Bannon has financial ties to Harvey Wienstein and must have known.
He profited more than Hillary and Obama combined.
He's an accomplice, and so is the White House who enabled him.
1
Did Mr Douthat miss the part about Bannon being a bigot? Or Maybe Mr Douthat (like so many Republicans) just doesn't care about the details so long as they have a chance of getting their ideological agenda rammed through.
But I care about Bannon being a white supremacist and I am sure many millions of other Americans do to.
12
I hope that some time in the future, Bannon & the Mercers are tried for treason.
11
Bannon?
Yesterday's bad news bobbing its head for one more gasp, before it drowns.
Perhaps he was early into the alt-news business, but having nothing of value or originality to offer, he and his ilk are becoming just another annoying press release on an over crowded web.
I'm sure he has his fan base, but life on this planet is moving at light speeds from hurricanes and earthquakes, to Rocket Man and the opioid epidemic Et. al
he's a walking, talking void.
3
Let's not use the word 'notional' more than once in a column.
3
Why is anyone surprised over this? For the last 20 years liberals have relentlessly attacked anyone right of center over their Christian religion, patriotism, education, and social mobility.The Bannon movement is going to be around a while- even longer now that you took their Confederate flags and statues away.
1
You know, Mr. Douthat, that's what the Germans wanted in 1930: a leader (Fuhrer). Be careful what you wish for.
10
The last, angry, pathetic stand of the old angry white men.
10
Who cares? We should do what we should have always done in the Middle East. Stay out if it, let them outcrazy each other and see who's left. Then the Independents and moderate Dems should debate them.
You could see them eating each other. It was only a matter of time before they fully turned on each other. And just like the Middle East, the vacuum of leadership has all the crazy and bitter tribes loooking to fill it.
5
There's a reason Bannon himself, in 2014, described himself as a "Leninist" (aka Bolshevist/Bolshevik), Ross. He's at least as much enamored of the disruption he can cause to the Establishment as he might be in any actual governance. Because he made that comment before he himself became a celebrity, and therefore beholden to any major commitments, I would trust his words then over anything he says today. So, that's what years of GOP cynical obfuscation has spawned, a self-avowed American Leninist, as interested in blowing things up as getting anything done.
And as for the 'reality' that has confounded every Republican reformer, that reality also MUST include acknowledging the anti-democratic means by which the GOP has tried to short-circuit the democratic process in its zeal to 'win'. We are in our 3rd congress being run by a MANUFACTURED majority, built from a MINORITY number of total American votes. It should not be any wonder that our 'politics' is in disarray: what majority would look kindly on (or do business with) a minority that cheats its way into public power and then refuses any input from the political minority that actually represents a majority of American voters? It's an untenable situation that only metastasizes the cancer that Bannon represents to American governance. And it will only improve when American voters feel they are being honestly represented in the nation's legislatures, rather than used as pawns in a rich man's game.
9
It is not just a "leader' we need who can inspire people to run off a cliff for him or her but rather a LEADER WITH A CONSCIENCE and a deliberative mind capable of not embracing their own biases only.
5
Won't that headline get you mileage - in reverse.
The word revolution should've been in air-quotes, eg 'Revolution'. (Unless Ross was thinking specifically of the French (or Russian?) Revolution, which was indeed the kind of disaster to be expected when a government gets decapitated.)
1
OMG please no. Let them not find a LEADER.
That would be the final piece needed to drop us all through the trapdoor from a Republic of Law to a real Imperial Presidency.
Don't forget that another word for Leader is Fuhrer and that is who Bannon is looking for...
6
I would like an effective, policy oriented conservative president. Do you see any candidates on the horizon?
2
The Republican Party created Trump with decades of race-baiting "dog whistle" appeals to bigoted voters, racist knee-jerk opposition to even the most conservative of Obama's policies (like Obamacare patterned on conservative, market-based principles) and racist campaign tactics (such as the Willie Horton ads in 1988 against Dukakis). So don't tell me you don't like what you've created. I would prefer you just be honest, repent of your obvious sin of politically-useful racism, and return to your non-racist roots (a la Abe Lincoln) by working with thoughtful centrist Democrats and independents to rescue our democracy from the slow cancer of Trump's authoritarianism.
Many former Democrats like this independent pro-life evangelical progressive are waiting....
6
Spot on. We’ve seen the republicans head this way for some time. And there are no likely conservative leaning centrists who can be elected now that the trump is out of the bottle.
1
Maybe the failure is that the responsible conservatives are actually moderate Democrats now. The whole Republican party has fallen off the map, into the "here be dragons" part of the book. Which kind of monster to try next isn't a policy debate.
We should have two parties, one more labor-focused and one more business-focused. Policy that works comes out of debate between the two. But nothing that's coming from any faction of Republicans is the slightest bit of use.
(Hint for those who want the populism without the racism... that actually IS liberalism. No need to reinvent it.)
7
Good analysis, but you are missing that Bannon wants to destroy government, not take it over. His mission is served now by Cabinet Secretaries who are destroying their departments. Bomb throwers in Congress will serve his mission, but a leader might not.
7
Those commenters referencing fascism are spot on. Mr. Douthat surely knows that constant movement of the sort that looks like deja vu is the mark of totalitarian movements. This one represents a fairly small minority, but it has substantial power within one of our political parties, and that should be concerning. Let's hope it doesn't find a "leader."
3
Another spot on commentary from the NY Times!
Whether you or Brooks or Krugman et. al. - The intelligence is admirable and relevent and prescriptive of our urgent need for implementing policies and programs that wil benefit the common weal.
NO ONE on the right in government or in their rural warrens gives a tick! They do not read -or ponder or adsorb or reflect on anything but emotional thunder and lightening!
EVERYDAY we watch a dysfunctional president rant and rave to his core shock troops and watch his party slobber at his feet:
While the wworld watches in absolute amazement at the ascendancy of "America -The Reality Show!"
5
So Roy Moore will deliver something that will help the USA? Somehow, I doubt that. Trump promised a lot to his voters, but is going to deliver nothing. Trump is going to help the Trump Crime Family and no one else. Moore may become another Trump, if he is elected. I hope he loses and loses bigly.
5
Sorry Ross, but there is doubt whatsoever that Steve Bannon is delusional.
In case people have forgotten Bannon is down here in Alabama trying to get dangerous Senate candidates elected to the U.S. Senate -- Roy Moore is a candidate who has suggested the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook was punishment for America's immorality, and that being gay should be illegal.
Do you still think that Bannon is not "delusional?" Bannon is DANGEROUS and DELUSIONAL.
7
Ross, are you saying (in thousands of words, sheesh - how many metaphors did you pack into that first paragraph?!) that nationalism on the outside and nihilism on the inside is an unworkable schizophrenia, or that it's just another figleaf arrangement for the usual cast of GOP grifters but with new "game?"
11
Bannon is nothing more than a jumped-up, bellicose nonentity who found one of his kind in the kleig lights and saw an opportunity for his own aggrandizement by attempting to manage Trump's. But mutual exploitation by narcissists is never a formula for satisfaction, much less accomplishment, never mind sustainability. Both have gone their own bumbling, self-deluded ways. Sic transit hotshot.
5
The "leader" Mr. Bannon and his movement needs just self-identified himself. He is Senator Corker from Tennessee. But, he is unacceptable to the Bannonites because he does thiink for himself, works well with others and has an imagination.
What the Bannonites really want is someone who is able to get votes, but is willing to let Mr. Bannon make all the decisions. A front man.
Mr. Bannon is on a fool's errand using monies supplied by other fools.
5
Policy and Trump? Where did that come from? Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!
4
God forbid Father Doubt That dares to reveal the common fervor he shares with Bannon for the Dubia writing radical right American Cardinal Raymond Burke. While Father Doubt That only admires his opposition to Pope Francis, Bannon actually has a relationship with Burke.
Of course, neither Bannon nor Father Doubt That show much concern for the Children abused by priests under Burke’s command in St. Louis.
4
Ross mentions a word that Republican swamp rats NEVER want to hear: Tea Party. Admitting that the Tea Party gave the GOP the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014 would mean that the GOP did nothing so that they could get along with liberals after being given power in Congress by the liberals' enemies.
There are a lot of GOPers that Bannon needs to help replace, including both of Kentucky's Senators, the indictment-bound Corker, and the New Englanders who are just progressives wearing GOP smiles.
While Trump has shined a bright light on the inability of the GOP Senate to function as a caucus, this problem was there long ago.
No wonder there are more than one in Congress who are on the medications normally administered to Alzheimer's Disease patients.
Sorry, Ross, but I just can't disagree with Bannon on this one. It takes a snake to accept a Congressional majority and then do nothing with it simply out of spite.
For Ross to posit that only a president can make a difference because our system is now "imperial," is to give up on democracy. Why can't the system be reformed to restore the power of the legislative branch? Are we truly a lost cause?
In his call for " the election of an effective, policy-oriented conservative president," Ross is describing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. And look how that has turned out! If Ross is looking for a candidate like that in today's GOP, he can look in vain, or back to the now distant past: HW Bush, Bob Dole, Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller? These people of honor and reason would never get nominated for the presidency today, much less win the general election.
Time to go back to the drawing board Ross-- what can save this nation?
4
Mr. Douthat, you might be one of the very, very few who consider Bannon a Republican. He, and the Tea Party crowd, have used the GOP as a foil for their limited agenda, one that few apparently including Bannon, really have any idea of its contents other than destroy what exists and then let's see.
A slogan isn't an agenda, nor is it a strategy; it is a short-run tactic to get attention. Most people have no idea what they are doing, which is why we have Trump as POTUS. The same people who, in 2009, cried "don't touch my Medicare" voted consistently for a party that promised to do worse.
The "conservatives" have no policies other than to impose minority religious views on their fellow citizens using the power of the state. Oh yes, the rich are horrified that they have to pay any taxes to support a government whose only value is to ensure that they can become richer.
1
The Republicans ( the REAL ones) can thank themselves for all their troubles.
Their whoring themselves to every crackpot (organization) where they thought they saw a new majority of votes was a self-inflicted injury. Demonizing the Democrats to the point where they figured any unknown was a better bet was a bad bargain. (and worse for the general public, who don't always even try to look under the carpet for the cockroaches.)
3
I regret to say that it is pretty hard to over-demonize the current Democrats in nationally prominent offices. The Democratic Party of the post-WWII period was anti-communist, religious, and wholly patriotic.
The progressive-socialist Democrats of today would willingly run this country into bankruptcy and not regret their part in it. They stand for nothing that would build people up and, since November, have said nothing except to name who they hate.
A hate-based party might stage an insurrection but can never lead a country, and has no place in a democracy.
I hope both parties realize who elected them and how far they have fallen since better times.
2
One can debate how Democrats' plans in 2016 could be financed, but the ideas of(1) transitioning coalminers into green and other jobs, (2)reducing student debt by making state college tuition free for those whose family income was below $125,000, (3) working at improving relations between the police and the communities in which they worked, (4)giving women equal pay for equal work ,(5) encouraging companies to give their workers a share in the ownership, (6) efforts to coordinate relations between corporations and graduating students of community colleges to smooth their path to jobs,(7) increased investment in vocational training, (8) higher taxes on Wall Street transactions and higher taxes on the wealthiest segment of our country, (9) stricter enforcement of our trade pact provisions to protect the interests of American industry and American workers, (10) a slow path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, (11)-reforms in the Affordable Care Act to make it really more affordable for those above the poverty line-- all these were in the democratic platform of 2016. These seem to be ideas devoted to opening up opportunity for all Americans. One can still debate the soundness of these ideas, but unfortunately such a debate last year was never fully engaged by the public.
Bannon is only a small cog in the wheel being turned by the exceptional focus and funding from the Koch Brothers.... Read "Dark Money" if you want to see how this machine is working to destroy the administrative state... i.e. our government....
3
Marshall McLuhan, visionary that he was, wrote about how "the medium is the message." Let's take a look at Steve Bannon, the medium in this Op-Ed. Slovenly, obese, unshaven, cirrhotic in appearance, thrice-divorced and a nihilist-at-heart. This is not a man who cares about himself or his longevity. Exactly how did he become conflated with Machiavelli?
So, when I hear the message, and there's nothing new about populism/nationalism other than the ability to reach out to more malcontents, I have to take the message from whence it came - or the medium of Steve Bannon. Singularly unimpressive - but then, that's what they thought of Hitler in the early days too until Joseph Goebbels came along.
1
This is a very interesting analysis by Mr Douthat, as always. What I missed was a bit more of historical focus and less naivety. Parties are basically organisations looking for power, not principles. The dichotomy between left and right is a somewhat exaggerated concept dating back to the French Revolution and of little validity for today's political reality. It is only used to give the electorate the impression of black and white, as if there were a tremendous struggle of principles going on, while the real struggle is in fact the struggle for power.
Why, the Republicans were originally a liberal party, just look at their record in the 19th century, while the Democrates were extremely conservative. When the GOP shifted more and more to the right from the 1910s onwards, the Democrates, far from being happy about it, shifted to the left, both parties aiming always to keep the appearence of ideological differences to cover up the self-serving struggle for power behind it. This is simply the dynamics of power anywhere in the world. Greedy quarrels need noble pretexts. As I wrote in a recent letter to Jeremy Corbyn on Brexit and immigration, the danger of this "pragmatic" approach to politics is the disaster of populism and cynicism everywhere in the political spectrum, with a vacuum in-between: http://greg-ory.org/thecarolingian.html
Perhaps that's our fate.
1
In a country where there are no strong working class or Socialist parties, the workers will have no other alternative but Fascism.
2
Until the Republican Party commits, from the deepest part of its soul, to abhor and to end racism in its ranks, it will forever be a multi-headed monster, capable of survival only by devouring its own flesh.
3
Steve Bannon acts like the leader of a cult. If the Republicans haven't figured out that their party has been used like a host animal invaded by parasites, and don't take action now to repel Bannon, then it is not surprising if Bannon thinks that he can continue to target and replace his "enemies". He couldn't change the government from the West Wing through Trump, so he will do everything he can to undermine the government through the Congress with the Roy Moore types. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised that if he can buy enough politicans who embrace his ideas, that he will try to run for President himself at some point.
4
"Republican Leadership" is an oxymoron of the highest order.
16
Bannon's guy won the presidential election. Bannon's guy won the Senate contest in Alabama. Bannon's "guys" are going to win a lot more. That is because even though he could be one of the most unlikable figures in politics he is focused on just one thing. Winning. The closest the Democrats ever had to a Bannon type was James Carville. They desperately need a strategist like that again. Remember. It's about winning.
4
The Dems have made it clear that they don't care about working class Americans, which is why Bannon's "guys" have won recently - unlike Dems/NYT readers, they aren't snobs.
