Politics

Here's How 'Trumpism' Will Change the GOP

September 3rd 2016

Apres moi le deluge is most often attributed to Louis XV, who assumed that after his death, his country would descend into chaos. Although another interpretation was that the French monarch didn’t give a flying fuck what happened to his country after he was gone. The arrogance, the apathy, not to mention the subtle sense of style, could all be applied to Trump.

Trump is losing. He’s losing bigly. He’s losing so bigly he’s becoming his own worst nightmare – a loser. And deep down in the dark, twisted recesses of his damaged loser psyche, he knows it. Yet, like an overmatched boxer who knows he’s behind on rounds, his face bloodied, his knees buckling, he keeps taking wild swings, desperately trying to land a punch. He flails with erratic statements about Hillary’s health. He panders to black voters, though it’s painfully obvious that after 15 months of vile, racist comments, it’s all just an act. Fake, meaningless, and badly delivered. The ultimate hypocrisy is that if he were ahead in the polls, he’d be doubling down on the same hateful rhetoric that blasted him through the primaries. Even his running mate – a vertical loaf of Wonder Bread – can’t mask the candidate’s inner stink.

donald-trumpAP/Gerald Herbert - apimages.com

As he was from the beginning, Trump is aided and abetted by a flailing media that clings to the horserace meme. They don’t seem to understand the phenomenon they’re dealing with. They treat Trump like a democrat. They think calling him a hypocrite, flip flopper, or inconsistent in his position is a damning attack. It’s like a child walked into a room and scrawled on the wall with his own poop, and the media analyzes the paintings.

They gleefully sling around new words they’ve learned, like “pivot,” “softening,” and “tightening.” They analyze Trump’s statements, desperately looking for his policies, as if there’s actually some sense in his nonsense. There isn’t. Shit flows out of his mouth on an ad hoc basis, crafted to rile up the crowd. And it works on his supporters because they don’t know what he’s saying, they just love the way he says it. If he says to boo journalists, they boo. If he said to applaud them, they’d applaud. He’s a clown, pulling streams of colored handkerchiefs out of his sleeve at a children’s party.

Trump’s not pivoting. He’s not softening. He’s changing his rhetoric because he’s losing and needs to shake out as many white people as possible in as many swing states as possible. And everyone knows it. Those in the GOP know it. They also know they’re stuck with a nominee who is so despicable that they can’t even follow their usual behavior, which is to fall in lockstep behind him. For the more thoughtful among them, the fear is that he’ll take down their brand. For the more opportunistic, it’s simply that he’s losing. And as Trump goes down in flames, they’re left to question the future of the party. Has the GOP brand been tainted beyond repair? Will they be forever Trumpstained?

AP/Rich Pedroncelli - apimages.com

I think this will be a real come-to-Jesus moment for the GOP, in which they will come to accept that obstructionism isn’t a valid political stance, it’s simply an impediment to governing. They’ll see that intransigence is not integrity, and that compromise is not capitulation. They’ll take down the reality shields and publicly acknowledge that climate change is real, and that addressing the problem takes government and business working together to create a clean energy policy. They’ll finally man up and take on the NRA because they’ll realize that a country with over 30,000 gun deaths a year has a gun problem. They’ll admit that free enterprise, and common sense regulations, whether financial or environmental, are just the push/pull of individual desire and group responsibility. Ultimately this will lead to an era of cooperation between the parties where they’ll join hands and lead this country into the 21st century.

No, I’m just fucking around. Of course that won’t happen. They’ll just want back in power. And they know that while Trump may disappear from the national stage, Trumpism isn’t going anywhere. The millions of voters who propelled the orange brain fart to the nomination are still angry that the country they loved is morphing into a multicultural, non-Jesus-loving, gay-marrying, sexually fluid hellscape. They’ll just be raw anger without a voice. And the party wants that anger. They’ll need that anger. They’ll just have to find a way to channel it via a kinder, gentler advocate. A more intelligent, less hateful, less Trump-y Trump.

Mitch McConnellWikimedia - wikimedia.org

Like an army preparing a reinvasion, they’re going to stockpile supplies at the border, setting their sights on (most likely) re-taking the Senate in 2018, where more Democrats will be vulnerable, and gunning for the White House in 2020. Master calculator Ted Cruz will plot his political resurrection, so get ready for more Green Eggs and Ham. Also shooting for 2020 will be Paul Ryan, who will never abandon his wet dream of a Randian utopia. Each will position himself as a leader in the holy war against Clintonism. And while it remains to be seen whether President Clinton would move on a more liberal agenda, or take a more pragmatic approach, it would be disingenuous of her to think that Republicans will cooperate in any way. Per an article in Politico, President Clinton will have the “shortest honeymoon period of any incoming commander in chief in recent history.”

hillary-clintonAP/J. Scott Applewhite - apimages.com

It’s unfortunate that Republicans will see Trump as just a wild, drunken road trip — the symbol of a wasted opportunity in a winnable election — as opposed to a Frankenstein monster created out of 8 years of racism and fear-mongering, a virtual boner pill for those who were afraid that civilization was leaving them behind. He is the sum total of their politics, and their policies. And neither of those will change.

There will be no post-Trump Republican deluge. No re-evaluating. No self-reflection. Just a subtle re-branding, more obstruction, and a search for a new messiah.

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