What seemed disastrous for the Left in 2016 is the Right’s disaster now. Revelations to date from the Mueller investigation suggest not just impropriety, but that an actual criminal might have taken the GOP over, and worse, that said criminal speaks for the Republicans in letter and spirit, backed by a substantial voter base that will defend him against both the law and the Party. Conservatives still pay lip service to the Constitution, freedom, free markets, and limited government; in fact we’ve seen them betray their agenda categorically as they try to blast unpopular legislation past the processes and traditions of their own Congress, skew the judiciary against an irresistible wave of changing custom on race, gender, and equality, and explode the deficit yet again.
Donald Trump’s takeover of the American Right is following the script that all Trump’s other takeovers made plain: he acquires a distressed property, promises to make it very very very very beautiful again, slaps his name on it, bilks lots of other people out of the money, and walks away. They know it now: they’ve been had. Worse, they’ve been had as publicly as possible. They’re afraid to face their own constituents, run for their own offices, or even uphold their oaths to defend the law.
All they said they valued, they have sold. All they said they stood for, they have betrayed. Donald Trump has gutted the GOP ideologically and politically, and he’s threatening now to do it legally as he stampedes the worst against the rest.
Let’s face it: had Hillary Clinton been elected, such a comprehensive defeat of the Republicans would have been impossible. She’d have faced a Republican majority in Congress, relentless show trials and empty screaming investigations, a galvanized and enraged Right wing base infuriated every day by the partisan media, and a defeated vengeful Trump holding rallies, making speeches, landing colossal book deals, and likely starting his own branded media company. From that safe fortress he could have done all that he’s done to the GOP already—make it his brand—but with zero accountability, a huge audience, and Trump’s signature gleeful sadistic malice. Clinton’s agenda wouldn’t have moved an inch. The Republicans would have let the judiciary go vacant all the way up to the Supreme Court. They’d have passed legislation to bait her vetoes and then taken a veto-proof majority in 2018. Ryan would be living part-time in New Hampshire and Iowa grooming himself for the Oval Office. The Democratic Party would be dead all the way down to municipalities.
The case is building against Donald Trump, which is why his presence in the White House is only to the disadvantage of the GOP. Trump has proven himself so ineffective as a party leader that even in Pennsylvania and Alabama he couldn’t help the Republicans win. The party can’t ignore him because they’ll be flanked by pure Trumpists from the Right, and they can’t use him because he alienates the center. He’s costing the Evangelicals their next generation of voters as his moral decrepitude forces them to repudiate their own consciences and rationalize Trump’s daily lies and immorality to their own families.
Trump’s shattering them from the inside, politically and ideologically. Clinton could never have done it. We can thank her for starting a blue wave by accident, and for a defeat that will change history. But Trump is our asset now, and we need to keep him there for the near term to own the future, starting this fall.