That was the year that was
by Tom Sullivan
A tip of the hat this morning to Tom Lehrer.
The year 2015 will go down as the year Donald Trump destroyed the Republican Party, writes Eugene Robinson. But he had help. “Trump has given voice to the ugliness and anger that the party spent years encouraging and exploiting. He let the cat out of the bag, and it’s hungry.”
Globalization, the shrinking middle class, terrorism, immigration. The Party flogged the issues for years to stoke anger in the base and garner votes, but did not deliver change. Robinson explains:
The Republican Party promised — with nods, winks and dog-whistle toots — to change all of this and make everything the way it used to be . In practice, however, party leaders were compelled to deal with the world as it actually is. Hence, for example, the establishment view a couple of years ago in favor of comprehensive immigration reform.
Enter Trump, who has the temerity to point out that the party establishment says one thing but does another. He launched his campaign by calling the GOP’s bluff on immigration: If the 11 million people here without documents are really “illegal,” as the party loudly proclaims, then send them home. Other candidates were put in the position of having to explain why, after claiming that President Obama was somehow “soft” on immigration, their position on allowing the undocumented to stay is basically the same.
The base woke up to the fact that the GOP’s leaders consistently fail to deliver what they conditioned voters to want. No liberal could convince them of that. It took one of their own emperors declaring the others had no clothes. And Trump did, letting slip the dogs of intraparty war. Conservatives are already accusing new House Speaker Paul Ryan of betraying America for attempting to do the job for which he is being paid.
Feeding the crazy worked, and may still work, just not for party regulars. Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz are the beneficiaries, if we can call it that. The Daily Beast’s Andrew Kirell sampled some of what Cruz fans are dishing on at a rally in Mechanicsville, VA:
Ted Cruz supporters sound exactly like Trump supporters. These people can all have each other. pic.twitter.com/a35vHQcnGh— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) December 28, 2015
One guy wants a Christian “warrior priest” for president [timestamp 6:40]. Cruz, naturally.
♫And everybody hates the Jews Muslims: