I don’t know if Erick Erickson is representative of a lot of voters or not. He’s a wackadoodle, in my honest opinion, but there is no shortage of wackadoodles in this country, obviously. I guess one way of looking at this is to ask whether many social conservatives will follow his lead in pledging (in their hearts, at least) to never, ever vote for Donald Trump. To answer that question, we probably ought to begin by looking at the factors that Erickson cites to explain his pending defection from the Party of Lincoln.
Erickson isn’t just an anti-choice crusader; he uses the most intemperate language to wage his battle against reproductive rights for women. He promises us that hell awaits us if we support this barbaric practice. This is a child’s hell. Dante’s hell. A very literal hell. And Erickson has used the most graphic and disgusting language to describe what Planned Parenthood is falsely alleged to have done with the sale of “baby parts.”
In his mind, Planned Parenthood isn’t a health care provider but some kind of totemic symbol of the purest demonic evil. So, when Donald Trump says that Planned Parenthood does a lot of worthwhile things, that’s not a kind of nuance that can be processed in the dichotomous mind of Erick Erickson.
Donald Trump believes the federal government should fund Planned Parenthood. Donald Trump believes there are good things the child killers do…
…Jerry Falwell, Jr. has joined the whores of Moloch, defending Trump’s Planned Parenthood statement on Twitter. Falwell presides over an institution that expels students who have abortions, but is willing to give positive lip service to Trump saying there are good things Planned Parenthood does.
When Jerry Falwell, Jr. sees too much grey area for you, you might just be an extremist.
But we need to drill a little deeper here. It’s not just that Erickson can’t abide Planned Parenthood getting any funding at all for any purpose at all, it’s that he doesn’t believe that Donald Trump is sincerely anti-choice. He thinks Trump is pulling a con on anti-choice voters and that he’ll revert to his true self if he’s actually elected president.
I have become convinced that Donald Trump’s pro-life conversion is a conversion of convenience. Life is the foremost cause in how I vote. Therefore I will not be voting for Donald Trump at all. Ever…
…Frankly, if Trump is able to get the nomination, the Republican Party will cease to be the party in which I served as an elected official. It will not deserve my support and will not get it if it chooses to nominate a pro-abortion liberal masquerading as a conservative…
…Donald Trump has had no “road to Damascus” conversion. He only wants to date the preacher’s daughter. Once he’s gotten in her ballot box, he’ll be back to his pro-abortion New York values self. I’ll play no part in this farce.
Part of me says that it doesn’t matter if Trump is sincere or not because if he’s elected with a particular coalition of voters, he’ll have to do things to keep that coalition largely intact if he wants to get reelected. That means, he’ll have to sign anti-choice legislation, have his Justice Department defend that legislation in court, nominate anti-choice judges to rule on those cases, and use his executive authority to further the anti-choice cause. Might he be a little less vigorous and committed than the anti-rape/incest exception candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio?
Yes, that’s likely. But I don’t see him doing a one-eighty and coming out as a champion of reproductive freedom. On the other hand, I agree with Erickson that it is quite likely that Trump is not sincerely anti-choice. Where we differ is that I don’t think that matters a whole lot.
To his credit, though, Erickson has a few other reasons for opposing Trump and refusing to vote for him. Erickson correctly notes that Trump “preys on nationalistic, tribal tendencies and has an army of white supremacists online as his loudest cheerleaders.” Erickson disapprovingly insists that “I know for certain a large number of Trump supporters will not rally to a Cuban.”
He even has a Sandersesque critique:
And on top of it all, the oligarchs would be just fine. They would coddle and humor a President Trump, a man of mountainous ego, and get their way while the very people Donald Trump promises to help would get table scraps.
I’ll give Erickson credit for mentioning these latter objections, but looking at the tax plans and anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and sometimes anti-gay rhetoric of Trump’s remaining opponents, I can’t see how Trump is an outlier here. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio is the least offensive of the bunch in these matters, but Erickson doesn’t support Kasich.
But, getting back to the point here, how many people view the world like Erickson does and simply won’t vote for Trump because he’s not adequately anti-choice or sincere in his Christian conservatism?
I don’t think there are too many, which is one reason why Trump seems to doing well with white evangelical voters, including in the Deep South. There certainly isn’t a concentration of enough of these Erickson voters in any battleground states to make a difference in the outcome of the presidential election.
But, there might be a different kind of problem, which is the overall cohesiveness of the conservative movement over time. The most committed ideologues are the ones who will bolt the party over Trump’s stance on abortion. But they are the leaders of the movement. Or, they’re one of the legs in the stool, anyway.
There’s always a chance these folks will pack up their tents and go home…kind of give up on the political system as a viable avenue to pursue their goals. Losing any near-term hope of controlling the Supreme Court could help that along, which may also go a long way toward explaining the GOP’s leadership’s refusal to let that happen before the voting in November is completed.
I think Erickson has some influence on these kinds of matters. Not a ton, and there won’t be a line of people under his banner walking out the door if Trump is nominated. But he could be a bit of a canary in a coal mine in terms of longer term effects.
