Yes, it’s true. Trump didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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It’s a long and interesting article, but I hate it. When you start trying to make Paul Ryan look like anything other than a cynical, serial-lying monster, you’ve lost me.
Great point. The boy wonder is nothing if not part of the problem. Randians opportunistically taking advantage of racists and bigots because there’s no real coalition for rewarding the richest of the rich at the expense of everyone else. The cynicism is overwhelming and that’s the true core of the problem. But like a genie let out of a bottle, it’s too late to get everything back in place. The only way forward requires repudiation of the Republican party and everything it stands for. I think we’re clearly moving in that direction as a nation but I’m not sure how long it will take to manifest or what things will look like by the time we get there.
With Trump at 41% its pretty obvious our country has a large faction of folks that disagree. Unfortunately I don’t see these ignorant idiots going away any time soon.
The article has a bad case of bothsiderism. Yes, the Republicans have gone nuts, with even the non-nuts forced to kowtow to the nuts. But while there were some nuts in the Sanders campaign, they weren’t even a majority within the campaign, never mind the party, unlike the Republicans, where various nuts are about 75% of the primary electorate. In addition, there’s simply no nuts among significant elected Democrats – Sanders was just a hard negotiator.
Maybe down the line social media will produce a detached-from-reality group on the left large enough to take over the party. But they’re a small minority now and this hypothetical Kanye campaign, or anything like it, would flop like a fish in a boat if tried in 2020. For the next decade at least, we’re going to have a crazy party and a non-crazy party.
>bothsiderism
Aye, that’s the rub.
That’s exactly what I was going to say. This will burn out when Republicans are stomped into oblivion. We all share the fervent prayer, I’m sure, that that blessed day will come soon.
Trump has opened a can of worms. Now that he is trying to back away from his build the wall. He awakened all of these extremest and they are dangerous. Listen to this caller he sums it up nicely. The Secret Service is going to be busy for sure and Trump’s danger level has dramatically increased.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/watch-spooky-caller-stuns-glenn-beck-by-threatening-to-go-after-trum
p-if-he-breaks-wall-promise/
The rotting stench of lazy bothsiderism from this piece really undercuts it’s thesis.
Only one side of American politics is insane.
Only one side of American politics has adopted as it’s main motivating force the idea that “Government is the problem” or uses terms like “drown it in the bathtub”
Only one side had pushed America to the brink of default.
Only one side has declared that sitting presidents shall not be allowed to nominate Supreme Court justices.
True, our country’s politics are dysfunctional, but the Democrats sure as HELL didn’t build that.
Another Burkean, Brookings Institute product who thinks government IS the problem.
Seems to me it was the ’80s when that ball started rolling, no? We’ve just reached its climax. Or I damn sure hope so.
Oh, I read that piece of shit a while ago. It’s ridiculous.
That read like something David Frum or Andrew Sullivan would write. And it’s in The Atlantic so that makes sense. So I checked this guy’s Wikipedia page, and he could be Sully’s twin. Gay. Against hate crime laws. Obsesses over Edumund Burke and Madison.
On the topic of what caused or was caused by Trump, this is a really fascinating in-depth history of the Breitbart/alt-right phenomenon.
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12552602/breitbart-trump-explained
For me, I’ve spent 20 years beating my head against the “what’s the matter with Kansas” contradiction: why red state voters support conservative/corporatist/oligarchic candidates that have systematically destroyed their prosperity and even their way of life (e.g., replacing small town local-owned businesses with corporate chains). What’s happening now is much bigger than Trump – he’s just a charlatan who’s latched onto it in a way that probably surprised him more than anyone. What’s happening now is a civil war within the GOP – the “southern strategy” contingent versus the Nixon/Reagan/Bush/Ryan/Rubio/Kasich/McConnell old guard.
It’s a beautiful thing to behold.
On the other hand, I just read “What’s the Matter with Kansas” author Thomas Frank’s new book, “Listen Liberal”, a brutal account of the last 60 years that, while it destroys conservatism, also leaves many bruises on the Clintons (especially Bill) and Obama.
“the “southern strategy” contingent versus the Nixon/Reagan/Bush/Ryan/Rubio/Kasich/McConnell old guard”
Nixon started the Southern Strategy, and it’s been the GOP’s ethos ever since. Reagan, in particular, was a master of using it, as are the Bush Clan, Ryan, Kasich and McConnell. Possibly Rubio not so much.
https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
See Bill Moyers’ explanation about what’s happening now:
http://billmoyers.com/2015/10/15/why-the-gop-crackup-is-the-final-unraveling-of-nixons-southern-stra
tegy
Trump is merely the end-game (well, hopefully he is the END game but frickin who knows) of the Southern Strategy.
It’s just that the others were marginally more subtle about their racism & bigotry – but only marginally so. They’re all racists, and what is happening now with Trump is just the logical outcome of what the GOP, and all their enablers in the media, has wrought with their Southern Strategy. They are ALL in it. All of them. ALL of them are responsible. It goes back to Nixon, and really even before that to Joe McCarthy and the Koch’s Dad’s Birch Society.
The Southern strategy as envisioned by Kevin Phillips for the Nixon campaign was a working-class/farmer ethnic strategy based on patriotic fervor/anti-communism and early elements of the culture war/anti-hippie-ism. It sought to strip the Democratic Party of its urban ethnic and Catholic white flight (segreationist) constituency in the North and Midwest and its white Hell No (segregationist) constituency in the South. It struck at both Humprhey’s and Wallace’s bases and delivered electoral votes for Wallace when it couldn’t for Nixon.
