Americans hate turncoats, tattletales, and spoiled sports. As a father raising two young children I can tell you, every parent in my neighborhood repeats that mantra during every sporting event, outdoor barbecue, and play date.
"Don't be a tattle tale. No one likes a tattle tale!"
"Don't be a spoiled sport! No one likes a sore loser!"
"Play as a team! Teamwork! Teamwork!"
If only we could raise our politicians the way we raise our children...
The Republicans have never been very good at politics. In the modern era, they have enjoyed moderate electoral success in this center-right country only to shoot themselves in the foot or stab each other in the back. The Republican Party is a party that professes to stand on principle, even when those principles mean that they must annihilate each other. And annihilate each other they do. Not surprisingly, a group of turncoats and tattletales, who cannot play as a team, have achieved almost nothing legislatively in 20 years.
Hillary Clinton was the most experienced, well funded, connected, and established candidate for president since George W. Bush. In fact, apart from the Bush's, she may have been the most established candidate since Richard Nixon. She enjoyed near unanimous media support. She was surrounded by the best political minds in the country. She had the support of a popular outgoing President who had a unique ability to articulate his political message. Yet, somehow, she lost. Not only did she lose, but she lost to Donald Trump. And, not only did she lose to "The Donald," but she took the entire Democratic ticket down with her, from top to bottom.
It's not like she just face planted at the finish line, either. She managed to lead the Democratic Party to the worst electoral defeat since Dukakis, and she managed to help lose nearly every state legislature and governor's race that was in play during the election. The Democratic Party's post-mortem is, of course, all over the place. The Russians did it. James Comey did it. Wikileaks did it. It was poor messaging. It was overconfidence. It was her failure to campaign in swing states during the closing two weeks. But none of these reasons is particularly convincing.
Even Maxine Waters and Diane Feinstein admit that there is "no evidence of collusion" between the Trump campaign and Russia. While Comey's timing certainly didn't help Secretary Clinton, his decision to take the prosecutorial decision away from a compromised Attorney-General and subsequently drop the case against Clinton was a sacrifice fly to center field. He had to know he would be castigated by both sides and has said as much publicly. Comey, to his credit, took one for the team.
Wikileaks could have been devastating if not for the muted reporting of the legacy media. Most polls show that the embarrassing leaked emails did little more than confirm voters' impressions of the parties. Democrats were incensed about the leaks, and Republicans' beliefs about media collusion and bias were confirmed.
Finally, while messaging, overconfidence and her failure to campaign probably all played some role in her defeat, it seems difficult to believe that those failures led to the catastrophic down ballot losses. Even so, the evidence shows that her messaging was, in fact, effective. She won the popular vote. Her vitriolic, scathing rhetoric about Trump and his supporters is still affecting his ability to govern. Likewise, it's difficult to accuse a candidate who wins the most votes of being "overconfident" or failing to campaign. She had it in the bag, or so it seemed.
So there must be some other reason that Trump won while simultaneously elevating a group of Trump-haters to the majority across the nation. Perhaps, maybe, just maybe, he had a better message. And maybe, just maybe, he was the preferred messenger to take the wood to Washington.
Taking the wood to Washington was, above all else, what The Donald was elected to do. His messaging was short and to the point: "Drain the swamp," "Build the Wall," "Lock her Up," "End bad trade deals," make NATO "pay its fair share." In a world of 30 second commercials and 40 character messaging, Trump prevailed. Trump prevailed because that's what he does for a living, and because he had the right overall message: "America First."
Trump prevailed notwithstanding a "team" that kept running the wrong way with the ball. Republicans were constantly distancing themselves from Trump or his latest gaffe. Trump, of course, commits his fair share of unforced errors. So what? Trump did nothing, absolutely nothing, as egregious as Democratic candidates have done in the past.
