By Rich Lowry
Friday, November 10, 2017
Ed Gillespie went from potential vindicator of Trumpism
to cuckservative in the space of a couple of hours.
The Virginia Republican, campaigning in a treacherous
political environment defined by an unpopular president of his own party, ran
the only race he reasonably could. He distanced himself from Donald Trump
personally, hoping to lessen his losses in heavily Democratic Northern
Virginia, while hitting some Trumpian notes on crime and immigration to appeal
to the president’s base.
As of last week, Gillespie looked to be gaining on
Democrat Ralph Northam fast. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, the
self-declared keeper of the Trumpist flame, believed Gillespie had cracked the
code by fashioning a “Trumpism without Trump.”
At least that was the party line until Gillespie lost.
Then, he became an establishment tool who had betrayed Trumpism and the
president.
The hypocrisy of the Bannon faction aside, the Virginia
race revealed a problem with the Trumpism-without-Trump construct — namely,
that it’s not really possible.
First, it’s not going to be convincing to Trump-haters.
Ed Gillespie is not the slightest bit Trumpy. He is earnest, wonky, and
friendly. When he distanced himself from Trump, it was credible because he
hadn’t been close to Trump to begin with. He had never met him, and all of
Trump’s support on Twitter was unsolicited.
None of this made the slightest difference to voters in
Northern Virginia, where Northam racked up margins bigger than Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama had. These people weren’t showing up to send a message to
Gillespie, the otherwise unthreatening candidate who happened to run a barrage
of negative ads against Northam (not the first time this has happened in
electoral politics). They were showing up to send a message to Trump, whom they
believe to be a clear and present danger to all that they hold dear.
So as a sheer political matter, there can be no such
thing as Trumpism without Trump, or Anti-Trumpism without Trump, or Anything
Else without Trump.
It is difficult enough for a candidate to run away from a
conventional president of his own party; it is going be even harder with a
president who dominates the media to an extent no other president has, and
courts — nay, enjoys — radioactive controversies.
Then, there is the other, opposite problem: that Trumpism
without Trump won’t be fully acceptable to Trumpists. They talk a lot about the
“Trump agenda,” although what this means is vague. How could Gillespie have run
on it more to their satisfaction? Promise to build a wall and have Mexico pay
for it? To implement extreme vetting? To hire the best people and make the best
deals?
The fact is that the Trump legislative agenda is entirely
conventional (certainly Gillespie has no problem with it) and what sets Trump
apart is his populist, guy-on-a-barstool persona and perpetual combativeness.
This is what his loyalists ultimately want everyone to
sign up for, the personality. As Trump himself put it in a particularly
classless tweet immediately after the Virginia result, Gillespie “did not
embrace me or what I stand for.”
In theory, Trumpism without Trump is the right direction
for the GOP. It should learn from his populist, nationalistic appeal while
avoiding its (and his) excesses.
In practice, Trump himself is going to loom all the
larger in the party. He is the main issue in American politics, and he may be
the only Republican fit to weather the storm — he has a proven ability to turn
out his voters, he doesn’t have to win elections in nonpresidential years, and
his persona works for him, if not for anyone else. If the worst comes and
Republicans lose both houses of Congress next year, Trump’s importance will be
further magnified as the only Republican standing between Democrats and unified
control of the federal government.
In that circumstance, Republican voters would probably be
much more willing to embrace Trump without Trumpism, rather than the opposite.
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