There are other Republicans of different persuasions who will bolt the party over Trump. Those people aren’t supporting Rubio or Cruz, though. They’re upset by the religious extremism of the party, but it’s either the economic unorthodoxy of Trump or the fascistic element of Trump’s pitch that’s going to drive them away.
As I’ve said before, if he’s nominated, Trump will change the shape of the electorate. How many media hypnotized folks he wins, how much he can offset his traditional Republican losses with an influx of previously disengaged bigots and wannabe stormtroopers…those are the things that will determine whether he’ll be another Goldwater or our next president.
I do have one final question about all this, however. Does Erick Erickson’s very principled stand here have anything to do with Donald Trump calling him a deviant insider loser?
Game Changer was on again last night. Towards the end when Nicole Wallace admits to Steve Schmidt that she didn’t vote…after Palin had torn into her relentlessly, is where I’m hoping this goes. That, and the insider notes in the film that she isn’t mentally stable would be a nice carryover to Trump.
That was a lot of reading to get to the punchline.
Yes, BooMan could have written one of his hilariously terse posts. But his larger point is a worthwhile one to consider. Given the fact that Trump is doing everything possible to maximize non-white turnout against him, it’s already extremely unlikely that he could win in November. If The Donald starts losing portions of white voters, however small, his slim chances reduce to none.
But here’s the thing: Erick Son Of Erick has a poor character. I simply don’t believe him when he claims that he will fail to crawl across broken glass to stop Sanders or Clinton from gaining the Presidency. However, if he successfully talks others out of voting for Trump, I applaud his efforts.
Erickson will be supporting Trump if he’s the nominee. Publicly.
Jerry Falwell worships the god of Mammon, and so, has no problem backing Trump, especially because I’m sure Falwell’s a big old racist. I’m sure Trump has crossed Jerry’s palms with silver.
Yeah, guess Trump called Erick Son of Erick Son of Erick a sonuvagun, so Erick etc has to take his principled stand on being a sadistic chauvinistic misogynistic asshole towards poor women who have the nerve to expect some kind of health care in this libertarian bootstraps country of ours.
Does Erick etc have enough followers to go lemming-like after him? Who knows? I don’t get the attraction of any of these whores, but hey, whadda I know?
I’ll just point out that Erick Erickson gets tons of TV time as a “conservative voice”. No left wing blogger gets close. Nor does Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, or even TV regular Paul Krugman. This suggests that the people who run the news shows think he’s closer to the center than all of those people.
And you know what? In the social circles they run in they are probably right – he is closer to the center.
That’s part of it.
Here’s the other part (from a Variety article on Meet the Press with Toad):
“And though the 25-54 demo is the one most closely watched in the news business, “Meet the Press” could claim victory in the younger-adult demo of adults 18-49. It averaged 623,000 adults under 50, followed by 584,000 for “This Week” and 563,000 for the first half-hour of “Face the Nation.””
In other words, they aren’t reaching a broad (younger) audience. And these gabfests aren’t the kinds of shows that people watch on demand.
I’m not so sure that Erickson is viewed as closer to the center by the PTB. JMHO, of course, but I think the PTB know exactly who Erickson is and what his viewpoints are, and they’re not even Center-Right. Erickson is hard right… or hard right nutbar fringe, pick your poison. And that’s what they want espoused on TV.
These gabfest shows aren’t watched very much anymore. How many lemmings can Erickson take with him? Slim pickings, frankly.
Yes. I think what they want is for hard right views to have the patina of centrism. When you attain that, it is much easier to convince people that extremism is a mainstream point of view. It’s how they have been so successful in shifting the Overton Window of our politics in the country.
Exactly. It’s Ye Olde Overton window. The PTB know fully well that Erickson isn’t some centrist. He’s hard right, nutbar fringe right, but possibly on tv (I don’t own one), he’s peddled as some sort of centrist.
I heard a blip on National Propaganda Radio expressing feigned “surprise” vis a vis Sanders’ good showing (in spite of the showing in NV) so far. Something was said to the tune of “golly gee whiz, amazing how many LEFTWINGERS there are out there!!! whodda guessed?”
That’s just part of the overall narrative of the PTB that Sanders is this insanely fringe super-duper commie leftie… which he’s not. And that it’s totally incredible that a somewhat significant portion of the voting proles, you know, actually SUPPORT those viewpoints.
The narrative has pushed super rightwing views as being so-called “centrist” for so long now that it becomes easy to call a spooge bucket like Erickson as “centrist.” No, no he’s not, and not by a long shot.
Someone below makes a good argument that Erickson makes for good tv viewing. That’s possibly true in these debased times, but it’s also part and parcel of why I refuse to watch tv anymore. dreck. sheer unmitigated propaganda, offensive mind-numbing and dreck.
My useful window of televised political commentary and punditry is rapidly shrinking. There is almost nothing for me there beyond understanding the what and why of the beltway narrative of the week. There is almost no useful information peddled which helps one to truly understand the back story of the political landscape. It’s gotten to the point when I hear anyone start talking politics, right away I can almost always pick out what they use as their primary source of political information. Anymore, it seems as predictable as the sunrise.
