David Brooks has been growing increasingly disassociated from the real world for a long time, living in a dream where the Republican Party was composed of intellectual elitists who understood the secret message behind Austrian economics. Then someone woke him and pointed at Trump.
Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.
This may be the most exclusive paragraph about inclusive politics ever written. Just assume it says “tut, tut, my boy, we used to do things properly.”
Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.
Yes. Exclusive to the right. It’s exclusive to the right. There’s no damn both sides do it here, Brooks. There is no equivalent force on the left.
The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience. That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.
That’s not an accident. That’s the plan. That’s been the plan for decades. That’s not just the “since Reagan,” that’s Reagan. That’s your party, Dave. How in the @#%! have you missed that?
And in walks Donald Trump. People say that Trump is an unconventional candidate and that he represents a break from politics as usual. That’s not true. Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means.
This! This! Someone get the man a cup of coffee. He may have been snoozing since, oh, 1979, but at least he seems to have been pulled out of his coma for the moment.
Maybe that’s the secret of Donald Trump’s hair. The traffic cone orange is meant to be a reminder to even the least observant that we’ve left the highway and are proceeding at high speed toward a non-existent bridge.
Okay, let the man find his carpet slippers. Come on in, let’s read the rest of them.
Paul Krugman is watching the establishment die.
As many have noted, it’s remarkable how shocked — shocked! — that establishment has been at the success of Donald Trump’s racist, xenophobic campaign. Who knew that this kind of thing would appeal to the party’s base? Isn’t the G.O.P. the party of Ronald Reagan, who sold conservatism with high-minded philosophical messages, like talking about a “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks?
Seriously, Republican political strategy has been exploiting racial antagonism, getting working-class whites to despise government because it dares to help Those People, for almost half a century. So it’s amazing to see the party’s elite utterly astonished by the success of a candidate who is just saying outright what they have consistently tried to convey with dog whistles.
Republican voters aren’t confused by Trump. They’re relieved. Finally, someone who doesn’t just blow a dog whistle, he puts on an entire Westminster of White Anger. That he actually says the things they’ve been implying for decades makes Trump seem like a more honest version of the standard Republican.
What I find even more amazing, however, are the Republican establishment’s delusions about what its own voters are for. You see, all indications are that the party elite imagines that base voters share its own faith in conservative principles, when that not only isn’t true, it never has been.
You mean the average Republican voter is more concerned about seeing the bootheel come down on blacks, Hispanics, and those pointy-headed college-professor types than he is about whether or not the Laffer Curve marks anything but a gravy stain? No!
Gail Collins on the last-minute realization by Rubio and Cruz that Trump might actually be a threat.
Rubio was the star of the latest Republican debate, having finally learned Trump’s key to success: Avoid being distracted by discussions of actual policy and concentrate on inflicting death by insult. …
On Friday, Rubio was in his new Trumpian glory, strutting around a platform and telling his audience that the developer had gone into a “meltdown” backstage during the debate. “First he had this little makeup thing applying, like, makeup around his mustache because he had one of those sweat mustaches,” Rubio gloated. “Then he asked for a full-length mirror … maybe to make sure his pants weren’t wet.”
Good. Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you! Soon you shall be… no wait. Sorry. But hey, thanks for playing.
The role model of the modern Republican isn’t actually Ronald Reagan. It’s Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.
Emma Roller on the approach Sanders and Clinton are making to the African-American community.
This election, presidential candidates have a tricky choice: ignore the concerns of black voters, as the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, has largely done, or address them and run the risk of being called a phony. In the first Democratic primary to follow the first African-American president, how can white politicians reach black voters without looking opportunistic?
This is a tricky choice? For Democratic candidates to address the concerns of black voters isn’t only good politics, it’s plain good. And hey, Trump hasn’t “ignored the concerns of black voters” he’s played to the fears of white voters. That’s an extremely different thing.
… for the most part, Mrs. Clinton has been speaking to crowds who are eager to hear everything she, and her surrogates, have to say. She has spent her time in the run-up to the South Carolina primary in Baptist churches, banquet halls and converted gyms, talking about criminal justice reform, the water crisis in Flint, Mich., and college affordability and, yes, praising President Obama’s legacy. She sprinkled a few “I tell you whats” into her speech, with a bit of twang — a tic that might be a remnant of her time spent in Arkansas, or an affected folksiness required of every politician not named Trump or Sanders. …
When Mr. Sanders talks about race, he talks about his personal involvement in the civil rights movement, and his longstanding work on inequality — and he talks a lot about statistics. He’s adept at rattling off the rates of African-American children living below the poverty line, or the disproportionate share of black men who are incarcerated — as he did at a hastily called news conference in Columbia on Wednesday before leaving to campaign in Super Tuesday states.
The difference between the two candidates on this approach isn’t as stark as Roller suggests. They’re both using a mixture of personal stories and the broad statistics to persuade. Which is called… politics. However, Hillary Clinton has made sure over the last decade to keep up the strong connections that Bill Clinton had with many black leaders, and many in the community see a vote for Hillary as a vote to extend the legacy of Obama. That’s a tough combination to get past.
Joe Scarborough is totally not conflicted when writing about Rubio.
Expect the huddled masses of GOP insiders and conservative media commentators to tell us for the ninth time this election season that Marco Rubio had the debate of his life Thursday night and that the young senator’s tour de force will finally bring Donald Trump to his political knees. Some may even be delusional enough to once again utter the word “Marco-mentum”.
I think Joe made that one up just to see us all wince.
If you’re keeping score at home, Sen. Rubio is 0 for 4 and facing a string of Super Tuesday defeats that will extend that losing streak to fifteen. But relief will surely come in Florida, when Rubio returns to his Sunshine State. Right? Well, no.
Thursday’s Quinnipiac poll of likely GOP voters in Florida showed Donald Trump crushing the sitting Florida senator 44 percent to 28 percent. Among the tea party voters who propelled Rubio to the Senate in 2010, Rubio is getting pummeled 54 percent to 14 percent.
This message brought to you by someone who is absolutely not a simpering extension of Donald Trump’s campaign, and by the letter Can’t MSNBC find anyone better to host a show?
Sue Klebold has something personal to say about guns.
I am not an expert on guns. I have never owned one, and my husband and I never kept one in the house. So when it comes to gun safety and reducing the number of mass shootings that take place in our country, I would be the last person to suggest there are easy answers. But I do have a tragically personal vantage point on the issue.
Nearly 17 years ago, my son Dylan, and his friend Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High School carrying an array of firearms and explosives. They killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded more than 20 others. It was an incomprehensible tragedy that I have lived with every day of my life since. Why did Dylan do it? How could this have happened? These questions have consumed my every waking moment.
A different perspective, and a poignant reminder of why both personal stories and statistics are needed to drive home ideas. Go read the rest.
George Will… only kidding! Just because I’m subbing on a Saturday doesn’t mean I’m going to raise the Will Curtain.