I never thought in the details of the acting from Mr. Bannon, but he really should became "a better place" as running wild. The gouvernment don´t wanted him any longer after he made several mistakes in public argumentation and making politics behind the back of an inner-political-circle. BRING HIM BACK!!!
... Mr. President.
Ross hits on one certain Republican Party truth here: The return to the race-baiting culture war. It's the one thing Chamber of Commerce and Country Club Republicans, religious fundamentalists (think Southern Baptist Convention here), Wall Street Tax Cutters and bailout artists can all agree on. Mainly, it can all be done behind doors, in a closed loop, and provide a lot of self-satisfaction for those who have a desperate need to relitigate the Civil War, while judging the sorry state of our central cities and our 100-year-old ghetto's (still filled with descendants of the great migration, stuck there after desperately escaping Jim Crow and the lynch mob).
On top of that, going to NFL, NBA and College Football games with business associates can provide a perfect plausible deniability to the shame of this thinly veiled racial animus. But should those vaudeville actors step out of line, then see how they respond......oh, we already have. Cue the anthem.
3
"but it never seems to cash out in anything except a return to empty, race-baiting culture war."
In other words, the standard GOP campaign since Nixon.
7
I remain unclear to to what Bannon "really" stands for. Google the question and you can get about half a million hits (depending on how one phrases the question). At least it is some comfort to know that Google is as confused as I am.
Here is another recent essay tackling the subject: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-steve-bannon-sc... ("What you may not know about Steve Bannon"). That essay mentions five myths: Myth No. 1: Bannon hates Muslims, Myth No. 2: Bannon is a nationalist, Myth No. 3: Bannon is Trump's Rasputin, Myth No. 4: "Seinfeld" made Bannon fabulously rich, and Myth No. 5: Bannon knows what he's doing.
Maybe others could add a few more. My point here is that I do not believe that Mr. Douthat has any singular insights to offer. This column could be seen as supporting the observations of Joshua Green's earlier essay (link above). Bannon analysis has become something of its own spectator sport.
2
'An effective, policy oriented conservative president, surrounded by people who understand the ways of power...' Sounds like Hillary to me.
The problem Republicans have at this point is that their fundamental political philosophy has proven intellectually bankrupt--from trickle down to Trumpism. There's no donut, only a hole.
3
Take a look at a recent close-up photograph of Steve Bannon. I wish I could get the money from recycling all of his Scotch whisky bottles, plus the glasses he breaks.
4
Of "the election of an effective, policy-oriented conservative president," Douthat frets that "I don’t pretend to know if such a presidency will ever happen." As well he should. The only way today's "conservatives" can win election -- any election -- is if they can continue to lie effectively enough to make the common man and woman believe he really, really cares about them, as opposed to the richest 1%.
Of course, with the success they've had these last fifty years, conservatives, and Douthat, shouldn't give up hope.
1
The whole concept of a republican party re-alignment, of a reckoning back to the revolution that conservatives seem so determined to be or have, is patently absurdist chimera hunting at best. First, the revolution was Reagan, then it was Gingrich and company, then no, it was Bush and the merry band of congressionals, and then, finally and most farcically, it was the teabillies and their self-righteous, bombastic ballyhoo. Does the GOP stand for or serve no purpose save for the aspiration to revolution ? All this clamor for revolt, mind you, has occurred even as conservatism has either ran things or held philosophical reign over them. Typically, all the things railed against have occurred under their rebellious hand - huge deficits, incredible overall national debt, ballooned govt. bureaucracy like homeland security, a divisive wedge politics, interventionist foreign policy. Remember when Somalia was a poor use of resources ? Let's face it, conservatism is a fine minority report or rhetorical caution, but it is no way to govern and its proponents are not suitable stewards of either public policy or resources. The only vision these guys ever had was vision quest, an endless, fruitless, scorched earth vision quest.
8
As the late, great Petyr Baelish might say, look not at what they say, but at what they do. The uber rich conservative donor class spearheaded by the Mercers and their ilk are not bankrolling Breitbart, Daily Caller, National Enquirer and all the rest because they want to help the middle class. They are promoting racism, misogyny, nationalism and culture war to keep the majority of American voters fragmented, so the rich can control the government, not only with their campaign spending, but with their propaganda media.
14
The truth is Bannon wants to run for president but he can't because his Resume (personal and professional) has some pretty unsavory chunks of stuff floating around in his rebellion stew. The fact is Bannon is a very angry guy and he uses his anger to manipulate narcissists like Trump and religious and social extremists such as Roy Moore. Bannon is too unsavory character to actually run for office so he sits behind a microphone and tells disillusioned and disgruntled people that their unhappiness and dissatisfaction are the fault of immigrants, liberals, people of color, educators, anythig new... Thereby creating enemies they can hate. And let's face it, hate is a much stronger initiative for getting out the vote than love, justice, so Steve an enraged man as was the Las Vegas shooter. Bannon hopes that once he destroys the government and convinces American voters of the need for cleansing of the stock then American voters will turn to him in desperation as the desperate and angry German people turned to Hotler in 1932, the worst year of the depression. Beware Americans!
7
Didn’t seem to stop Trump.
1
It is distressing and depressing that, with all the understanding we have gained over the past few hundred years about the natural and physical world, the majority of humans believe in supernatural myths that originated more than a thousand years ago. This irrationality is handed down generation to generation by indoctrinating young children who do not have the where with all to challenge these superstitions given to them by their parents and other authority figures. This is why we have so many in our country who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old and believe in the literal word of their holy book and many of them get elected to political office – Pence and Moore and others. Ask any republican in office if he believes in evolution and the answer will be no. These are the ones who helped get Trump elected and the ones Bannon appeals to. So irrationality and stupidity rules in this country where a buffoon with very high self-esteem and who is obviously clueless was elected and who continues to divide the country.
3
Oh please. The GOP and its hacks (you) have offered nothing but "shambolic anti-liberalism" decades. The GOP has been about nothing but race bating all along. Curated doublespeak becomes "policy" that is wrapped up in white rage and sold to the hate-filled base.
What policy ideas are there for a supposed new leader to work with? Lindsey Graham an expert on health care!?!! Even you - yes, even you - know that's a joke and illustrative of how the GOP has ZERO policy ideas to solve problems. The only policy ideas are to stoke racist culture wars, whip up the ignorant, and skim as much money off working people as possible.
You have been a intellectually and morally lazy shill in this charade for years. You were happy to play with and stoke authoritarianism as long as you thought you could make all the rules.
7
The only reason that last deplorable bill had Lindsay Graham’s name on it was a transparent ploy to win John McCain’s vote.
It was just as transparent and cynical as the dog and pony show from Pastor Pence at the Dolts’ game, which only actually served to insult Peyton Manning, perhaps the next Republican $enator from Tennessee. Which would be yet another whoops moment.
1
Is there anything more poignant than hearing a "principled" conservative lament that his (ideological) children have deserted the nest and now merrily look forward to committing patricide?
To quote Donald Trump Jr., "I love it!"
7
Bannon was probably at least mildly surprised that Trump won, and once in the White House, he quickly recognized Trump's extreme intellectual limitations and total lack of any kind of political or policy sense. He is now looking for a real candidate that will capture Trump's base but also have the brains and the skills to bring some real policy to fruition. If he finds someone, then we are really in trouble.
1
There is little doubt that Bannon recognized Trump as an intellectual cipher during the campaign, but wished to see what he could push through on his own. His presence on the National Security Council should have been the conductor’s call for “last call for the crazy train.”
