As it is starting to look increasingly likely that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President of the United States, I thought it would be prudent to take a long look at the man to see if there is any remote justification for supporting him. In the first of this two-part series, we will look at Trump, the man, to see if we can better understand him.
Naturally, the first question is: who exactly is Donald Trump? He is a successful businessman, a reality TV star, and a lifelong Democrat who is now seeking the Republican nomination. He is a New Yorker through and through, and possesses probably the second biggest ego in the world at the moment (his only competition is Kanye West). Throughout his life and career, he has taken just about every position on every salient issue, imaginable. Recently, he has taken up the conservative positions on many (but not all) issues, but it is not difficult to find a past statement he has made on an issue that would contradict his current professed positions. For one so loud, he is actually a bit of an enigma as to what he actually believes.
If there is one thing Trump has built his campaign on it is the issue of immigration. Admittedly, I did not foresee that immigration would become the salient topic that it has. I did not think that in the face of ISIS, lingering economic problems, Supreme Court appointments, and other problems that immigration would be all that important. But Trump has certainly tapped into an angry base by taking the most hardline positions imaginable on that topic. He has, in other words, made use of one of the oldest and saddest of American traditions- the tradition of using immigrants as the scapegoats for all of one’s problems (be they Chinese, Mexican, Irish, Japanese, or any others). The extent to which he personally believes what he is saying is unclear, but he certainly picked some fertile ground for a primary campaign that the others would have largely ignored.
Classifying Trump on the normal ideological spectrum is difficult. It certainly cannot be done on a one-dimensional scale, or even a 2-dimensional scale (such as the Political Compass). Although he is espousing strong racially conservative views, he does not align very well with conservatives on other views. He is not opposed to taxation, for example, in the way that someone like Grover Norquist would like. Nor is he an especially strong social conservative- defending Planned Parenthood and having made statements in the past supportive of abortion. As for foreign policy, from what I can discern from his often incoherent rambles, he is certainly no neoconservative. In fact, his accusations against President Bush and the War in Iraq made him sound like Dennis Kucinich in the 2008 Democratic primary. In terms of trade policies, he appears to be the strongest protectionist in the Republican Party since the days of Robert Taft. Trump’s views, in short, are a wild array of different beliefs that lack substance and are not nuanced, but allow him to defy classification according to the normal ideological labels. The fairest way, I think, to label him would be a racially conservative nationalist protectionist isolationist populist demagogue.
Trump and the Tea Party
Interestingly, Trump’s largest base of support seems to come from the remnants of the Tea Party movement- figures like Sarah Palin. I call this “interesting” because Donald Trump is the antithesis of everything that started the movement. In its original form, the Tea Party was a fiscally conservative and libertarian movement more closely aligned with Ron Paul than with anything remotely like Trump. The Tea Party formed in response to programs like TARP and the various bailouts that, in the eyes of the Tea Party’s founders, represented crony capitalism and poor economics. Social issues and foreign policy were not concerns of the Tea Party in its infancy, just fiscal conservatism.
So what happened? Desperate to grow and become more influential, the Tea Party allowed itself to morph from a libertarian economic protest movement to a movement without any particular direction due to the numerous issues they pledged to attack. According to their website, illegal immigration somehow made it to the very top of their list- the most important “non-negotiable” belief in their manifesto. Suddenly, the movement was overwhelmed by the various factions within it and looked more like Michele Bachmann’s core principles than Ron Paul’s more narrowly-focused vision. Since then, it has only gotten worse as the Tea Party became a haven for people angry at everything rather than a coordinated movement dedicated to slowing down the rise of big government in the realm of fiscal policy. The Tea Party, in short, merely became the extreme arm of the Republican Party, rather than the next step of the Ron Paul movement.
Given this lack of direction, focus, and discipline, it is hardly surprising that what is left of the Tea Party would embrace Donald Trump seven years after the birth of the movement. Trump speaks to their anger and offers them a list of villains to blame. His decidedly less-than-conservative record is cast aside by his demagogic tirades against immigrants. And since some Tea Party politicians have failed to deliver on their promises, his nuclear tactics against any politician seem like the logical next step. Trump, in essence, is the manifestation of everything the Tea Party has become over the years, of how much of their message they are willing to sacrifice for a demagogue. Instead of fiscal conservatism, he speaks of protectionism, trade wars, and even eminent domain. Instead of strong religious and family values, they embrace the man who is on his third trophy wife, has only recently expressed pro-life positions, and made money by owning casinos. Instead of opposing Obamacare, they endorse a man who has openly expressed his desire for single-payer universal health care, the same as Bernie Sanders. Instead of seeking the sort of unity Americans had on September 12th, 2001 (which was the purpose of Glenn Beck’s tangentially-related 9.12 Groups), they are campaigning for a man who is one step away from being a full-fledged 9/11 Truther! Instead of denouncing the auto and bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009, they are throwing their support behind a man who supported these actions- the ones responsible for jumpstarting the Tea Party movement!