Could I suggest an alternative explanation? That it’s not about the networks’ political aims but their business aims: Erickson makes good TV from their point of view: he’s a crazy outrageous person but willing to focus endlessly on horserace topics, so he creates drama in the areas where they want the discussion to be. And there’s the persistent belief that he’s “powerful”: as Molly Ball said in an Atlantic profile of him last summer, “the most powerful conservative in America”. And why should Atlantic pay him any attention either, for that matter? Not because Ball espouses his political views but because he’s good copy.
And Trump’s right that he’s an insider making it by cultivating an outsider persona. He’s worked incredibly hard at it. TV loves him because his real values, as opposed to the values of his shtik, are theirs: be a player, whatever it takes.
ummmm…I don’t know.
I made the observation once about my brother not being fired up, ramped up and all hot and bothered by Bernie being called a socialist. My point was not that my brother would ever vote for Bernie, it was that he wasn’t all that concerned about it. He wasn’t foaming at the mouth.
Booman makes the point that there aren’t too many people like Erickson (thank FSM), but I would make the point that in the trenches getting out the vote, making sure that people are enthused, scaring the shit out of low information voters … people like Erickson are worth FAR more than one vote.
I would point out that without the initial impetuous of enthusiastic, messianic support Trump, Cruz and Bernie would fall to the same point of Rand Paul who lost the Ericksons when attempting to triangulate and doing it poorly.
Don’t count your chickens before they roost, folks. Trump’s real support will come from millions of heretofore non-political Americans who finally see someone reaching for the presidency who claims to be totally independent of the bosses who in their view…a righteous view, even though simplistic…have ruined their lives from the time they entered the workforce. He can lose all kinds of lockstep Republicans and still win the presidency. His problem will be getting nominated, and so far he’s doing a damned good job at that.
Watch.
Bumping into a couple of Eric Ericksons aren’t going to put much of a dent in his Cadillac.
Bet on it.
AG
Bumping into tens of millions of non-white voters would be his biggest problem, along with tens of millions of white voters like me and (accepting your word) you who would also be voting against him.
We’ll do what we need to in order to keep Donald out of the White House. Since you have defined both Clinton and Sanders as unworthy, it is difficult to see how you are doing what you need to do.
What will you do when Elizabeth Warren begins to campaign for the Democratic Party candidate? Will you define Warren as a servile member of the PermaGov?
We shall see.
I hope you’re right. I really do.
My gut says otherwise, though.
We shall seed…
AG
Oh, RMoney had an obvious pro-choice past as well, and I can’t remember this American Taliban yokel foaming at the mouth over him, and it appears said yokel still is part of the Repub party after it nominated abortion-phony RMoney. So perhaps even the loser’s “single issue” is a trifle variable…
Of course Der Trumper will have a coalition to balance as he moves towards the nomination, but I have to wonder how many ordinary Repubs of whatever stripe will really abandon him as he is crowned. As strange as it seems, Trumper apparently has a pretty good grip on what quite a lot of those calling themselves Repubs seem to believe. For a “pro-choice” pagan, Trump is doing pretty well with the Talibaners, as Cruz’s across the board failure suggests. And those wingnuts that do abandon Trump for whatever reason will just stay home on election day and pout, they’ll never vote Dem. And a week after his election those wingnuts who abandoned him will be cheering him on. Cuz even losers like Erickson love a winner!
Trump’s ever-increasing success is the real canary in the coal mine—proof that the degeneration of the American voter continues apace. The question is when the Trump campaign rolls out the approved hand/arm gesture? Would that be too much? Interesting times…
It appears that the Talibangelicals are more interested in sticking it to minorities & the DFHs than anything else. They’re lock step behind their fuhr, uh, “leader,” and even the dumb bunnies have to know somewhere in their pea brains that Trump really isn’t much of a “Christian.”
Which proves how shallow their pious self-righteous Dominionist Evangelical bs is. It’s only about kissing up, while kicking down, being racist and victimizing.
Evoking the preacher’s daughter and her ballot box…classy.
For a man who claims moral superiority, he sure does write and say a lot of vile, immoral things, some with explicitly offensive sexual imagery. Here’s a couple more:
http://gawker.com/5508412/erick-erickson-hates-it-when-you-mention-things-he-says
It’s a publicity-driven feud, like a WWE or rap feud, deriving from Trump’s run-in in the summer with the probably not menstruating Megyn Kelly. Not that they’re not genuinely angry, these guys can lose their tempers over anything, but that it’s not about abortion. Erickson quickly took sides with his employers’ interest and disinvited Trump from the RedState gathering on which his legendary powerfulness is focused; Trump called him a deviant insider loser, and Erickson couldn’t bear this disrespect, the apparent suggestion that he isn’t all that powerful. Planned Parenthood is just the material Trump happens to supply.
To be honest, I think I’d trust woman’s reproduction to Trump before Kasich. Jeeze.
Absolutely. I feel that way about several issues, though. All told, Trump is probably the best of the lot. How scary is that?