1
Mr. Douthat, since the Republican party has captured the Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court and now controls 2/3 of all the state legislatures and governors, why is it that the latest poll shows 74% of the people think we are headed in the wrong direction? This is the question that the Republicans should focus on answering.
5
baldski- your observation is spot on. This dichotomy is a result of 25 years of propaganda for the right wing, spewed by the likes of Fox and talk radio, now fueled by social media, now enabled by foreign intrusion into our elections. the "deplorables" have bought into this propaganda hook line and sinker; or they are so driven by negative identity politics (anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti gun controls) that they knowingly vote against their own interests and stated desires for the country, for this singular issue (to them) of importance. The GOP has no interest to focus on answering this question-- they win anyhow. In fact, it's the question the democratic party should be exploring.
I THANK ROSS DOUTHAT For his excellent column today. He has redeemed himself in my opinion and forgiven for his overzealousness in castigating Harvey Weinstein, whom any person who accepts the facts of the matter, was one of the most egregious offenders, violating the rules of decency and civility, by using his power against those who were powerless to exploit sexual favors from them in exchange for jobs. I clearly agreed with Ross, but thought that he crossed the line when he went on to generalize about the problems among the Democrats. In my book, Bill's affair with Monica was an abuse of power and a stain on the office of President. But it was a personal matter, as adjudicated by a jury of his peers in the Senate. Bannon, on the other hand, is dangerous, because in his core, he has a vacuum. A void. That's why he and Trump got along so well. They both have severe antisocial personality disorders, meaning that they have severe impairments in their capacity for empathy and remorse. Trump has built his ruthlessness into an altar where he expects all to genuflect. But the gesture is empty because it is but a sham, a ruse, like the Wizard of Oz. A small scared man hiding behind a curtain who is empty. The GOP needs a leader. Desperately. The alternative is nihilism, which has set the GOP on the path toward self-annihilation. Nothingness begets nothingness. Death begets death. Void begets void. And evil begets evil. So ends the GOP in its current incarnation.
3
Of course, you have met both Trump and Bannon, so your pronouncements are based on knowledge, right?
It's easy to stop GOP's endemic circular firing squads, evangelical purity tests and comic posturing. All that's needed is for most of us to vote DEM in 2018 and 2020 to get this wretched show off our national stage. If you must, just hold your nose and vote DEM to get government at the Federal, State and Local levels back to a level of sanity that works for the greatest good of all citizens.
7
It is "blindingly obvious" that the GOP is a agent of Putin's Russian kleptocracy. Republicans are blinded by their selfish disloyalty, but decent Americans see Republicans' obvious treachery.
Why would any decent person want Republicans to achieve their plain goal of replacing what little remains of American democracy with an authoritarian police state ruled by an unholy alliance of corporate plutocrats, dynastic kleptocrats, and trashy white supremacists?
Decent Americans should shun Republicans, both socially and, to the extent practicable, in commerce. Republicans demand a dual society - let's give it to them.
6
"because the would-be senators he’s recruiting are a mix of cynics and fanatics who seem to share no coherent vision, just a common mix of ambition and resentment." I would say your statement defines the Republican party as a whole right now. None of them have a vision or give a darn about the American people unfortunately.
6
Do Democrats care about Americans who happen to be white and over 40?
1
Bottom line of this analysis: even Douthat finally admits that racism and the culture wars are the sole motivators for the core of today's Republican party. Finally, someone in the party owns up to the message that sells, maybe now they can start putting that genie back in the bottle.
9
Paul Krugman, also of the NYT, has distilled the GOP's problem: They created an web of lies about the Dems and their governance, and now that they're in power, they're unable to reconcile their lies with reality.
They sowed the wind, and now reap the whirlwind.
7
All this stuff is drivel. Regardless of labels and slogans, those who would lead must address real problems (bread, land and peace, as Bannon's role model, V.I. Lenin put it).
3
Then Lenin took their land, stopped their bread and sent their sons to war. Sounds a lot like Trump.
2
Romney redux? Perhaps any one of the retired, celebrity Generals? A Cotton-like flavor of the month? Even the second coming of the Savior could not rescue the GOP rusted jalopy, wildly careening down the highway, from its ill-fated smash up into the median barrier. Only the strewn wreckage will be left, to be sold as scrap. Lincoln weeps in his tomb. Sad, but predictable.
1
If there is a “Bannon vision”, then it’s a pretty derivative one; and it’s a vision lacking a targeted end-state every bit as obviously as the Tea Party’s. It’s actually Grover Norquist’s vision, and the objective isn’t governance but sufficient resistance to prevent governance. Heaven protect us from such a “revolution”.
The social ferment of the 1960s was influential in forcing us to adjust our worldviews along more open and progressive lines, but its real purpose was to tear down traditional models of governance and community. As an adolescent living in those times, I came to reject it intellectually because it too lacked a targeted end-state. Abby Hoffman, like Steve Bannon, wanted to tear down ALL the fence posts without defining what would take the place of folkways, values and guideposts that had taken centuries to painfully build – it didn’t matter what replaced what was there, so long as what was there was destroyed. Bannon has, like Hoffman and the Tea Party had, no real idea of the America he seeks, he just wants one different from the one we have. And he’d desperately like to take credit for summoning it, whatever it turns out to be.
Bannon and Hoffman were equally irresponsible. We have no business seeking revolution when we have no idea where it might lead us and what our nation will be or look like at the end of the process. If a Bannon pol can’t articulate that vision of a target-America, then only a fool would vote for him or her.
3
most people I knew as a teenager thought of EF Schumacher as the patron saint of the "revolution" - someone who called himself a socialist, but was really an advocate of subsidiarity (not, it is not in the least bit like right wing libertarianism), who understood the perennial philosophy and though himself a Christian, understood the profound ontological commonality of all great spiritual traditions.
By age 17, I understood that the silliness of Abby Hoffman (and the creepiness of Buckley and the far right crazies he was trying to stop) had nothing to do with the real revolution - a revolution in consciousness which has proceeded to a degree I never imagined possible 47 years ago.
In 1990, I met a sleep physiologist who, with his wife - a med student at Yale at the time - had studied Tibetan Buddhism since 1975. I said to him, "you know, if you described what's happening now [in 1990] and told me about this in 1970, I would have thought you were telling me about something in the 21st century." he turned to his wife, told her what I said, and she said, "yes, we were just saying that last night."
I never imagined leading scientists around the world - internationally renowned physicists, cognitive scientists and others - would be saying that Consciousness (NOT information) may be the foundation of the universe. This is a more far reaching change than anything Galileo or Copernicus came up with.
www.remember-to-breathe.org
1
The MAGA wing that Trump and Bannon revealed doesn't do articulation. They think with their blood. Articulation is part of the whole epistemology that they want to burn down, along with intellectual consistency, empiricism, and reason. All that those do is to permit the inherently unequal voters to presume equality; they permit arguments to be won on merit instead of power; and they let facts into places where people want to be free from fact. Their vision is to be released from all that so they can be Great Again.
3
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of Abbie Hoffman making his big time bow at the Chicago Convention then as one of the Chicago 8, later 7 defendants. Richie Rich writes as if we went right from Abbie and the Yippies to Bannon and the “blood and soil” mob. In truth, there was a whole lot of Nix9n, dirty tricks and Watergate included, the Gipper and the big lie of trickle down, not to mention Iran Contra and an embrace of priest murdering, nun raping death squads in Central America, and Dubbya, with more trickle down quickly exhausting a budget surplus and then engaging in two wars of choice, still going on almost two decades later, wars accompanied by tax cuts for the first time in American history, and never put on the budget.