The Tea Party has truly lost all sense of direction by endorsing the sort of big government demagogue that the movement formed to oppose. Donald Trump is the manifestation of this undisciplined, out of control movement that is now only really united by anger directed at abstract enemies like China and immigrants. And a movement that has no unifying principles beyond just anger cannot really be expected to survive for very long. As far as I am concerned, he has killed the Tea Party movement, co-opted it into his own personal cult and capitalized on the anger fueling what is left of the movement. He has taken advantage of the cacophony of oft-competing messages espoused by Tea Party leaders and re-forged it into his own unique political message that betrays the original purpose of the Tea Party. But, he is exactly what that movement deserves for being unable to stay true to their original intent and allowing anger to blind their judgement.
Conclusion
So, who is Donald Trump? I have three theories. First, that he is an extremely talented entertainer and underrated politician who has a keen sense of what his audience desires and tells them what they want to hear in order to boost himself. He is breaking and re-writing all the political rules because he had a better sense of his audience’s anger and desire for chaos than any of us who study politics for a living. In this theory, he is only running for president as part of some kind of ego trip just to prove that he can and that Americans really are stupid enough to ceaselessly support him out of anger (making him little better than a con artist). My second theory is that he is Hillary Clinton’s ultimate agent of chaos. Bill Clinton only won in 1992 because of Ross Perot’s 3rd party bid, so Hillary might have sensed that Trump could help her in a 3rd party. Even better, from her perspective, he could open Pandora’s Box against the Republicans and irreparably split the GOP by running a successful primary campaign. In all seriousness, I cannot think of anything Trump could do differently to plunge the GOP into chaos in an election year. Every time he threatens an independent bid, the RNC falls flat on their face trying to make it up to him. He is systematically destroying some of the GOP’s best candidates (beginning with Scott Walker) and trumpeting a toxic political issue (immigration) that forces Republicans to take positions that will hasten their eventual demise as a party. He has reduced the debates to incoherent screaming bouts that inexplicably never seem to backfire on him in the polls. His campaign is destroying the Republican Party, but I cannot decide if this is intentional on his part or if he just does not care. Finally, my third theory is he is actually sincere about his desire to become president and actually believes the oft-vile statements he spews. I find this to be the least plausible (oddly enough) because he has no consistency, whatsoever, in his history of political philosophies. It seems to me he usually just spouts out whatever pops into his head or whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. But if he does actually believe the things he says, that is the scariest thought of all…
Stay tuned for my thoughts on how the Republicans should respond to Trump, now that he is no longer a punch line.
Naturally, the first question is: who exactly is Donald Trump? He is a successful businessman, a reality TV star, and a lifelong Democrat who is now seeking the Republican nomination. He is a New Yorker through and through, and possesses probably the second biggest ego in the world at the moment (his only competition is Kanye West). Throughout his life and career, he has taken just about every position on every salient issue, imaginable. Recently, he has taken up the conservative positions on many (but not all) issues, but it is not difficult to find a past statement he has made on an issue that would contradict his current professed positions. For one so loud, he is actually a bit of an enigma as to what he actually believes.
If there is one thing Trump has built his campaign on it is the issue of immigration. Admittedly, I did not foresee that immigration would become the salient topic that it has. I did not think that in the face of ISIS, lingering economic problems, Supreme Court appointments, and other problems that immigration would be all that important. But Trump has certainly tapped into an angry base by taking the most hardline positions imaginable on that topic. He has, in other words, made use of one of the oldest and saddest of American traditions- the tradition of using immigrants as the scapegoats for all of one’s problems (be they Chinese, Mexican, Irish, Japanese, or any others). The extent to which he personally believes what he is saying is unclear, but he certainly picked some fertile ground for a primary campaign that the others would have largely ignored.
Classifying Trump on the normal ideological spectrum is difficult. It certainly cannot be done on a one-dimensional scale, or even a 2-dimensional scale (such as the Political Compass). Although he is espousing strong racially conservative views, he does not align very well with conservatives on other views. He is not opposed to taxation, for example, in the way that someone like Grover Norquist would like. Nor is he an especially strong social conservative- defending Planned Parenthood and having made statements in the past supportive of abortion. As for foreign policy, from what I can discern from his often incoherent rambles, he is certainly no neoconservative. In fact, his accusations against President Bush and the War in Iraq made him sound like Dennis Kucinich in the 2008 Democratic primary. In terms of trade policies, he appears to be the strongest protectionist in the Republican Party since the days of Robert Taft. Trump’s views, in short, are a wild array of different beliefs that lack substance and are not nuanced, but allow him to defy classification according to the normal ideological labels. The fairest way, I think, to label him would be a racially conservative nationalist protectionist isolationist populist demagogue.