Guess what role Gary Johnson is playing in this election. Whose votes does he strip? Mmmm-Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and their supporters. Where does Johnson have regional strength? If those aren’t moving strongly, it’s a two-person race. Stein’s 3% nationally is not going to move although the Greens might pick up a state or two in ballot access.
The shiny object of the culture wars apparently doesn’t suit you as an explanation for what to do when local, state, and federal economic policy is screwed by the “no new taxes” ideology that equates the government purse with the household wallet.
When you know that government is not the solution for economics because Reagan said so, what is left? Patriotism and religion.
I’ll go with others in noting that this is just lazy bothsiderism.
Take away the personality and obnoxious behavior of Trump, and he’s a standard-issue Republican.
Bashing immigrants? Standard-issue Republican.
Promising to deal with scary, scary Muslim countries in tough-guy ways? Standard-issue Republican.
Massive unfunded tax-cuts? Standard-issue Republican.
Buddy-buddy with Putin? Shit, Junior was Trump fifteen years it was “cool”.
They’re been insane for going-on forth years now. Nixon, when having an occasional bout of sobriety, was the last one who could even be described as semi-sane.
Agree.
Trump is a charlatan and a Con man, a crooked lousy business person who has successfully horned in on the GOP’s grift.
Trump is NO different from any other GOP major politician during my lifetime. Not one bit.
They’re all racists; they’ve all employed the Southern Strategy; they have no morals or values; and they could give a sh*t about what’s “good” for our nation. They’re all too busy ripping off the US taxpayer for quaint notions like democracy and public service.
Trump IS the GOP. He’s not an outlier. He’s not some odd person who came out of the blue, and he’s not very different from the rest of that debauched pack of liars that ran in the primary. Trump IS the GOP. THIS is who they are. All of them. No different. Not one bit.
Spare me from the Both Siderist bullshit. I’m so sick of that craptastic nonsense.
Bernie Sanders wasn’t all that radical, although he did push forward some ideas that have come to be seen as outside the mainstream. Most of what I heard Sanders discussing was stuff that WAS mainstream, and not all that long ago frankly.
This is just one lousy suck job and trying to paint “both sides” as equally crazy. Cut me a break.
Yeah some of Sanders’ voters have caused some stinks and have stood up loud and proud for what they believe. SO????? So what? Like you’re going to equate those people at the Democratic convention with all the crazy Uncle Liberties supporting Trump? Really? REALLY??? Oh please. My Aunt Fanny.
What a load of hogwash. I read part of this rubbish and cast it aside. Not interested, thanks.
M$M once again trying to push the meme that Democratic voters are every bit as “radical” and “crazy” as those idiot Trump voters. I won’t stand for that crap any longer, and no one else should either. This has been the prevailing theme in the corporate owned-beholden to the .001% M$M for the past 3+ decades. It’s been bullshit all along. There simply aren’t that many “radicals” or “kooks” on the left.
What was Sanders talking about? Sane tax codes. Holding the banks and wall street accountable?? Wow how radical.
No thanks. Not reading the rest of it. Come back with something that actually trucks in reality. It takes a hell of a nerve to write lying bullshit like this with Trump running for President.
R U Kidding ME??????
Nostalgia for the Grand Bargain that coulda been.
Sympathy for the machine.
Sweeping under the rug the growth of big and anonymous lobbying and campaign money.
Someone misses his cocktail wienies.
Contrary to Johnathan Rauch, the people did not get what they wanted in reform.
Just take Joe Manchin. It seems that it is his daughter who is the CEO of the corporation that jumped the prices on the EpiPen. And daddy was one of the Blue Dogs who pushed to keep the government from negotiating pharmaceutical prices. People are going to die because of this greasing of the skids in this way instead of the sensible solutions that Rauch abhors.
It seems like the American nomenklatura is panicked by this election no matter how it goes. For us out in the boonies that is a refreshing reaction to see from DC. It salves the notion that there is no alternative to business as usual and the American people, even as an aggregate constituency, are really not that important to politicians.
THAT apple did not fall far from tree.
This happened:
What a country!
I was going to mention that. I like how he’s authored a book with Roger Stone just last year, and now…did stone not reallize he was writing with a kook? Yeah, stone is also missing a lot if bricks, but Jesus. I guess it doesn’t actually take one to know one.
The fact that he was elected to a county wide republican office. Where does the right keep its lab where they manufacture buffoons? I don’t think the democrats have that, and we don’t have voters who can’t tell an insane kook from someone who might at least try not to embarrass the party too much.
Seriously. I know there’s lots of animosity towards Clinton in these comments, but I’d like to think that if Bernie started wearing a jesters hat in public and talked about “titties” that perhaps his voters would distance themselves from their support and rally around Clinton simply because even if you think she’s a craven war monger, at least she’s not going to start garbling on like a loon. Likewise, I’m assuming Clinton supporters would have deserted her en masse had she dressed up like the queen of hearts and talked about choosing cabinet members based on schlong sizes.
I’m going to play contrarian here. Yes, it’s a badly flawed piece, for all the reasons people have noted, AND for its bizarrely full-throated defense of political cronyism, AND for largely ignoring the social media revolution that makes addressing many of these problems more difficult even as it’s provided new opportunities for people who were, in the past, largely ignored politically. AND there’s plenty of institutional changes (e.g., Citizens United) that magically didn’t make it into the piece even as the author laments Sanders’ to use small donors to fund a presidential campaign.
All that said – and I could go on – it’s still worth the read. The problems are complex, and the issues he’s primarily addressing are real and usually ignored. For that alone, it’s badly flawed but still useful.