Trump and Bannon are the illogical extension of what came before, fermented in racial hatred of the first black president and accompanying block obstruction of same.
Yeah, it’s Abbie Hoffman’s fault, Richie Rich. Keep telling yourself that.
2
A leader you ask for. How about an asking for acceptance of truth and facts and an ability to penalize the slanderous, snake oil, bait and switch con artists. There can be no credible leader without an the ability to separate fact from fiction. Not to sound melodramatic, but we may have reached a tipping point where democracy is lost as we have elected a leader with the ability to lie with disregard and those unwilling to search for the truth.
6
The Republican party is actually a cult and Trump is the current leader. Once you re-frame them as such, it all makes sense.
11
Sleezy opportunists always recognize and love a void. But it's really too bad that people can't just ignore miscreants like Steve Bannon. If he wasn't given speaking engagements and people like Charlie Rose just didn't interview him on TV, then he would just have to sulk away and rant to his Breitebart followers. Instead, because he has been given so much attention by the media, he has assumed the position of an influential person and inserted himself into the Washington political scene. The same could be said of his good buddy Donald Trump, who he helped to succeed and whose coattails he is hanging on to for all it's worth to him.
6
Trump is the middle ground.
Middle of the madness!
1
Of what?
Isn't an imperial President what Hamilton had in mind, an elected King. He wanted an American King George (Washington) to replace the English King George. And isn't Hamilton! all the rage among our ruling elite? It appears so from this.
The divisions in this country are not ideological. They are the interests of the ruling elite versus the interests of the rest of us. The ruling elite dreams of a king who will protect their interests from a democratic rabble. Bannon dreams of power. Those two things are not incompatible, but and of the current crop of politicians who is not going to stand aside for Bannon is going to be pushed overboard. He isn't interested in winning a few ideological debates, he wants power for its own sake.
As for "cranks and gadflys", doesn't that pretty much define Trump and most of his cabinet? The biggest mistake Republicans and Democrats alike have made is not taking them seriously. They really mean to do the things they say they will do. They aren't bluffing.
5
I find it quite alarming that one of America's leading intellectual conservatives (at least measured by his perch at the NYT) sees salvation in... a strong leader. (Yes, I know Douthat didn't add 'strong', but I think it's implicit in his statement).
If only we had a strong leader, the confused say, everything would be come clear, the scales would fall from our rivals' eyes, unity would flourish, and heretics could burn... Oh, wait, I wasn't supposed to add that last bit.
The yearning for strong leadership in confused and troubling times has led communities of all sizes and in all eras to the darkest, most dangerous places possible. A serious conservative, confronted with a President who told his party "I alone can fix it," who disregards process and tradition and transparency, would react and recoil with horror from the call for a 'strong leader'. Douthat doesn't get that far.
8
You write that if you were a Republican "with a vision for the GOP" you "would be looking for the thing that too many people deceived themselves into believing Trump might be, and that Bannonite populism for all its potential strength now lacks: a leader." Assume that you are that Republican. Why not grow a back bone and cultivate the virtues of prudence and honesty while you look for that leader? If you're prudent and honest you're less likely to confuse a loud-mouthed bigot with a leader.
2
The Bureaucracy will survive. That is what makes America possible.Politicians don't get that until after they take the Oath. Their constituents don't either.
1
Sounds like you've made the best case for John Kasich that I've ever read.
2
This column reminds me of some salient facts:
1) The modern Republican party is a lie to it's core. It uses the culture wars (abortion, religion, race, sexual identity, immigration, etc) to rile up a base against the evil other, but has no real policy agenda other than reducing taxes on the rich and reducing government, which is actually bad for its base.
2) The Republican base has a contradictory and impossible to achieve set of desires - reduce welfare, but provide them with Social Security, Medicare, job security, etc. Protect us from foreign competition but make sure we can buy stuff cheap. Make everyone else bow to our will, but don't get is involved in foreign wars. These desires are impossible to achieve, but rather than admit this, the GOP keeps promising it. Then, when it fails, rather than turn their backs on the party, the base just elects a new bunch of leaders to the party (who will also inevitably fail).
Wash rinse repeat. We're doomed.
7
"...the void at the heart of the contemporary Republican Party, the vacuum that somebody, somehow needs to fill."
That space is filled with greed and mindless hate-mongering. This is not casual innuendo, for Republicans gleefully declare their intentions. Trump liberated Republicans by ripping off their facade of public respectability, and with it all civility in public discourse.
The corporate overlords want to pay no taxes and use the national treasury as a private account. That much is clear. And the rural base is consumed with petty, vicious gossip about Hillary, the NBA, and other frivolities to distract them from their humdrum lives.
There is no vision in the Republican party to seriously address real issues, only bombastic declarations of patriotism and scathing hatred for anyone who does not white, straight, rural, and nearly illiterate.
What we are dealing with is a primitive mob being steered by cynical hucksters.
4
A review of German and Russian history seems to be providing the roadmap for the ever-growing demand for purges against any person who expresses the slightest lack of unremitting loyalty to the cause. Next, they'll be ordering brown shirts.
3
And there it is; as Ross Douthat notes:
"Our system isn’t really all that republican anymore; it’s imperial.."
Yes, it is. We straddle an Empire of our own creation, yet seem quite witless to this fact. We have a feckless class of elite "leaders" none of whom seem to express the concerns of the Republic. We are an Imperium. We are Rome just past its glory. And once again the wheel of history swings round.
We are one step away from someone declaring themselves Emperor. It won't be Trump. He's too old; and far too stupid. But by his actions, and the continuing acquiescence of all those who should know better, he sets the path of precedence in place for someone else to come along and do so.
We must wake up to the reality that the Republic is dead from the neck up right now folks. It's simply a question of time, so long as we proceed apace, before someone comes along and buries it. History tells us where we are going. So fell into ruin the glory that was Rome and so, too, shall we fall as long as we continue to walk this narcissistic self-involved American path.
So it goes.
John~
American Net'Zen
3
Bannon's Breitbart—which never offered real news stories—has transformed itself into an activist website, riling up people who actually believe the fake conspiracies it peddles.
Everybody needs to stop calling it "Breitbart News" and just "Breitbart."
3
The Republican Party has devolved into two factions, the empty suits who will pretend to believe anything, no matter how crazy, and the lunatics who actually believe it, no matter how crazy.
5
Bannon is not a populist; he's an anarchist. His goal is to burn the American house down and build a new one to his liking. And guess what? It probably doesn't include you if you are not white, Christian (his brand of it anyway), and wealthy.
The fact that he was a presidential advisor tells me it's already too late for us.
6
Question to Mr. Douthat: how do you address these issues to your fellow Republicans, particularly the know-nothing base or rural voters who dominate your party?
Surely 90% of readers of the NY Times can be categorized as 'progressive' or 'Democrat', but we are not the ones you need to persuade. How do you reach out to your fellow Republicans, because the overwhelming majority of them do not read the NY Times, or much of anything else, I suspect.
Give us your formula for dealing with your people. We on the left have run out of ideas short of dividing up the Union into separate countries.
