By Ian Tuttle
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump announced that “the
shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want
to.” What constitutes unshackled fighting “for America”? Apparently, going
hammer-and-tongs after the sitting Republican speaker of the House: “It is hard
to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support!” Trump tweeted. Then,
an hour later: “Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad
conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty.” Trump then
condemned “disloyal R’s” as “far more difficult than Crooked Hillary.”
With less than one month until Election Day, the
Republican presidential nominee has declared war on his own party.
This development has all the inevitability of Sophoclean
tragedy. In August 2015, during the very first Republican primary debate, Trump
was the sole candidate who refused to pledge to support the eventual nominee.
Eventually, he signed a pledge to offer support, but in March of this year,
alleging “unfair” treatment by the Republican National Committee, he took it
back. Meanwhile, throughout the election, Trump has regularly seemed more eager
to pick fights with Republicans than with Democrats, up to and including his
general-election opponent. He said scurrilous things not just about his fellow
candidates — e.g., he compared Ben Carson to a “child molester” and suggested
that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination — but
openly denounced Republican officeholders: John McCain (“I like people who
weren’t captured”), Jeff Flake (“weak and ineffective”), Nikki Haley (an
“embarrassment”), and, of course, Ryan, whom Trump initially refused to endorse
in his much-watched primary contest.
But, of course, this is what Trump was nominated to do.
As has been widely chronicled, Donald Trump was the
candidate of a large clique of voters convinced that they had been at best
ignored, or at worst betrayed, by Republican officeholders. Some of their
grievances were and remain fair: on immigration, for example, where Republican
leaders have failed to acknowledge the disruptive effects, both economic and
social, of the large-scale importation of foreign workers; or on tax policy,
where Republican leaders have propounded the virtues of supply-side economics
but failed to recognize that empowering top earners has not mitigated
demoralizing trends such as long-term wage stagnation. But the angry idealism
of the conservative-media complex also created pernicious misimpressions: that
Republicans, for example, could force President Obama to repeal his signature
health-care act. The structural limits imposed by a constitutional structure of
government — limits that, yes, apply to Democrats, too — were forgotten.
Republican spinelessness was a far more enticing story than the simple reality:
that in a government of separated powers and checks and balances, sometimes you
lose.
Donald Trump became an avatar for that seething
dissatisfaction. With his gut instinct for an opportunity, he sensed the
fragility of the Republican establishment and set himself against it, bolstered
by his policy heterodoxies and roughhewn rhetorical style. Having no particular
attachment to the Republican party as an institution, Trump was happy to cheer
on calls to “Burn it down!”
And now, flailing in the wake of the revelation that he’s
a self-confessed serial groper, with polls showing him falling fast, Trump no
longer feels any compunction about setting the fire himself. He has come fully
into his own: Donald Trump as embattled underdog; Donald Trump as light-bringer
against the forces of intraparty darkness; Donald Trump as refining fire.
But this will not be — cannot be — a controlled burn.
Trump’s inclination to scorch the earth behind him may create space to erect a
new political apparatus, “Republican” or otherwise, more amenable to the
interests of Trump supporters. But it will also do the very thing Trump
supporters so fear: give Hillary Clinton carte blanche to impose her agenda on
the country. Because if Trump’s vindictiveness were to succeed, the result
would be not only a Clinton administration; it would be Democratic majorities
in the Senate and possibly House, which would happily rubber-stamp her most
extravagant policy ambitions.
The Republican party needed — needs — significant
reforms. Its congressional leadership has failed to be responsive to the
desires of significant segments of its constituency. Its national committee has
been headed by feckless apparatchiks, eager to go along to get along. Its media
complex has been happy to expand its profit margin at the expense of
conservative principles. But there is a conservative way to reform:
incrementally, thoughtfully, with obeisance to the obvious truth that it’s far
easier to tear something down than to build it up.
In the primaries, Republicans, heedless of the consequences,
opted to “burn it down.” They’re getting their wish.
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