Establishment Disloyalty Earned A Trump Candidacy

Many of my Republican friends are setting themselves on fire today. Donald Trump has now totally obliterated a field of experienced political insiders that stood opposed to him for the nomination. He did it with almost no party support and very little money or advertising. He had almost no staff and preferred large crowds and free media to attack ads and fund raisers. As he has correctly noted, his opponents spent $60M in negative advertising against him. Against all odds, he won and, he didn't just win, he crushed the field. 

The Erik Erickson wing of the Republican Party has made it clear that they will not support Donald Trump. They have rejected the judgment of the voters, their message to the Establishment, and their messenger. In other words, they will now be disloyal to the Republican Party and its nominee because, in their view, Donald Trump is not ideologically pure. What they continue to miss is the fact that it is exactly this kind of disloyalty to the electorate that gave rise to Trump in the first place.

Establishment disloyalty began in 2006 when George W. Bush took a sudden turn away from his otherwise very conservative presidency. He began legacy building with Ted Kennedy Democrats, passing massive new entitlements and educational reforms like "No Child Left Behind." Most conservative Republicans felt completely betrayed, and it only got worse. In 2008, the great Republican compromiser, John McCain, won the nomination. His campaign was obsessed with "Democrat light" arguments. He was the embodiment of the type of Republicanism that Ronald Reagan ridiculed as "pale pastels," rather than "bold colors." He refused to attack Obama, instead leaving it to the media to vet the inexperienced first term Senator; a job they did not do. 

President Obama was elected of course, and he went on to ram Obamacare through Congress. Two years later, a large group of usually silent voters began protesting. These protesters appeared at political town hall meetings and events to voice their deep concern over the sudden expansion of government. In 2010, these protesters (later called the "Tea Party") voted in huge numbers for Republicans, putting them back into power in the House. 

"Tea" stands for "taxed enough already." The principle ambition of this loose affiliation of voters was to reduce the size and scope of government. It was originally a grassroots movement made up of ordinary Americans fed up with big government. Democrats, sensing an impending disaster, began attacking the Tea Party movement as "radical." Exactly no one in the Establishment of the Republican Party came to their defense and, as a result, the Tea Party activists set their sights on Republican incumbents. As it turned out, most of the nation had grown tired of elite, establishment politics on both sides. Many incumbent Republicans lost their primaries and a small but vocal group of Tea Party Republicans made their way to Congress.

But the Empire struck back. Establishment Republicans, angry that their special little club was being invaded by ordinary Americans, began in earnest to destroy the Tea Party. They joined Democratic Party attacks on their own candidates and tarred and feathered political amateurs who made any statement perceived to be out of the mainstream. In short, the Establishment attacked its own grass root voters; voters who had loyally supported slack-jawed moderates and Republicrats for decades. It was no doubt a surprise to most of these Americans that their own party would be so disloyal to them, especially after they handed them control of the Congress. You never hear about the Tea Party anymore. The Establishment accomplished its goal. Or so they thought...

Over the course of the next four years, Republicans proceeded to do exactly nothing they had promised to do. In fact, the only thing the Republicans did was rubber stamp President Obama's huge, Omnibus Budget bills, doubling the deficit in the process. Adding insult to injury, the Republican Party shoved Mitt Romney down voters' throats in 2012. The same voices now attacking Donald Trump's conservative credentials said very little about Romney's record of liberalism, like Romneycare, gun bans, and tax increases. This time, the Tea Party stayed home on election day. Somewhere between 7 and 11 million Republican voters opted out of Establishment politics, leaving Romney to lose by 3 million votes to Obama. The Establishment should've taken the hint. They didn't. Instead of focusing on winning back the voters who stayed home, they instead began to "reach out" to every conceivable balkanized Democrat in a desperate attempt to sell ice to Eskimos. They continued to pass enormous, deficit busting budgets, and they continued to demonize ideological conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Party candidates.

It was the most pathetic misreading of the electorate since Howard Taft stole the Republican nomination from Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, the Party has been so wrong about the will of the electorate, that many Republican voters began to believe it was intentional; that, in reality, the Republicans only cared about staying in power and voters were nothing more than a fig leaf used for legitimacy.

It was always going to be the case that there was one remedy for this entrenched group of political elites who consistently ignore the will of the electorate - an outsider. And not just an anti-establishment politician, like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. No, it had to be a true outsider, like Ben Carson or Donald Trump. Voters chose Trump.

I've had my fair share of jury trials. I've won some and lost some, but I've always accepted the judgment of the jury. One American alone may not be a genius, but if you put 12 of us together in a room, something miraculous happens. The collective intelligence of the jury, more often than not, gets it right. Any lawyer who doesn't respect that collective intelligence will fail as a trial lawyer. More importantly, however, is the fact that the jury will know if you think they're nothing more than a bunch of stupid commoners, and they will punish you for it.

Elections are really no different. The collective intelligence of the American people far exceeds that of any individual candidate or party. Accept their judgment or don't, that's your business. But remember this, America is the most powerful nation that has ever existed and it is the collective wisdom of the American people that has made it that way. The collective will of the Republican voters in this election was to disenfranchise the elites and influence peddlers. The money changers have now been thrown out of the temple, and "we the people" will start over, building a new Republican Party that listens to the electorate.

Win or lose in the general election, Trump or someone like Trump was inevitable. The Republican elites fawning over the idea of a third Bush presidency likely sealed the deal early in the process. Voters have had enough, and who can blame them? Trump now goes into the general election with a popular "America First" agenda. He will get votes from segments of the population that haven't ever voted or who have traditionally voted Democrat. Coal miners will support Trump. Manufacturing employees will support Trump. Service workers will support Trump. In fact, anyone who has been left out of the Bush/Obama/NAFTA/Wall Street/Finance/paper pusher economy is a potential Trump convert.

In the Trump election, Americans will be defined and divided on the basis of their own personal ambitions and desires, not on the basis of skin color, or ethnic group, or sexual preference. While Democrats will desperately attempt to use racial politics to divide Americans, Trump transcends group politics with a broad prosperity agenda. He will unite "Americans" by promoting an "America First" agenda. If you are an American, you will be targeted for prosperity at the expense of a Chinese in Hong Kong or an Eastern European or, yes, a Mexican working in Mexico. How will he help African Americans? He will get them jobs. Why is he good for women? Because he will get them, and their husbands, jobs. Why should hispanics vote for him? Because he will get them jobs. It is the simplest, most pure message in modern politics. We all put our pants on the same way in the morning. We all want jobs, and we all want to support our families. We all want to do just a little bit better than last year, and we all want the freedom to pursue happiness. We care about those things far more than we care about our own skin color or the skin color of our neighbors. Us married men want our wives to be happy, whether that's working or staying at home. Us fathers want our daughters to be happy, whether that's working or staying at home. We want our sons to have better opportunities than we had. Prosperity is not a theory in some old American History textbook. It is not some fantasy that is reserved for the super-rich or the elites and influence peddlers. It is real, people know it is real, and people are demanding it.

Trump is, like most messengers, imperfect. He has nevertheless dutifully carried the populist message through the primaries, earning more votes than any other Republican primary candidate in history. Unbelievably, he did it with 16 other highly qualified and popular candidates in the race. Voter turn out is 70% higher for Republicans this year than in the last cycle. Like him or hate him, his argument resonates with the jury and he should be respected for that. The worst thing that could happen to the Republican Establishment in this election has probably already happened, but it could still get worse. If they refuse to support him, or if they actively work against him and he still wins, then the Party's influence will be done for a generation. My guess is that the elites will find a way to compromise with him and his followers if for no other reason than to preserve what little influence they have left.