6
Bannon and Trump's success is due to the loss of control and sense of alienation of a huge proportion of the population who blame it upon those that conservative politicians have demonized for decades. The conservatives were a minority who opposed the great government programs which redistributed wealth to assure that most people did not want for lack of wealth, but had long had to tolerate these programs because the majority of voters wanted them. It just reinforced their opposition to popular democracy and to measures which offset systematic inequities which undermined democracy. With Reagan they found a way to gain the support of the majority in undoing the programs which benefitted themselves by promising wildly speculative policies that would provide freedom and prosperity to all while giving the rich more control over wealth and politics. They even asserted that the only true source of prosperity and opportunity for all was only possible with the willing participation of the very wealthy, so their command of the national wealth and systems of government would enable all to be freer and far better off. It was only half a lie because the conservatives actually believed it, even those who actually founded and ran the businesses which actually create new wealth -- a product of failing to apply what is well known with respect to one situation to another situation. So Conservatives anti-democratic policies produced this movement which is proving to be so nihilistic.
1
"The ideological shake-up took the form of paper promises, not successful legislation."
that's because genuine populism is antithetical to everything american. bannon is a fake populist although he does seem modestly nationalistic using populist rhetoric to garner influence and power. nothing populist has ever been proposed by the trump administration; it's used to deceive voters into thinking things are being done for them but in reality benefit only wealth and privilege.
2
Republicans haven't had a leader since Newt Gingrich took over the House in 1994.
Newt Gingrich was the first in a long line of headless (brainless) horsemen who have run the GOP since the 1990s.
8
And extremely evil, and still is, even as an old, old man
1
The vacuum Donald Trump and Steve Bannon have filled in the GOP is a moral vacuum. For years Mr. Trump ran around the country raving that our first African American president was a secret African. Do you think they couldn't see the silent complicity of GOP "leaders?" Be honest, Republicans hoped that the Birtherite smear would redound to the benefit of the party, so they did nothing. Trump and Bannon laugh at weaklings like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who love to pose as virtuous rulers but are as morally cynical as themselves. Donald Trump's presidency is the culmination of Nixon's southern strategy, Reagan's "coded messages," and the ungovernable rage of most Republicans that Barack Obama was elected president.
10
Meanwhile, at least half the country wishes that Obama was still president.
2
No they don't.
Actually, they do. Obama had his flaws, as all presidents do. But nobody lived in fear of waking up to find out he started WWIII in a fit of pique!
1
Ross,
I believe this may be the first time you ever thought or wrote anything funny!
Congrats on that first paragraph. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were actually developing as sense of ironic distance.
Keep it up!
Stewart
3
Bannon is the worst of the worst. The expression"not right" applies to him, Trump, Pence, Ryan and a long list of GOP and blundering Democrats.
3
How about some leaders that actually respond to the actual prblems:
climactic breakdown, wage stagnation, medical errors, antibiotic resistance, gun deaths, opioid deaths, college debt, access to quality health care.
Is that too much to ask?
4
"Climatic breakdown" is a quasi-religious theme interfering with others in your list. And it is first in your list! Many progressives like you need to refocus.
1
Pundits, commentators, et. al. almost always give far too much credit to certain operatives (Rove, Cheney, Axelrod, et. al. and now Bannon) as being responsible for seismic shifts in the political or societal landscape. Hogwash - the effect and/or impact is generally temporal. Societies are far too dynamic and complex and policy issues constantly and vigorously contested and changes slow to materialise to ascribe to any particular person or persons. Who now speaks of Rove, once the so-called mighty architect assumed to be solely responsible for GOP victories; who now speaks of the Rove revolution? Who now speaks of Axelrod? Etc. . . .
1
Ross, you are confusing not passing legislation, with not getting anything done.
For decades the Republican Project has been to make government the enemy. Reagan said government was not the solution but the problem. Norquist, whose anti-tax pledge was signed by almost every Republican, wants to drown the government in the bathtub.
The point according to Republicans is to destroy government. The only thing they trust government with is arresting millions of brown and black people and waging war against little countries that can't defend themselves. But of course even these functions should be privatized and given over to global corporations, under fat, no bid, cost plus contracts.
The only policy prescription the Republicans have is tax cuts for the rich as the solution to every problem. They are only against deficits when they are not in power.
According to the United States Constitution, government is how democracy is supposed to get things done. We each lend our sovereign power to representatives who are supposed to "provide for the general welfare." Markets are not mentioned in the constitution except where it says they should be regulated and taxed. But Republicans (and "centrist" Democrats) want to provide for the particular welfare of their billionaire donors, and leave the rest of us for markets as democracy, even though we don't have enough dollars to influence the "vote."
Being against government, means being against the constitution and democracy.
6
The fundamental building block of the modern Republican party is the belief the way to increase the net worth of the nation (decrease the national debt) is to reduce national revenues. it's a move that appeals to a broad section of people that hate paying for the very infrastructure that keeps the country running, benefits the top 1% more than the average Joe that wants to pay less taxes and leaves the country without the funding needed to pay for everything except by borrowing. And they are confident that there are enough shortsighted people in the country that they will always be able to sneak this thru under the guise of "reform". To date, we have proved we are a nation of nincompoops. They probably will. The piper will be paid by all of us later. But when that time comes they will always have a foil, the hapless Democratic party.
2
Why would a party with a void at its heart need -- or, more importantly, deserve -- a leader?
3
The ongoing problem of the Republican Party is its addiction to "conservative" media. Over the last 20 years the Republicans have turned their policy making over to FOX and Limbaugh and their ilk. These outlets are very popular since they stoke anger and ignorance on the part of viewers. Bannon's "Alt-Right" is the same thing except further to the right. The trouble is that none of these shows or websites have to govern so they can say anything they want as long as the ratings keep coming in. The actual politicians will never be as entertaining as the hosts, so actual legislation and rational policy will never be a part of Republican politics so lang as the party maintains its addiction on entertainment outlets for policy creation.
5
Do you remember? When Trump was elected, Mr Bannon said: Deconstruction of the administrative state has begun. I beg you to consider: what if Bannon doesn't really want a working government? What if he just wants to cause trouble, the bigger the better? What if that's the true mandate he has in mind when he supports these outliers to run for Congress? What if that's the reason Trump's agenda seems to be so destructive? Maybe he's not so much doing it to tear down Obama's legacy, as to simply tear down the government. Maybe he listened very well to Bannon. Pretty soon there won't be a system to call republican or imperial. It won't matter. Please STOP calling it "Bannon populism that lacks a leader." Don't give it credibility where there is none. And I mean NONE. Nada. Nothing.
5
"...what if Bannon doesn't really want a working government? "
There isn't any "what if". It is his stated goal to destroy the functioning government. I'd say he's doing pretty well.
1
They want anarchy.
2
The problem with the Republican party and conservative 'movement' in general is that its ideology has always come from the top down,from those with money who can pay the think tank 'thinkers' and the lawyers to bring lawsuits against the ACA, rich employers like Hobby Lobby owner who is religiously offended by having to pay for certain types of birth control, etc. etc. etc. There are thousands of incidents like this in the last 40 years that have done nothing to help make life in America better for anyone. The bottom line is that conservatism is nothing but anti-left. Nothing. When the left stops trying to accomplish anything, the right will die, unless it can find a new target of its antipathy. When the left is out of power, as now, the right must find a new enemy. That's why racism is in resurgence. Americans against Americans. That's what Republicans stand for.
