NYT: Pretty Much All Republican Candidates = Donald Trump

I’ve said it many times: the person who can master Donald Trump’s appeal to disaffected voters but without his serial mendacity, absurdly overblown rhetoric and tendency to go off on irrelevant tangents will have a real shot at the presidency.  Trump won in 2016 despite those and many other detriments and four years later added about 10 million votes to his previous total despite a four-year campaign by much of the news media to get him out of office by fair means or foul.  That election wasn’t “stolen,” but no one pretends that the commentariat or the press generally made the least effort to be “fair and balanced.” 

So it’s no surprise that the Republican Party is looking ahead to a post-Trump future.  Exactly when that will be, no one knows.  Federal or state indictments may finally escort Trump off the electoral stage, but the movement to which he gives voice remains.

And it’s not just Republicans looking ahead; Democrats and the Left are too, and their efforts reveal a lot about how they intend to approach the transition of the GOP from Trump to post-Trump.  For the last six years, Trump has given Democrats their best talking points and highest hopes of electoral success.  So naturally, for them, a post-Trump world is fraught with peril; it needs to retain, if not him, then some reasonable facsimile thereof.  Ergo, they need to brand as “Trumpists” all Republicans they view as possible threats to their future power.  This New York Times article, entitled “Trumpism beyond Trump,” is a case in point.

What is “Trumpism?”  Amazingly, national political correspondent Lisa Lerer never says, despite its being the topic of her article.  Why?  Because by never identifying what Trumpism actually is, Lerer avoids the salient feature of the Trump phenomenon – the profound disaffection of tens of millions of American voters from the political system and the news media that support it.  Those people believe that inside-the-beltway elites - elected officials, the administrative state and the lobbying edifice towering above all - neither know who they are, nor care.  They believe that their legitimate wants and needs are, as a matter of course, completely ignored. 

Are they wrong?

Just in the past couple of decades, they’ve seen five million good jobs vanish into Mexico and China and an opioid epidemic ensue.  They’ve seen an alarming spike in violent crime that, amazingly, is dismissed or even promoted by the powers that be.  They see open dishonesty on the part of the press, a massive influx of illegal immigrants whose very presence drives down their already-meager wages.  They’ve seen the economy unnecessarily shut down for two years, delivering a body blow to their incomes, savings, and kids’ educations and mental well-being.  If they believe that they should have a say in their children’s educations, they’re called terrorists by the Attorney General; if they believe in equal opportunities for all, they’re called racists; if they believe there are only two sexes, or that the United States is something better than history’s worst nation, they’re ridiculed and dismissed.  Inflation may be eating away at their paychecks, but they’re supposed to believe that the current government played no part in record price rises.  They’re routinely told that climate change will destroy the human race by 2030, 2035 or some other date, but know in their hearts that the claim is bogus, even as the rates they pay for electricity steadily increase.  They no longer believe the federal government is honest or competent.

In short, vast swaths of Americans have concluded that the political system doesn’t, in a fundamental way, represent them or their interests.  And no, they’re not wrong, hence the Trump phenomenon.

But Lerer can’t even hint at Trump supporters’ legitimate complaints.  After all, to give them a voice might lead readers to understand their point of view and - horror of horrors - sympathize, the very opposite of the Gray Lady’s goal.  So Lerer writes a piece about “Trumpism,” but can’t even suggest what it is.  Amazing.

That’s the more so because she at least vaguely senses that Trumpism has something to do with being an outsider. 

[GOP candidate for Arizona Governor, Kari] Lake is running as a political outsider, bashing the media and promising to be “the fake news’s worst nightmare.”

So Lerer grasps that the status of “outsider” may be part of Trumpism, but evinces not the slightest idea of why that might appeal to voters.  That the status quo itself could be perceived as an enemy of the people seems not to register despite the fact that even a casual glance at the opinions, values and attitudes of Trump voters leaves no doubt about it.

Weirder still is her effort to shoehorn into “Trumpism” not only Trump’s most serious GOP challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, but Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin who’s about as distant from Donald Trump as anyone in the Republican Party.  In doing so, Lerer actually claims that DeSantis’ busing illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard qualifies as Trumpism, despite also admitting that such a scheme was considered and rejected by the Trump White House.  Strange indeed.  The fact that DeSantis may run against Trump and is therefore doing his utmost to distance himself from the 45th president seems to make no impression on her.

Then there’s Youngkin who is such a traditional Republican that, prior to his election in 2021, none other than Republican strategist Karl Rove, hardly a Trump enthusiast, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal extolling Youngkin as the type of candidate the party needs.  So how does Youngkin qualify as a Trumpist?  Lerer never explains.

When it comes to electoral politics, the leftist press seems to have but a single idea – call all non-left candidates Donald Trump and hope for the best.  I suppose, as a campaign strategy, that beats defunding the police, teaching critical race theory and promoting men in women’s sports.  But when it comes to addressing inflation, crime, open borders and power elites that neither know nor care about the people they govern, it falls a bit short.