The LA Times’ Jonah Goldberg discusses the idea that Republicans are hooked on victimization, believing that they are under siege by powerful forces that are destroying their way of life:
Among his core supporters, about 37% of the party according to a breakdown of the poll by the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, literally nobody thinks he committed any crimes and 94% think the party needs to rally around him against these presumably bogus charges.
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If the Republican establishment forces were as powerful as Trump and his voters think, they’d be able to do something about it. If the Deep State were half as formidable as they think, Trump would never have been president in the first place.
But large segments of the GOP suffer from the delusion that they are victims of the ruling classes and that the woke left is running everything — or will — if Trump doesn’t stop them.
Even in states with Republican governors and legislative supermajorities, like Tennessee, a certain paranoia that the left could take over at any moment dominates politics. As one GOP state legislator recently said on a leaked conference call, “The left wants Tennessee so bad because if they get us, the Southeast falls and it’s ‘game over’ for the republic.”
Of course, if these left-wing overlords were as fearsome as all that, the GOP would not be in total control of the Volunteer State in the first place. Similarly, if the “RINO” establishment were in charge, Trump wouldn’t be the runaway front-runner.
This is the paradox of Republican politics today. The populists run or at least dominate the party but they derive their power and intensity from the bizarre conviction that they’re powerless victims — and that only Trump can save them.
The delusion is vexing but it also points to the only way to prevent Trump from getting the Republican nomination. The last decade has shown that the only kingmakers in American politics are precisely who they’re supposed to be: the voters. In 2008 Hillary Clinton proved that big money and establishment backing weren’t enough in the face of a popular opponent. Jeb Bush proved the same thing in 2016.
Much of the left and right have convinced themselves that American democracy has been hijacked, to one extent or another, by powerful special interests, billionaire donors, the Deep State, hegemonic party establishments and/or the media. And yet, time and again, the string-pullers have proved to be ordinary people.
He’s right up to a point. Our democracy hasn’t been so degraded that ordinary voters have no power at all. They certainly do. But I think the left, at least, is quite cognizant of that fact. They know that the MAGA right is composed of tens of millions of ordinary people who are enthralled by a deranged demagogue who has convinced them that they have been targeted for extinction by a non-existent conspiracy. That is not a delusion. It’s all too real. And it is terrifying.