6
The core of the right's politics is the belief that democracy should be limited to the most capable citizens and not subject to the whims of the poor and those who seem to be unable to succeed without the help of society. Efforts to include all and to offset the effects of disparities of wealth and influence must diminish the wealth and power of the whole, in their view. Inequities can lead to freedoms being proportional to wealth and influence. So, liberals act upon the belief that for democracy to work all must have a say and all must have the actual ability to decide independently for liberty and justice to exist for all in any meaningful way. But the price of liberty in a large popular democracy is tolerance for other citizens who hold vastly different cultural convictions but who agree to live together based upon our legalistic system of government with specified limits upon the powers and role of government and upon leaders, like an independent judiciary and a separation of powers. It means that people are obliged to accept others with whose way of living the strongly disapprove. It means accepting changes which make the way that they live suddenly very difficult. It means giving up traditional attitudes that deprive others of their rights. It gives people who have become convinced that life has no meaning nor have any human systems any particular benefits worth keeping, a way to experience power by exploiting a large number of discontented people.
1
Bannon has accomplished amazing deeds. He led the campaign victory for an absolutely unqualified dangerous ego maniac as president. The opposition and the liberal media launched into a wholly dishonest destructive attack on Russia blaming them for Trump's election. Bannon must be amazed at how much he has unhinged the status quo in Washington.
1
CH: how is the air over there in Candler? We were thinking of moving there, but heard that the fumes were causing people trouble. Are you alright?
1
I for one think this is a good thing. If the economics profession can effectively take into account more aspects of human behavior, they can give better input to those in a position to effect policy.
We seem to be at a Weimar (the real Teutonic) moment with Steve Bannon seeking to finish the demolition of the Republican Party that began when they allowed the Tea Party to pose as Republicans and then Donald Trump to decapitate the professional Republican political class with a white nationalist, America First neo-Nazi agenda. For Bannon Congress is the Reichstag he wants to burn down and install white racists like Roy Moore. The problem he's facing is that his Fuhrer is not only an overtly mentally unstable autocrat, but one who also continues to enrich himself and his cabinet of oligarchs in a Putin-style kleptocracy thereby furthering the economic, political, and social instability that brought him to power. This is not the man who will "build the autobahn and make the railroads run on time" (aka the new infrastructure), but one who will impoverish the nation and plunge it into, rather than out of, another Great Recession with his traditional Republican obsession with "massive" tax cuts. That is, if he doesn't suffocate us all with his denial and rollback of climate change policies or incinerate us into radioactive nuclear ash, first
8
If there really are a large number of people on the right interested in a "Bannon vision" that involves "infrastructure projects and antitrust actions and maybe even tax hikes on the rich," the American answer would seem to be simple: acknowledge the political legitimacy of the Democrats and negotiate with them.
(I'd hope infrastructure, antitrust, and taxes would be considered ever so carefully and that the negotiations would involve business people and wealthy people who are not intransigent.)
But instead of opposing identity politics on the left with a politics that emphasizes our common humanity and the dignity of all (the phrase "all lives matter", in context, is not an example of such a politics), it seems that populist ideas on the right are joined in practice with white identity politics and anti-liberalism.
So I wonder if what your column has actually done is etch a vivid picture of divide and conquer.
I don't see a good way out that doesn't include many in the R donor class beholding their creation with horror, and being willing to help shape policy on infrastructure, antitrust, and taxes while acknowledging the legitimacy of populist and Democratic viewpoints on these issues.
2
I think it's important to note that Bannon controls a website that's undoubtedly seen a massive increase in traffic since last year. Websites that get a lot clicks can collect huge advertising revenue. Like Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh before him, Bannon may care more about increasing his audience than he cares about shaping policy. He might just be the latest media figure to reap huge profits from conservatives' hunger for caustic rants about a pre-determined cast of political heroes and villains. If I'm right, then this roadshow he's on stumping for a slate of zany candidates is simply a publicity tour.
6
As an independent, I can tell you what the Republicans are against, but not what they stand for. Increasingly it seems as if Republicans are against truth, justice, and the American Way. Their complete unwillingness to compromise, which is the basis of our entire political system, identifies them as dangerous radicals to be resisted. THIS is the end of the road on which Goldwater and Reagan set the Republican Party. It is not very pretty is it?
12
Please, let's have no more press coverage of Steve Bannon. I don't care what he's doing, I don't want to hear about him. His actions are self-indulgent and, given their destructiveness, it's apparent he's doing what he does only for the press coverage. Much like Trump. They're willing to set the world on fire, so long as it gives them good ratings. Stop, please. No more press for Steve Bannon. None.
8
I don't understand Bannon's supposed leverage. How is he any different than any other private citizen? His name has never appeared on a ballot, he's never ran for or held public office, no one voted for him. Any Republican incumbent facing a Bannon backed opponent needs to tell the voters you voted for me to represent you. I don't answer to Steve Bannon and would question the judgment, priorities and loyalty of a candidate who accepts backing from Bannon.
4
If this were a reasonable country, your portrait of a party lost in the mad house might make sense. But you fail to account for the gullibility and apparently limitless appetite for resentment-stoking among voters.
In a reasonable country, none of this would be happening. Instead, the mad house party is in charge of most levels of government. It's not Bannon's fault. It's the people's.
2
An excellent summation of the sorry state. Bannon is a faux populist in sheep's clothing, his pockets stuffed with Mercer cash. He's proven himself completely incapable of actually governing or encouraging legislation. Each of his candidates promise to burn the house down. But what comes next? Bannon's promised utopia is always just over the rainbow and one incumbent away from being realized. We've seen and are living Bannon's vision and it only grows more fractured and divided with each Roy Moore.
3
Ross, I ask this question without irony: What does it mean to be a conservative in 2017? As a young man, "conservatism" was often a magnet for a variety of positions not always related or consistent. On the other hand, "conservatism" for the most part embraced certain fundamental values and positions: small government and regulation, a strong global military presence, and most of all individual responsibility. This was the preferred "face" of conservatism despite a persistent "fringe" of views on its periphery. Now, that core of values and positions have disappeared. Now, young self-styled "conservatives" identify with professional flame throwers like Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Ingraham and Steve Bannon. Their values and positions can be summed up as bigotry, xenophobia, and zero-sum ideological polarization. Ross, in light of present realities, can you still call yourself a "conservative?"
2
The last leader to show up here was --shudder/gasp--black, and of course quickly and thoroughly and firmly, and loudly and at great spittle-flecked length, rejected.
Yeah, see Ross, the GOP, name notwithstanding, is a nothing but an unruly crowd of grumpy, racist cranks.
It is a shame, but in a democracy you get what you deserve.
10
Talk radio, tv pundits and "friends" are always stirring. One pound of brown hate, 2 cups of liberal bashing, one egg at the lesbians and gays, and one egg at the bisexuals, queers, and transgenders. Stir.
To make "something other than a shambolic repository for anti-liberalism", Mr Douthat gives us the original Republican list of leadership ingrediants and none are found on the Trump aisle.
As for Bannon's recipe, Mr Douthat is consigned to "it never seems to cash out in anything except a return to empty, race-baiting culture war."
I say "Look at what is being dumped into the masses every second of every day. It's impossible to stir all of that rabid cynicism into a good mix, so the GOP is left with an ugly batter that it doesn't want."
3
The most frighteningly accurate observation in this piece is that the presidency is now imperial rather than republican. Ben Franklin announced after the Constitutional convention that we have a republic, "...if you can keep it." He was wise to phrase it in the conditional.
1
The four republican healthcare plans and this current tax reform plan are both fraudulent aggressions against the majority of Americans
All will enrich the wealth at the expense of the poor, elderly, disabled and middle class
The republicans are devoted to their donors. There is nothing populist about them except for their lies.