The difference is, the Democrats know how to play as a team. They don't kick the ball into their own goal just so they can say that they scored. When Hillary Clinton deleted tens of thousands of emails from her secret server, Democrats rallied to her defense, stuck to the party line and obstructed every Republican attempt to hold her accountable. When Anthony Weiner was arrested on child porn charges, they stood by Clinton notwithstanding that he was married to her chief aide. When Wikileaks revealed near despotic collusion between the legacy media and the Clinton campaign, the Democrats fought back with the Russia narrative - a narrative that is still in play today.
The Democrats are experts at politics and have been since Reconstruction. When was the last time you saw a pack of Democrats turn on a Democrat politician? When was the last time you saw Democrat staffers leaking information damaging to a Democratic administration? It doesn't happen very often because, unlike Republicans, Democrats have a common agenda, as radical as it may be, and they know how to wield power.
Compare that to the Republicans' recent, massive, electoral success. Americans rewarded Republicans for nominating the "Drain the Swamp" candidate with a landslide victory across the nation. They now control the vast majority of state legislatures and governorships, both houses of Congress, and enjoy a right leaning majority on the Supreme Court. Yet, in spite of all of this power, Republicans have been unable to pass a single piece of consequential legislation. In fact, to the contrary, they have humiliated themselves over a healthcare bill, failed to propose anything resembling a reasonable budget, failed to propose any meaningful tax reform, failed follow up on any Republican initiated investigations into Democratic misconduct, and have utterly failed to wrestle the microphone from the Democrats.
Worse, despite controlling pretty much the entire government, they have somehow allowed a ridiculous investigation into whether Trump is a Russian spy to dominate the agenda. In less than 200 days, the Republican majority has helped cripple the Trump presidency. It will be remarkable if he survives his first term and, if he does not, it will not be because of the minority party.
My Republican friends will argue: "But Trump has done it to himself. He can't shut up or stop tweeting." That's a fair point, but that's where teamwork comes in to play. If Republicans were to circle the wagons to protect their President, like the Democrats always do, these stories would go away and the business of government could proceed. Trump has not tweeted, said or done anything as bad as setting up a secret server or blaming a terrorist attack on an internet video. His attacks on the media are harsh, but he has yet to ban a news outlet from the Whitehouse or turn the NSA on a member of the press as Obama did to James Rosen. In each instance, Democrats quickly produce and distribute their talking points and go to war. They win the narrative each time, not because they are right, but because they are effective.
The Republicans have done exactly the opposite. They have allowed multiple investigations to proceed where Democrats would have shut them down. They have encouraged the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate crimes for which there is no evidence. The Majority Leader is allowing the Senate Intelligence Committee to subpoena "all campaign communications" from the 2016 Trump campaign. Can you imagine receiving such a request as the President? "All communications"? And what, exactly, do Republicans think will happen if Trump complies?
Trump would be handing a leaking, hostile group of Establishment buffoons his entire campaign strategy, including, undoubtedly, some embarrassing emails. In other words, the Republican led committee is willing to inflict massive political damage on the Trump Presidency, far exceeding what Wikileaks did to Clinton.
And why? For what possible reason would the Republicans want to take down their own President; a man who led them to a massive election victory?
The answers are simpler than one would think. First, the Republican Party really is four different parties: Goldwater Conservatives, Populists, Libertarians, and Establishment Elitists. The Conservatives love to stand on principle and, when they attack Trump, they attack him for attempting to compromise (think the Healthcare Bill). However, they are also political dilettantes. These principled Tea Party candidates came to power in the minority. They have never had power and have no idea how to wield it.
The Libertarian wing, with whom I am most aligned, partners with Conservatives to limit the size and scope of government. Since we believe that most Americans at their core want to be free, we tend to harbor less fear of populism. After all, individual freedom is not only popular, but a core Libertarian principle. Where there are disagreements, Libertarians are more likely to compromise. We believe that others are entitled to their opinions and respect the fact that others may have a better answer to the same problem. Goldwater Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." That is hardly an invitation to compromise.
