In a post on “The Hill We Climb,” the poem so eloquently delivered by 22-year-old Amanda Gorman at Joe Biden’s inaugural ceremony, David Marcus of The Federalist argues “Hers were the most honest remarks of the day in terms of what the American left actually believes.” Yet, Marcus doesn’t make it completely clear which beliefs he has in mind. Commenting on Gorman’s line “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,” Marcus wonders if this applies only to the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 or to Donald Trump supporters in general. Later on, he voices his concern is that progressives think “large numbers of Americans are basically racist…are deplorable and must be deprogrammed.”
In contrast, Marcus insists that many conservatives are “increasingly disturbed by what their kids learn in school, by their daughters competing against boys in athletics…”
Interestingly, he sees one of Trump’s achievements as reducing the stigma of racism:
On some level, Donald Trump’s presidency took the sting out of accusations of racism or bigotry against those who do not hold progressive moral and social values. Republicans should not be shy about these issues. Rather they should face them directly as Trump did.
Much is undecided and unknown as we embark on the administration of President Joe Biden. One thing is not. Conservatives will not return to a prone, defensive position on issues of race and culture, nor should they. The post-Trump conservative movement will be culture warriors who look a lot more like Andrew Breitbart than Mitt Romney. That is progress, and it must be maintained.
I mention all this to provide context for Marcus’s latest offering, which is a call for Mitch McConnell to step down or be ousted as the leader of the Senate Republicans.
Marcus, a Manhattanite with experience in theatre who has written for The Federalist since 2013, praises McConnell’s prior service, and especially his decision to deny Merrick Garland a place on the Supreme Court. Yet, McConnell “seems completely opposed to” letting “the conservative movement grow into its new form.”
Whereas McConnell represents “the pro-war, pro-corporate party he came up in” and is “willing to lose everything as long as big business does well,” the future is “a new working-class, diverse party…not McConnell’s white guys at the Rotary Club.”
Yet, in this piece, Marcus doesn’t explain what the working-class wants that distinguishes it from the big business types. In fact, the only sin McConnell seems to have committed is “playing a ridiculous game of footsie with the idea of convicting Donald Trump in his absurd impeachment.”
Marcus argues this move by McConnell “is nothing short of a betrayal of Republican voters” because “It is obvious that conservative voters have not abandoned Trump, even if he has.”
Republican voters won’t have it anymore. They know we are in a culture war that [McConnell] has no interest in fighting. We need Republican leaders who will.
Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton will fight this fight. These are the leaders we need. McConnell’s GOP was destroyed by Trump, but McConnell still doesn’t know it. He’d rather throw in with those who prefer losing to fighting. No. We aren’t going back to McConnell’s losing coalition. Trump lost, but he brought a new group of people to the GOP… It’s time for us to take up Trump’s call for a populist conservatism.
It’s only in Marcus’s piece on Amanda Gorman that he explains the important elements of the “culture war” that Hawley, Cruz, Rubio and Cotton will fight, and McConnell won’t. Chief among them is the insistence that conservatives “not return to a prone, defensive position on issues of race…”
This is precisely why I wrote on Thursday that the (second) impeachment battle is less about Trump than the future of white supremacy in American politics.
Marcus never questions McConnell’s commitment to small government or a strong national defense. He doesn’t talk about religion or abortion and, other than a complaint about girls and boys playing sports together, Marcus has nothing to say about gender roles or sexual preference.
Insofar that Marcus cares about these traditional conservative concerns, he knows that McConnell fought ably for them by stacking the federal courts with right-wing judges.
And, while it’s true that Marcus criticizes McConnell for being pro-war and pro-corporate, that didn’t warrant his removal from power until he expressed possible support for Trump’s conviction.
It’s clear that McConnell’s sin is not that he’s a Rotary Club Republican but that he won’t defend the Confederacy of Dunces who stormed the Capitol. The vote on Trump’s impeachment is really just a proxy for whether the party belongs to the racist insurrectionists or not.
After all, Trump is in retirement now. Marcus says, “The post-Trump conservative movement will be culture warriors who look a lot more like Andrew Breitbart than Mitt Romney.”
No one can seriously argue that McConnell hasn’t been a warrior for the Conservative Movement, but he’s now confronted with a conundrum. The post-Trump conservatives want a race war, and if he’s not on board with that then he has a more formidable enemy than Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer to contend with. If he thinks he can preserve his power by siding with people like Marcus, he’s sadly mistaken. The Breitbarters want his head, so his only option is to side with Mitt Romney and the Democrats, and put a stake in Trump’s future political prospects.
Gosh. You hate to see it.
If this movement is looking to Hawley, Cruz & Rubio as its leaders, I think the Democratic Party and its liberal base will have a long, long run.
Did you see the 2020 election results?
43,000 votes over 3 states that went Biden, otherwise Trump tied the EC and won with the House.
Those ~75m Trump voters aren’t just going to stay at home and binge watch Storage Wars. Democrats, on the other hand, might return to their apathy in ’22, with a loss in the House and Senate.