Trump and the Tea Party
Interestingly, Trump’s largest base of support seems to come from the remnants of the Tea Party movement- figures like Sarah Palin. I call this “interesting” because Donald Trump is the antithesis of everything that started the movement. In its original form, the Tea Party was a fiscally conservative and libertarian movement more closely aligned with Ron Paul than with anything remotely like Trump. The Tea Party formed in response to programs like TARP and the various bailouts that, in the eyes of the Tea Party’s founders, represented crony capitalism and poor economics. Social issues and foreign policy were not concerns of the Tea Party in its infancy, just fiscal conservatism.
So what happened? Desperate to grow and become more influential, the Tea Party allowed itself to morph from a libertarian economic protest movement to a movement without any particular direction due to the numerous issues they pledged to attack. According to their website, illegal immigration somehow made it to the very top of their list- the most important “non-negotiable” belief in their manifesto. Suddenly, the movement was overwhelmed by the various factions within it and looked more like Michele Bachmann’s core principles than Ron Paul’s more narrowly-focused vision. Since then, it has only gotten worse as the Tea Party became a haven for people angry at everything rather than a coordinated movement dedicated to slowing down the rise of big government in the realm of fiscal policy. The Tea Party, in short, merely became the extreme arm of the Republican Party, rather than the next step of the Ron Paul movement.
Given this lack of direction, focus, and discipline, it is hardly surprising that what is left of the Tea Party would embrace Donald Trump seven years after the birth of the movement. Trump speaks to their anger and offers them a list of villains to blame. His decidedly less-than-conservative record is cast aside by his demagogic tirades against immigrants. And since some Tea Party politicians have failed to deliver on their promises, his nuclear tactics against any politician seem like the logical next step. Trump, in essence, is the manifestation of everything the Tea Party has become over the years, of how much of their message they are willing to sacrifice for a demagogue. Instead of fiscal conservatism, he speaks of protectionism, trade wars, and even eminent domain. Instead of strong religious and family values, they embrace the man who is on his third trophy wife, has only recently expressed pro-life positions, and made money by owning casinos. Instead of opposing Obamacare, they endorse a man who has openly expressed his desire for single-payer universal health care, the same as Bernie Sanders. Instead of seeking the sort of unity Americans had on September 12th, 2001 (which was the purpose of Glenn Beck’s tangentially-related 9.12 Groups), they are campaigning for a man who is one step away from being a full-fledged 9/11 Truther! Instead of denouncing the auto and bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009, they are throwing their support behind a man who supported these actions- the ones responsible for jumpstarting the Tea Party movement!
The Tea Party has truly lost all sense of direction by endorsing the sort of big government demagogue that the movement formed to oppose. Donald Trump is the manifestation of this undisciplined, out of control movement that is now only really united by anger directed at abstract enemies like China and immigrants. And a movement that has no unifying principles beyond just anger cannot really be expected to survive for very long. As far as I am concerned, he has killed the Tea Party movement, co-opted it into his own personal cult and capitalized on the anger fueling what is left of the movement. He has taken advantage of the cacophony of oft-competing messages espoused by Tea Party leaders and re-forged it into his own unique political message that betrays the original purpose of the Tea Party. But, he is exactly what that movement deserves for being unable to stay true to their original intent and allowing anger to blind their judgement.
Conclusion
So, who is Donald Trump? I have three theories. First, that he is an extremely talented entertainer and underrated politician who has a keen sense of what his audience desires and tells them what they want to hear in order to boost himself. He is breaking and re-writing all the political rules because he had a better sense of his audience’s anger and desire for chaos than any of us who study politics for a living. In this theory, he is only running for president as part of some kind of ego trip just to prove that he can and that Americans really are stupid enough to ceaselessly support him out of anger (making him little better than a con artist). My second theory is that he is Hillary Clinton’s ultimate agent of chaos. Bill Clinton only won in 1992 because of Ross Perot’s 3rd party bid, so Hillary might have sensed that Trump could help her in a 3rd party. Even better, from her perspective, he could open Pandora’s Box against the Republicans and irreparably split the GOP by running a successful primary campaign. In all seriousness, I cannot think of anything Trump could do differently to plunge the GOP into chaos in an election year. Every time he threatens an independent bid, the RNC falls flat on their face trying to make it up to him. He is systematically destroying some of the GOP’s best candidates (beginning with Scott Walker) and trumpeting a toxic political issue (immigration) that forces Republicans to take positions that will hasten their eventual demise as a party. He has reduced the debates to incoherent screaming bouts that inexplicably never seem to backfire on him in the polls. His campaign is destroying the Republican Party, but I cannot decide if this is intentional on his part or if he just does not care. Finally, my third theory is he is actually sincere about his desire to become president and actually believes the oft-vile statements he spews. I find this to be the least plausible (oddly enough) because he has no consistency, whatsoever, in his history of political philosophies. It seems to me he usually just spouts out whatever pops into his head or whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. But if he does actually believe the things he says, that is the scariest thought of all…
Stay tuned for my thoughts on how the Republicans should respond to Trump, now that he is no longer a punch line.
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