There's been another uptick in stories about the Republican base and their deep-seated political beliefs that turn on a dime whenever you bring up the surnames Trump or Biden. The funniest is probably the hapless Iowa business owner now famous for a CNN interview in which he praised the government's new grants that have really boosted his business, only to also oppose them because President Joe Biden did them. He simultaneously dumped on Donald Trump for being a terrible person while hoping the seditionist crime boss wins reelection.
But the same dynamic can also be found in angry mob form. It was The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey who pointed us to a glorious tidbit in the recent New Yorker pre-obituary of the Ron DeSantis campaign: Hunting for anti-Trump messaging they might use, the campaign found that 70% of polled Republicans agreed the pandemic lockdowns during the Trump presidency were bad.
If they switched the language to a direct attack on Trump, calling them "Trump's COVID lockdowns," though, the numbers flipped completely. Seventy percent of Republicans wouldn't agree that those were bad.
A similar but more durable dynamic is the regular polling of the public's general feelings about "the economy." A new poll has 57% of Republicans believing their own personal "financial situation" is either good or excellent right now ... but more than 3 in 4 of them still believe that the "economy" itself is getting worse, and 19 in 20 believe Biden is making it worse.
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We have long known that reality can't hold a candle to what members of the Republican base want to believe inside their own noggins, but the Trump era has solidified that dichotomy. It now seems almost a point of pride for Republican politicians and voters alike to switch out their political beliefs not just by the day, but by the question. Almost the entirety of the party changes their positions to match whatever position Trump has last stated. It’s to the point where Republican Party officials didn't even try to draft up a new party platform for Trump's 2020 election, they just slapped together a We Support Whatever Dear Leader Thinks statement and called it done.
Honestly, the most frustrating part of it all might be that we liberals know, with absolute certainty, how to tweak Republicanism's core beliefs to be whatever we want them to be and still, we're not taking advantage of this.
The best path for the Democratic infrastructure plan was obvious from the start. Forget a milquetoast attempt at coddling Republican sensibilities by calling it the "Inflation Reduction Act," borrowing the latest Republican framing to pass the thing off as a whimpering genuflection to the Fox News punditry. Instead, you could put together a massive anti-climate change plan, stuff it with jobs, bullet trains, and a complete phase-out of the internal combustion engine, and slap a name on it like the “Donald Trump American Awesomeness Act.” The Republican base would be flooding phone lines demanding their Republican representatives vote for the thing right the hell now.
From the beginning, there was a way to make Republicans wear masks during a pandemic. You call them Tactical Respiratory Underpants for Militant Patriots and tell the Republican base that the government is trying to stop them from wearing them. You'd soon see people wearing red hats and five overlapping T.R.U.M.Ps at once. The same conservative sites and networks that flood themselves with ads for overpriced gold coins would be selling T.R.U.M.Ps for $100 a pop.
Why do we keep overthinking these things when Trump's base has made it clear they like being deceived, they want people to keep deceiving them, and they won't put up with people not deceiving them? Lie our asses off and tell them Trump was the inspiration for free school lunches for every child in America. We'll tell them he's personally paying for every meal. Trump himself will immediately agree that yeah, he was the one who did the thing. He'll pose with a big novelty check and claim it was his idea all along.
Now, I'm not thickheaded. I know full well there are two main problems with this plan. The first would be that while we could probably save the planet and certainly society by slapping Trump's name on everything, it would require seeing Trump's name on everything. It would be a hellscape. A hellscape of free health insurance, lower global temperatures, and the continued existence of Florida, to be sure, but if the price is seeing Trump's smirking mug on every corner, then it's quite possible the majority of America would prefer apocalypse. It's a tough sell.
A lesser but still pertinent problem is that Trump is, unfortunately, still alive, and he might be expected to object to this plan. But this is an easy one to solve: Through his entire life, Trump has only done anything for the sake of money. Have the Biden administration cut him some checks to keep his mouth shut and he'll do it and come back for more.
This is a man who partnered with journalist-murdering Saudi royalty to get a few million bucks thrown towards his golf resorts. It wouldn't take any more cash to get him to support universal health care, a complete transition to renewable energy sources, or a new energy weapon designed to blow up the moon. He doesn't care. Shove some money in his hand like he's Krusty the Clown, he'll say whatever you want him to.
Ah-ha, you say. But won't that start a bidding war? The government may have a lot of money to throw around, but it's still not clear they can compete with American billionaires who keep separate yachts for hosting Supreme Court justices. Not only will the oil companies start bidding up the prices for Trump's opinions near-immediately, but everyone from Vladimir Putin to the Chinese government will be joining the Trump Opinions Auction. It's unsustainable!
You would be correct, and that brings us to the simplest and most foolproof of my proposals, the one that Republicans could never mount a proper counter to.
Joe Biden should simply change his name to Donald Trump.
There's very little downside to this. The Republican base that likes being lied to very damn much will love being lied to with such vigor that they can no longer even tell which party Trump is in. A good 80% of the base will immediately celebrate because they get the second Trump term that many of them were willing to overthrow the government to get. It's not likely a majority will even realize that it's just Biden changing his name; they'll see on the news that the president is now "Donald Trump" and f--k yeah, it's party time at your weird uncle's house.
Want to rope in the entire QAnon movement and make them Democratic believers? Biden can claim that he was the "real" Trump all along, and that orange-tinted documents thief in Florida was just an imposter. If you're the kind of person who believes JFK is still alive and will be arriving to seize control of the government any day now, you're going to go absolutely bananas for that claim.
So sure, that will leave us with two Trumps—but that's not necessarily bad. Every partisan in America can claim only the "good" Trump while excoriating the "bad" one. The whole of America will put out "Trump" yard signs, and it won't do anyone a damn bit of good because nobody will know which of the two you're supporting. Liberals can put “F--k Donald Trump” bumper stickers on their cars and coal-rolling neoconfederates will scream "hell yeah" at them instead of trying to run them off the road.
The Donald Trump who used to be Joe Biden can then introduce the Donald Trump energy plan. The Donald Trump Health Care Plan. The Donald Trump Abortion Assistance Act. The Donald Trump Wilderness Preservation Act. Pile 'em on.
The brilliant part of this plan, if I may say so myself, is that it won't functionally change daily life in the Republican base. After an initial outraged news cycle or two, it's not likely to be remembered at all.
Everybody's already used to Trump saying two contradictory things at once; what does it matter if it's one person or two doing the contradicting?
But the best part of the plan is that it is very likely Trump will be going to prison soon. A very nice prison, to be sure. A prison with gold toilets and furniture that looks like it was stolen from French royals after they were dispatched to the guillotines. But unless it has its own television studio, the former Donald Trump won't be able to object much to a new Donald Trump taking over the airwaves in his absence.
The Republican Party already made the decision that they're not going to have policies anymore, they're just going to support whatever "Donald Trump" thinks. You can't possibly think they give a damn which Trump it is. Let’s just find them a new Trump so they stop having to worry their pretty little heads about these things.
American political parties might often seem stuck in their ways, but they can and in fact do change positions often. Joining us on this week's episode of "The Downballot" is political scientist David Karol, who tells us how and why both the Democratic and Republican parties have adjusted their views on a wide range of issues over the years. Karol offers three different models for how these transformations happen, and explains why voters often stick with their parties even after these shifts. He concludes by offering tips to activists seeking to push their parties when they're not changing fast enough.
