The title of this Diary is the title of some thoughts shared today by Mike Davis, an urban historian; author of City of Quartz, Planet of Slums, and others; and a sharp guy. He doesn’t maintain a blog: he sends out his thoughts to an email list, so you can get his writings only by contacting him directly. mdavis@ucr.edu . His writings are often gloomy, but also spot on, and well worth reading, especially when you are feeling particularly Pollyannaish about the world.
His take on the consequences of yesterday’s events for the Republican party are not encouraging (if you are a progressive); certainly we are not going to see the decline and death of the party. What had happened is that those who broke with Trump — even with their eleventh hour conversions — are now free to reestablish the far-right Republican party connected to big business (look for the return of the Koch influence) and Evangelical christians. There Trump rump group will continue be sizable (looks like about 138 judging from the votes last night in the house of Representatives) due to the many deep red districts, especially in rural areas. There will likely be some crossover (think Mario Rubio), and the two will likely find common ground to continue most of the Trump era legislation.
Democrats will continue to be controlled by centrist neo-liberals, at least through the Biden and Pelosi era, and probably beyond.
Here’s is an excerpt from Mr. Davis writing; there is much more of interest but I hesitate to dump it all here out of respect for him.
“But something unexpectedly profound happened: a deus ex machina that lifted the curse of Trump from the careers of conservative war hawks and rightwing young lions whose ambitions until yesterday had been fettered by the presidential cult. Today was the signal for a long awaited prison break. . . . . “
“By the White House's Fuhrerprinzip standards, Pence, Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, Ben Sasse, Jim Lankford even Kelly Loeffler are now traitors beyond the pale. This ironically enables them to become viable presidential contenders in a still far-right but post-Trump party. Since the election and behind the scenes, big business and many mega-Republican donors have been burning their bridges to the White House, most sensationally in the case of that uber-Republican institution, the National Association of Manufacturers, which this afternoon called for Pence to use the 25th Amendment to depose Trump. . . . .”
“The goal is a realignment of power within the Party with more traditional capitalist interest groups like NAM and the Business Roundtable as well as with the Koch family, long uncomfortable with Trump. There should no illusion that 'moderate Republicans' have suddenly been raised from the grave; the emerging project will preserve the core alliance between Christian evangelicals and economic conservatives and presumably defend most of the Trump era legislation. Institutionally, Senate Republicans, with a strong roster of young talents, will rule the post-Trump camp and via vicious darwinian competition - above all, the successor to McConnell - bring about a generational succession, probably before the Democrats' octogenarian oligarchy has left the scene. . . . .”
”That's one side of the split. The other is more dramatic: the True Trumpists have become a de facto third party, bunkered down heavily in the House of Representatives. As Trump embalms himself in bitter revenge fantasies, reconciliation between the two camps will probably become impossible, although individual defections may occur. Mar-a-Lago will become base camp for the Trump death cult which will continue to mobilize millions of zombified plain folk to terrorize Republican primaries and ensure the preservation of a large die-hard contingent in the House as well as in red state legislatures. “
Mr. Davis’ last observation seem particularly compelling: the emotional swamp exposed by Newt Gingrich and Tea Party is still open and festering, and seem likely to remain until . . .? Who knows what it will take for that to heal. It seems like the classical neolib approach — “here, have a sandwich” — has to date been completely ineffective, although I am all in favor of dumping a big part of Rep. DeFazio’s proposed billion dollar infrastructure money into Ohio to see if it might help. But we may simply need to wait until the angry old white guys die off.