual scandals to be regarded as an elder statesman. He was succeeded by two presidents who seemed to adhere to fidelity in their marriages, but legislative officeholders increasingly got a pass.
And then along came the “Very Stable Genius.” Let’s quickly review the trail of objectification of women that became public knowledge early on: his Access Hollywood tape, his walking through the dressing room of the Miss Teen USA pageant as contestants were changing, his affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal at a golf tournament while his third wife was home with their three-month-old son, and the cheating that ended his first two marriages.
It would be one thing if he’d demonstrated any adherence to a body of principles, but he quickly showed that he’d approach any and every policy front impulsively.
The cowardice and sycophancy of those who once opposed his 2016 candidacy cannot be overlooked. There’s Ted Cruz, who reacted with understandable outrage to Trump’s insulting of Cruz’s wife and floating a conspiracy theory about his father, but who is now totally on board. There’s Mike Pence, who, on the tarmac of the Columbus, Indiana Municipal Airport upon arriving home from Joe Biden’s inauguration, began his remarks by thanking Trump for years of service to the nation—weeks after Pence’s life was put in danger at the US Capitol. There’s Lindsey Graham, who said, in 2016, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” but now refutes Liz Cheney’s warnings about the former president.
So Trende is probably correct that the way for the Republican Party to shore up its viability is to patronize the swath of the voting populace that remains enthusiastic about Donald Trump. But somebody needs to point out that a Trump party gets us no closer to a return to a recognizable America than the current iteration of the Democrats. Something else is needed for that. That’s the conversation the rest of us need to be having.
Barney Quick is an Adjunct Professor teaching Jazz and Rock & Roll History at Indiana University Columbus. He received his Bachelor’s degree in English and Literature from Wabash College and his Master’s degree in History from Butler University. @Penandguitar
Man, this is on point. My goal and yours is not to win elections but to advance conservative ideas. If there aren’t enough Americans to win elections for conservative ideas, the job of conservatives is to persuade our fellow citizens. That’s what Reagan did.
Too many populists adhere to a (very progressive) notion that because the base of the Republican Party “feels” a certain way, conservatives need to change their policy ideas to accommodate. To be frank, this is ludicrous. The respectful thing to do is not to change our ideas, but to persuade others that those ideas are correct and all American citizens are potentially persuadable (some are just harder than others). They are generally intelligent-enough and goodhearted enough that such persuasion is possible, even if we begin from radically different positions.
The only reason to change one’s ideas is if those ideas are wrong. If they are right, there is no reason to change them, not even if all the world is against one.
Awesome piece. "Something else is needed for that. That’s the conversation the rest of us need to be having." Absolutely. What is needed is an explicit Conservative Party whose primary goal is normalcy-away from the extremes of the personality of MAGA and the policies of the Squad. Even if, like all 3rd parties, it fails, it might, like the Free Soilers, have its concepts become doctrine of the post Trump GOP.
As per the origins of this current GOP? You touch on many great factors. Gary Hart was toxic in 1988. Bill Clinton was fine for 1992. W's expansion of Medicare, the largest in 40 years. But I think something snapped with Obama. In 2004 he was going to be uniter but by 2012 he was the divider who straw manned the GOP at every turn. And the failure of "establisment" (you are correct, very unfortunate term) figures such as McCain and Romney to stop him.