The Populists have been kept at bay for most of the last 25 years. They are the Reagan Democrats, and the anti-establishment insiders like Pat Buchanan. They have typically been despised by the three other members of the coalition as the great unwashed, uneducated masses. Like a volcano, however, as some point there is an eruption. It may not be in your lifetime, but when it happens, it is literally Earth shattering. Populists pushed Ross Perot, for example, to run against the Uber-Established incumbent, George H. W. Bush. Bush had just escaped a primary against Pat Buchanan. Ross Perot cost Bush and the Establishment the election to Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump is a populist. His loyalty to the Republican Party has been to the extent they promote his traditionalist, Norman Rockwell view of America. Like a volcano, he erupted on the scene, smashing conventional politics to bits. Those smashed into the smallest bits were the Establishment Elites. These effete Washington "intellectuals" cannot stomach all these dirty people who work for a living. We'll just call this the George Will wing of the Party. They are the bratty kid who quits the team when he gets benched. They are the sore losers, the turncoats who attack their own, the tattletales who profit from embarrassing leaks to the press. They write scathing articles or give scathing speeches which seem like they come right out of the opposition playbook. They claim to act on principle, but really it is just arrogance. They act to preserve the status quo because change may rob them of power and influence.
Democrat Elites, on the other hand, know how to embrace a popular figure and force a compromise. Barack Obama won the imaginations of Democratic voters in the 2008 primary, but he stood opposed to Establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton. Just when the party began to turn on itself, Joe Biden stepped in to negotiate a compromise between the popular outsider, Obama, and the Establishment. What followed was total victory in two Presidential elections. Contrary to Republican talking points, Democrats did in fact have a number of serious accomplishments. They raised taxes, finally passed health care reform, passed Dodd-Frank, withdrew from Iraq, tilted the playing field in favor of employees, negotiated a nuclear arms deal with Iran, expanded the EPA, entered into climate change agreements, and generally expanded the size of government.
All things I disagree with. Nevertheless, these are core accomplishments for Democrats in the fight for America. Just because I disagree with them does not mean they did not happen...
America is and has been a center-right country for more than sixty years. That spans seven presidencies, both Republican and Democrat. When the pendulum swings too much in one direction, there is a sea change in the electorate to bring our government, more or less, back to just right of center. Democrats have been exceedingly successful over the years in pushing a leftist agenda through a center-right electorate. Their level of discipline, commitment, skill, and political intelligence must be respected.
Republicans have been given decades to push a center-right agenda through a center-right electorate with very little success. The Republican Revolution in 1994 led to the most success throughout that period, but it took a Democratic President to partner with Republicans to get it done. If Republicans continue down this road, they will again be thrown out of power.
This most recent Elitist fantasy of a post-impeachment Mike Pence Presidency would result in the final and total destruction of the Party. Populists and Reagan Democrats will quit politics or form a third party. Conservatives will be taken down with Trump, and the Establishment Elites will cling to a few seats inside the Beltway. Every four years they will put forward another white, milk toast candidate for President who, after losing a full third of the Party's interest, will be trounced by a leftist. Republicans can then go on to do what they seem to do best, launch symbolic investigations, form committees, and otherwise just say no.
Republican voters nominated Donald Trump precisely because the rest of the Party had failed them. He brought real energy to the process as well as new voters. He earned 65 million votes in the general election and won in states that the Republicans have not held since H.W. Bush. He lifted the entire Party up with him. In return, he is left on an island with a bunch of political neophytes to advise him. Establishment Republicans still don't like him and run to the press to reiterate that point every chance they get, like a weak little boy runs to his mommy to tattle when the big boys tease him. They stab Trump in the back with special prosecutors and astonishingly broad subpoenas. They write self-righteous articles about all the "real reasons" they lost the primary, like a bunch of sore losers. They damage the nation with leaks.
What they don't seem to realize is that, as goes Trump, so does the Republican Party. All of it...
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