In Saturday’s Pundit round-up Michael Lind opines that we’re seeing a partisan realignment, but one that in the long run favors the GOP. He is absurdly over-optimistic about the potential Trump’s potential to re-cast the GOP in a new image and overly dismissive of the Democratic party as a sterile elite.
Lind looks into the Trump campaign and sees a party of mostly working-class whites, based in the South and West and suburbs. This new GOP will accept the core of the ND safety net, but oppose immigration and display an instinctive economic nationalism. Democrats, says Lind, will be an urban alliance of upscale, progressive whites with blacks and Latinos . Multicultural, globalist.
This is way too pat and self-serving to a fault. His case is pat because the re-alignment is not all that clear cut. Take the GOP. Yes, Trump broke out of the pack and managed to capture the nomination. But, the segment of the GOP segment he captured is not new. Pat Buchanan made a similar appeal in 92. It is also not that big, perhaps representing a third of GOP voters. It does include middle class as well as blue collar voters. But even at that, they are still a minority within their own party. Trump’s win was abetted by the lack of a palatable establishment candidate, a tilted primary structure, and a party fool enough to allow him to participate.
Lind would like us to think that the issues raised by Trump will define the GOP’s future. There are two problems with this. First, the parties leadership, donor base, think tanks (co-called), and better educated supporters are still rooted in what Lind calls paleo-conservatism, the same fusion of libertarian economics, social conservatism and military triumphantalism that dates back to the early days of the National Review. The Trump wing has no such voice or base of support. It just has Trump, a most non-credible carrier for their crypto-Fascist waters. Without him, his base has no root, which might allow a shaky establishment to reassert control. Zombie Reaganism will likely will remain a factor in some time to come, although it would preside over a volatile base. *see below
Lind might care to think that his neo-New Nationalism would be the guiding light of a Trump-oriented GOP. Does he actually think Trump voters are going to lsiten or him or other reformocons? Theirs is too bloodless a doctrine for voters driven by inchoate rage. Trump’s supporters are animated by a race-animus that Lind barely acknowledges (or, less kindly, sweeps under the table). If Trump’s supporters adopt some theoretical coherence, it will be one more cruder and race-oriented than anything Lind imagines.
This makes a hash of one of Lind’s predictions, that Hispanic-Americans will assimilate, become honorary whites, and become part of Lind’s new majority. This only happens if the parties white base chills is exclusionary views. That will be a long time coming.
Also, the GOP has not fully reckoned with its religious wing. Lind argues that the culture wars are over, in the sense that the division along along parties lines is baked in. How can that be a good thing, to have a party define by litmus tests on abortion, LBGT rights, and religious freedom? On a related front, the party’s war on science remains an a stumbling block for all but true believers. Lind passes over the know-nothingism that pervades the GOP.
There are also caveats about Lind’s dismissive prediction of a Democratic urban ethnic alliance. Primary polling also showed lower income voters leaning Democratic (the average Trump and Cruz voter earned around $72K—a middle class income; Clinton’s average support was at $61k). This would indicate a broader coalition than the Brooksian urbans and ethnics cocktail contrived by Lind. Democrats, meanwhile, remain the only party credibly committed to the social insurance programs touted by Lind in his New nationalism. On this, Trump’s supporters are ambivalent, jealous of their own entitlements but adamant against what they see as a grifting 47%.
Democrats are also the only major party committed to addressing issues of inequality, corporate power, market regulation and money in politics. Trump’s supporters by and large are more intent on kicking back people on the lower rungs of the ladder to see what is going on above them. Lind does not even begin to address these issues. Hardly surprising, since Roosevelt’s New Nationalism was not opposed to concentration. While Democrats have their differences on this score, particularly on trade, the party is united toward a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities.
The GOP is unlikely to embrace Lind’s New Nationalism, but Democrats remain the heirs of Wilson’s New Freedom, Roosevelt’s 4 Freedoms and Johnson’s civil rights legacy.
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* Update: 8/8 Well that was fast. Today Trump endorsed Ryan’s supply-side tax reform, effectively surrendering his claim to populism, and leaving himself vulnerable to criticism from Hillary Clinton, who proposes a more genuinely populist tax increase. Mr Linds and the reformocons hopes for GOP sanity are once again buried by zombie Reaganism.
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Several comments have seen the word nationalism and responding to Nationalism strictly as identity and are missing the economic connection. Roosevelt and, for that matter, Bismark in Germany were trying to smooth over class conflicts by ameliorating working class conditions and controlling corporate excess; a form of common interests, but one without race identity and militarism.