I just can’t imagine McConnell throwing in with the Lincoln Project. Even more far fetched that he would abandon the GOP. I think we will see a sort of civil war but it will be within the Republican party. That’s what I’m hoping for anyway. It’s already happening here in Washington state. Two of our GOP House members voted against efforts to upend the electoral college vote. The state party has taken them on and taken on the one remaining GOP official in the state who won a state-wide vote.
Looks to me like something similar is playing out in many states. The GOP is at war with itself and that war is going to escalate. McConnell could try throwing in with loons like Marcus but, as you’ve said Martin, they’ll soon enough have his head on a pike. He could resist, in which case they’ll go after him with a Howitzer. I don’t see a way out (in the short run) for the conventional Republican party. They could take a shot at forming a new coalition, trying to split off the suburban voters who have turned their backs, but it would require taking their lumps. If they somehow managed to throw the loons out of the party and succeeded, we’d see a third party faster than you can “Twitler Lives!”
Perhaps there’s something I’m not seeing but it’s hard for me to see a way forward for the GOP. My guess is McConnell will not rally the party around conviction, Trump will skate and continue to exert his pull. If things go that route, the Republican party won’t collapse all at once. They’ll continue to win in a lot of places. They may even win back the presidency, the House, the Senate in future cycles for a bit longer. But the tide is going out and it’s a path that’s not sustainable. Not unless they can somehow redefine whiteness to include some of the folks who are excluded now and get a sizeable portion to buy in. Perhaps Mexico becomes the new Italy, Puerto Rico the new Spain. The result becomes a larger base of bigotry with which to keep playing the same games. But it won’t last unless young people buy in.
<BLOCKQUOTE>The result becomes a larger base of bigotry with which to keep playing the same games. But it won’t last unless young people buy in.</BLOCKQUOTE>
The Proud Boys etc., similar groups, other bigots are mostly pretty Jesusy, lots of praying, but that kind of religiousity is becoming unfashionable with young people. The GOP is looking at a big demographic timebomb as it narrows down more and more to being composed of and appealing mostly to Christian conservatives who mostly overlap the racists on a Venn diagram.
<BLOCKQUOTE>Trump will skate and continue to exert his pull.</BLOCKQUOTE>
I think Trump’s relevance will fade surprisingly fast without his bully pulpit and his Twitter access, he will not be much of a factor for long.
Seems now Lindsay Graham is playing the new President Davis as the south rises again to finish what they started at Fort Sumpter. This just reminds me of a continuation of the civil war and resolution of grievances and the lost cause surrounding hard fought myths and lies. I will be curious to see who sits it out, what states representatives say no. We may get a hint in the impeachment. Maybe that war did not end in a just peace after all and needs to be renegotiated. We shall see if the northern GOP made a good bargain with their southern strategy.
Damn buy that rascal General Grant a pint or two and pass the popcorn.
It’s my fervent hope and prayer that this time the fight is among and between the rebels. A pint and some popcorn sounds great.
That would be nice but it also means two Americas which likely is not going to happen peacefully. I can only hope the insanity is short lived and the majority of Trump people come to realize the terrible lies were just that — lies.
Helter Skelter was not going to go how Manson’s cultists envisioned. Not then. Not now.
Yes
I find it fascinating how what’s happening today, as referenced in Marcus’s piece, is really history repeating itself. Biden is not Sanders, but with his unity theme he’s asking for basically the same thing: that we focus on the common problems that affect us all. Its the virus, of course, but its also economic, and cultural. And Biden and others are right when they point out that there is more that unites us, e.g. more that we have in common, than our differences. If you listen to some of these frustrated Trump supporters, they say the same things: government hasn’t done anything for us, we’ve been maintained in a limbo of hopelessness with no way out. They’re misguided, of course, regarding who is to blame for that. “The left” cannot at once be “socialist” while at the same time holding them down for the benefit of the “elite.” Its their own party that does that. The solution for them is to realize who their real enemy is, and band together in common cause with non-whites who are in the same position. That is the threat, and race has been used throughout history to keep them apart whenever it looked like they might come together.
We’ve been here before:
In Georgia, Tom Watson led the Populist revolt against the Democratic Party. Watson spoke of their common plight: “You are made to hate each other because on that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded because you do not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system that beggars you both. The colored tenant is in the same boat as the white tenant, the colored laborer with the white laborer and that the accident of color can make no difference in the interests of farmers, croppers and laborers.”
Using fraud and violence, and rallying support by appealing to white supremacy, the Democrats held on to their power in Georgia and other Southern states. Many Democrats refused to endanger white supremacy by voting against the Democratic Party. In 1896 the Populists fused into the Democratic Party. With the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and with the Democrats successfully launching white unity campaigns in the South, the Populists gradually disappeared as a political force.
https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_org_populist.html
The same forces that used race to maintain power are still with us today. Some of the Trumpers are now saying they feel betrayed by Trump. Others are still angry/ Whiteness or white supremacy is still the draw; its all they have left.
I agree completely and add that these senseless divisions are far older than our republic. Dividing one oppressed group against another is an ancient tradition. It’s how the colonial powers held sway with tiny armies over huge land masses and enormous numbers of people who could have overwhelmed them. It’s how Rome created and held together an empire, though they wisely employed both carrot and stick. If a barbarian society played nice, they attained higher status. That’s how Rome extended and extended itself. Ultimately, people aspired to be part of the empire.