“You know, we laughed at
Reagan too, and Nixon, and ‘’ol Two-Cows’”
-----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”
Economist Paul Krugman, in a
piece appearing in the New York Times,
(1) entitled “Republicans Against Retirement” had this to say concerning the
dynamics emerging in the Republican contest for the party’s presidential
nomination:
“Something
strange is happening in the Republican primary — something strange, that is,
besides the Trump phenomenon. For some reason, just about all the leading
candidates other than The Donald have taken a deeply unpopular position, a
known political loser, on a major domestic policy issue. And it’s interesting
to ask why.
The issue
is Social Security. Most GOP candidates want to modify it with the outright
intent to kill it into privatization. George W. Bush tried it after the 2004
election claiming he had earned the political capital to ‘reform’ Social
Security. Of course it was a loser and Republicans ran away as fast as they
could from touching Social Security.
So what
is Donald Trump’s position? He wants to save and expand it.” (2)
Then Krugman answers his own
question:
“The
answer, I’d suggest, is that it’s all about the big money.
Wealthy
individuals have long played a disproportionate role in politics, but we’ve
never seen anything like what’s happening now: domination of campaign finance,
especially on the Republican side, by a tiny group of immensely wealthy donors.
Indeed, more than half the funds raised by Republican candidates through June came
from just 130 families.
And while
most Americans love Social Security, the wealthy don’t. Two years ago a
pioneering study of the policy preferences of the very wealthy found many
contrasts with the views of the general public; as you might expect, the rich
are politically different from you and me. But nowhere are they as different as
they are on the matter of Social Security. By a very wide margin, ordinary
Americans want to see Social Security expanded. But by an even wider margin,
Americans in the top 1 percent want to see it cut. And guess whose preferences
are prevailing among Republican candidates.
To most
Donald Trump is a caricature. However the media has the ability to make a
caricature into a contender. One must not forget that the demise of the
middle-class began with an actor, Ronald Reagan. He was a caricature backed by
an ideology that has inflicted unmeasurable damage to the middle-class. Soon
after, George W. Bush, another caricature, another bastion of incompetence,
used two wars and tax cuts to transfer America’s treasure to a wealthy few.
Chuck
Todd interviewed Donald Trump recently. The intent to provide legitimacy to
Donald Trump was evident. All bases are covered in case Trump breaks through.
That Fox News took Donald Trump’s side in the spat he had with Megan Kelly is
also probative.
It turns
out the one percenters may turn over the 2016 election to a one percenter.
Either way, they win. That is why a grassroots political revolution is
necessary to get a real middle-class populist elected.” (2)
It is easy to characterize
Donald Trump as being a megalomaniac without a hair stylist but, as Krugman
rightly points out, we very well may underestimate him at our peril. The Donald, it appears, is no fool. As noted in the previous post, lying not very
far beneath the veneer of the tea-bagger movement, now the base of conservatism,
are deeply held suspicions not only of the elites but of the emerging
concentrations of economic power. What
we may be witnessing is the emergence of a grass-roots firestorm that spans
nearly the entire current political spectrum from Tea-Party libertarians to the
emerging New Deal Democrats. A fire fueled
by the growing inequalities created by the present order and the resulting
foreclosure on the American Dream. ‘The
Donald’, as he has come to be known, may well be far ahead on the curve within
the conservative movement, for the lingering possibility is there that when the
Tea Baggers wake up and find that they are not seen by the 1% as their natural
allies, they will no longer be so willing to go to the ramparts in defense of
the insurance, banking and energy cartels.
Trump is smart enough to
understand that what Barry Goldwater represented is still the driving force
among grass-roots modern conservatism; that is a deep distrust of the ‘eastern’
establishment representing as they do the eastern moneyed interests. While the ‘astro-turf’ movements financed
entirely by the likes of Dick Armey’s ‘Freedomworks’
and other billionaire-funded political action groups have worked assiduously to
mask over the differences, by putting the middle class upon the economic rack
and ratcheting up the pain level out of a perverse sense of sadism, the radical
wrong may have brought about the undoing of their ‘blessed state of nature’;
and that undoing may be manifesting itself in the growing candidacy of one
Donald Trump.
Trump, understanding the
immense stake the voting public has in programs like Social Security, is now
seen as the only Republican contender to stand foursquare in support of the
program, to the point of echoing Bernie Sanders in a call to increase Social
Security and Medicare benefits.
Moreover, for the first time in a generation, we now have a Republican
candidate actually talking about raising
taxes! Trump has not only been found
criticizing the levels of CEO pay in this country but is about the country
advocating an increase in taxation for hedge funds, derivatives, and other
financial instruments.
It is worth noting that the
first casualty in the Republican race for the presidency was none other than
the GOP’s most experienced governor.
Rick Perry, governor of Texas for a record 14 years, called it quits
earlier this week leaving Rand Paul to ponder what it says about a party that
would jettison so quickly it’s most experienced executive. The answer is that the public has grown so
distrustful of its political elites that it hold in near absolute scorn any
record of political accomplishment. As a
result, not only do we find ‘The Donald’ way out in front of the pack but
registering in at number 2 is another candidate with no record of public
service, a retired neurosurgeon from Detroit named Ben Carson. While it is still early, and it will be months
before the electors of this nation go to the polls to make a ‘serious’ choice,
it is nonetheless telling that the two candidates with the least experience are
garnering the most support within conservative ranks. This speaks to the alienation of the
electorate; a deep distrust of the political elites which the voters rightly
see as being nothing but the water-carriers for the moneyed interests.
It remains to be seen if
Trump is in the pocket of the 1%, or that his candidacy is simply another
neo-con ploy to co-opt the middle class.
Trump is too much a loose cannon to know for sure, but I suspect, in
this context, the Trump is much more of a ‘populist’ candidate than Krugman
gives credit. Should he prevail, he will be in a position to perhaps redefine
American conservatism by taking the movement out of the hands of the
money-changers and giving it back to the people. He may also, in the bargain, snatch victory
from the jaws of defeat and, in so doing, save the Republican Party from
itself.
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