The Party of Trump

Molly Ball:

"... The push to topple Trump, it turned out, was a paper tiger, a few loud but lonely voices who never stood much of a chance in a party temperamentally inclined not to rock the boat. (Some members of the media who had spent the week hyping the effort grumbled afterward about feeling burned by the rebels’ grandiose and, it turned out, unsubstantiated claims.) Considering the powerful force of partisanship and the uncertain and unprecedented nature of their efforts, it’s impressive they got as far as they did: an office, flights of television ads, more than a dozen volunteers frantically strategizing and whipping delegate votes.

But as the effort went down in flames, it revealed a Republican Party that, although still chaotically divided, has largely decided, having bought the Trump ticket, to take the ride...."

Tierney Sneed:

"... But Trump-mentum and Kobach's brand of hard-right, anti-immigrant conservatism were a match made in heaven. The legal wunderkind-turned-state bureaucrat has long advocated for anti-immigrant legislation -- including Arizona’s infamous “show us your papers” law -- as well as for restrictive voting laws.

Now, with Trump at the top of the ticket, that attitude is reflected in the party platform, which presidential campaigns in the past have attempted to tone down. The platform also stakes out conservative positions in a number of other areas that are less of a focus for Trump, but Kobach expressed confidence that Trump is on board.

"That platform is a very conservative one and it is one that's consistent with Trump's message," Kobach said in a phone interview with TPM Wednesday. "If you check off the issues, it's hard to find much daylight between the platform and the positions of Mr. Trump."

According to Kobach, the Trump campaign had representatives at the platform meetings who were in communication with the delegates on the committee....

While many are looking at the current platform through the prism of Trump, Kobach described it as part of a longer evolution of the party in a more conservative direction.

"The platform has moved to the right between '08 and '12, and between '12 and '16, and the really marked difference is that I noticed, there’s a huge contrast between what happened in 2016 and 2008," Kobach said.

"In 2008 you had a fairly conservative platform committee that was in real tension with the McCain campaign. The McCain campaign did not like platform that was emerging, "Kobach said. "Here, in contrast, there hasn't been any tension with the Trump campaign. They seem comfortable with the platform, so this was a much easier process than in 2008.""

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There's been some more attention paid to the 2013 Republican 'autopsy' of the 2012 election now that Trump has formally secured the nomination. The autopsy basically called for classic American conservatism but with a softer stance on immigration. However, leading Republican candidates quickly positioned themselves strongly against immigration in the wake of Trump's entry and early successes, in direct juxtaposition to the hopes of party strategists. Even before then, candidates, except perhaps for Jeb Bush, were playing down any soft on immigration stances they had held in preparation for the primary season. (It's also worth noting that Latino voters, the group the party aimed to sway, actually care more about healthcare than immigration policy...) 

Some Republicans had been hoping that even if an anti-immigration, extremely conservative candidate were elected, i.e. Cruz, then a defeat in the general election, and probably with a greater margin than Romney's loss, would prove that the problem wasn't an issue of insufficient conservatism or an unmotivated base. On one hand, the fact the current platform is the most conservative ever means this dream can live on. On the other, conservative critics could retort that Trump was never a conservative, and that his disinterest in the platform and focus on feelings over actual conservative policies rather than feelings were what caused his loss (I'm still assuming he'll lose). That seems like it would be a weak argument though. 

Regardless, I think a pro-immigration candidacy will still be doomed during the next Republican primaries. Perhaps a candidate could follow in Trump's footsteps, running on nationalism, some xenophobia, opposition to elites, and a moderate conservatism that was consistent with support for existing welfare and healthcare institutions. No matter what, I think Trump will leave a big mark (stain?) on the Republican Party. The Republican Party isn't Reagan's anymore.

A Republican quoted in an article pointed somewhere pointed out that the generation with fond memories of Reagan is shrinking. Anyone who voted for Reagan in 1980 is older than 54 this year. Conservatism is be definitionally backward looking, but the Bush name doesn't have much luster to it now so where will conservatives look back too next? Again, one is left with Trump.

I think that the Republican Party will survive Trump even as he changes it. Although I think this will be a period of crisis for the conservative movement.

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Adding this last bit in just for fun. Matthew Yglesias:

""Are you safer than you were eight years ago?" That, according to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the House Homeland Security Committee chair who spoke Monday night in Cleveland, is the key question in this election. If you judge that question in terms of the rate of incidence of murder or violent crime more broadly, the answer is that yes, Americans are safer in 2016 than they were in 2008.

But this kind of dull, plodding fact was not the kind of thing the convention’s Make America Safe Again evening dwelled on. Nor was anyone inclined to mention that illegal immigration has fallen to its lowest level in more than 40 years...."

Trust

Well, I'm in China no longer. I flew through Cambodia and am now visiting family in the UK. It's fitting, then, that I just caught up with Stumbling and Mumbling.

I think it's important to look at the effects of inequality beyond the obvious harm to the less well off because not only does this help us understand society but, additionally, any costs felt by everyone could help to clarify and support opposition to the current level of inequality. There are many Econ 101 arguments in favor of some inequality, like incentives or differing marginal productivities, that people hold up as irrefutable points in support. Moreover, it's hard to convince someone espousing these arguments that any given level of inequality is bad because they can always reply that larger inequality creates greater incentives, or that its unfair to not pay people based on their contributions (since that's what markets do, right Mr. Economist?), dragging the discussion into the grey areas of moral choice. Costs felt by everyone, especially those for which the cost increases with inequality, provide a stepping stone out of morality and an irrefutable point against inequality.

Chris Dillow:

"... We have good evidence that increasing inequality leads to lower trust. As Mitchell Brown and Eric Uslaner write (pdf):

Declines in trust stem from economic inequality. As economic inequality increases, people feel that they have less in common with others, and therefore trust less.

The idea here is simple. As Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara say, “individuals trust those more similar to themselves”. In unequal societies, however, rulers and experts are less similar to laymen, and so are less trusted*. This might be magnified by the outgroup homogeneity bias. Readers of this blog might be well aware of the big differences between, say, Ed Miliband and David Cameron, but to someone living in poverty in Hull they are both posh Oxford types.

As we’re seeing, this distrust has important effects upon political culture. For one thing, as Gillian says, it leads to a groupthink in which every tribe builds its own reality. Also, it erodes representative democracy. One reason why we had a referendum on the EU was that many voters didn’t trust MPs to take the decision for them. There’s a third thing, pointed out by James Coleman:

There seems to be extensive evidence that the rise of a charismatic leader…is likely to occur in a period when trust or legitimacy has been extensively withdrawn from existing social institutions. (Foundations of Social Theory p196) 

The popularity of Nigel Farage [and Donald Trump] fits this pattern: we should worry that the gap left by his retirement will be filled by someone even worse...."