4
I can't but think of an article I read recently in Wired about a wasp of the genus Glyptapanteles. It lays its eggs in caterpillars and the larvae hatch and feed on the insides of their prey. They mind control the caterpillar and then hatch from its body to pupate. Amazingly some of the larvae stay behind to continue the mind control so the caterpillar is forced to defend the pupating wasps. Once the wasps hatch, the caterpillar dies of starvation. I could not think of a better analogy for Bannon and his ilk. Feeding and mind controlling our system until it dies of starvation. My question is, what then?
5
"Our system isn't really all that republican anymore...". You got that right.
The people's desires are not really represented (more health care, gun regulation) because the wealthy run the show.
Their greed is insatiable. It should be called out for what it is. Their greed enabled a disordered personality to become President!
Bannon fits right in with the leaders on the right...joining the middle school schoolyard.
So what the Republicans lack is a leader who can effectively implement the GOP agenda? And what is that agenda? Crackpot economic assumptions that have led to historic levels of income inequality and decimated the middle class. Thinly veiled racism that has been the foundation of every GOP presidential campaign for 50 years. Pouring money down the bottomless pit of the Pentagon rather than rebuilding a crumbling infrastructure. A refusal to accept science to save the planet for our children. The only thing saving the country right now is Trump's incompetence. God help us if Bannon finds a real leader.
6
Are we in a handbasket, or are we just going to hell one-by-one? Representative democracies can only be governed – can only survive and progress via movement from the center, and yet, America’s center is no more. Right and left, Republican and Democrat, no one can find the key to pollical dominance precisely because we have ceased to be a cohesive people – a true nation possessed of widely accepted norms of history, identity, purpose and direction. Our political calculus consists solely of constructing platforms based on polling data to arrive at winning recipes of trigger-words able to reliably capture predictable voting blocs.
History is not over. America’s future may not resemble its past. Sort yourself into groups depending upon you welcome that prospect or dread it.
You reap what you sow. And the tea party sowed hate and got white supremacists. Thanks.
9
Dems just need one smart, young, articulate guy to stand up to Trump and Bannon's bluster and offer a calm, rational message to our now terrified nation. We need someone who will inspire voters to go to the polls in 2018 and reverse the downward spiral in which this country is heading. Schumer and Pelosi can fight for platform issues behind the scenes but these two lack the charisma to be the face of an aspiring Democratic party.
5
Sorry you won't even imagine that it be a "gal."
Bannon represents the essence of anarchy. There is no agenda setting goals for government once his adherents have taken power, because the goal is not to have any government at all. Disruption for its own sake is anarchy. Asking Bannon about his agenda is to ask him about something utterly irrelevant to his plans. He doesn't need one!
2
The funny thing to me is, that .."His professed nationalism," makes him seem as if Bannon doesn't love this country at all. His professed patriotism (appears to me) is to undo the very values most of us hold so dear. I honestly believe Bannon's audience is small. But he has had more influence than he should over current events, so the fear I have is that he will succeed.I think he probably has the a workable idea, electing .."a few cranks and gadflies"..
The best idea to counter Bannon, I believe, is to run a lot of moderate democrats. I think most Americans don't like extremes. I think democrats could win pretty big with that plan. And it would shut down Bannon, and Trump, for this generation.
It's a pretty simple fix; Open Primaries. Neither party has increased broad support by closed primaries; they have only reinforced polarization. "Moderate Republican" was not always an oxymoron. Neither was "Conservative Democrat" and while the Democrats have not spiraled down an isolated rabbit hole as yet, they still have that opportunity.
Open primaries would invite the large centrist population back into process earlier, providing a counter balance that is missing today. Closed primaries are destructive process to governance that is based on a document modeled on compromise.
2
Open primaries are what gave us Trump:At this writing, in open primary and caucus states, Cruz won Texas and nearby Oklahoma, favorite son John Kasich won Ohio, and Marco Rubio picked off the Minnesota caucus. Trump swept Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri (pending recount), New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia.
The closed primary and caucus states tell a wholly different story. Trump won Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Kentucky. In contrast, Cruz won Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Utah, and Wyoming, while Rubio won Washington, D.C.
In short, Trump won 14 of 18 open contests, and in three of the four others, he lost to favorite sons. Trump won just five of 12 closed contests, those in which only Republicans can vote. ( http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160329_Commentary__In_closed_prim... )
@mcsandberg
My understanding of open primaries are one primary for all candidates of both parties.
Voters can then vote for any candidate of any party.
The result is that the two highest vote getters are in the final election.
This can be two candidates of the same party. So you could get a moderate Republican against a more extreme Republican.
This is what they now have in California.
There is no large centrist population. Centrists are the status quo. When are people like you going to admit that the status quo isn't working for most people?
Hey Ross ! Bannon is not a Political Philosopher ! He is , as George Clooney remarked, a B movie screenwriter ! He's also not a street fighter...... he's a bully !
8
The essential problem of today's GOP seems to be that its core impetus, among its supporters, is emotional rather than rational -- voters' misplaced outrage and indignation are easily and reliably channeled into monetary gains for the country's richest.
Unfortunately the rest of us will have to share in the consequences of this stupidity and greed, whether it be nuclear war, environmental disaster, mass shootings, or the continuing disintegration of our "health care" system. In fact the residents of blue states will likely bear the harshest consequences.
3
Clever to bring in the idea of eternal recurrence .... but it's the world -weary , almost adolescent nihilism that Bannon brings to the political table. Horribly dangerous and destructive in the geopolitical realm. The man is a menace. Nietzsche himself said: "Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions."
We need a moderate voice at the helm ....and we can still hope , to quote a more optimistic Nietzsche that "that which does not kill us makes us stronger". Bannon's no revolution. Revulsion more like it.
4
Okay, so let's say Bannon fully realizes his vision. A full 80% of government agencies are torn down, throwing millions of people out of work. Deregulation allows industry to operate unchecked, with all of the irreversible environmental damage, loss of public land, corruption, and exploitation of the working class that it entails.
The mega-rich double or even triple their wealth, while the middle-class disappears. The majority of the population is reduced to czarist-era serfdom to be ground up as animal feed, or to grease the gears of industry, as needed.
How does an American oligarchy keep this country on top of the world stage? Innovation would be dead. New businesses would get squashed. The oligarchs would use an army of lawyers to destroy anyone who would challenge them with new technology or better products.
Or...we work together to improve the system that has worked for the last 140 years. Of course the government can be more efficient. Of course obsolete or heavy-handed regulation can be paired back. But Mr. Bannon must have forgotten 3rd grade civics. The "government" is really the people. It doesn't make regulation or law on its own. People get tired of Enron losing all of their retirement savings, or Exxon spilling oil all over their coastline, and new regulations emerge to protect people. Fix what's broken, don't destroy it.
The guy seems incapable of building anything. All he does is destroy.
3
We don't need Bannon to "inspire a vision of the Republican Party as a wheel turning endlessly in darkness..."
McConnell and Ryan nailed that one down long ago.
And Bannon holds just as much contempt for the working class as those two - he's just less honest about it.
4
The Bannon "revolution" (really too much credit to Bannon and his people here), are very out-of-touch with what The World Leadership is planning for the Future. For the entire World, not just Country Level. New Products are going to hit the Market, and Bannon's product brand will look like an old dried-up leather sandal at the Smithsonian. Note: We are all born World Citizens, First.
1
Bannon is at his core a nihilist. Nihilists don't earn points by building things; quite the opposite. Bannon is the titular PT Barnum of a neo-Conservative movement devoid of ideas, policies, discipline and strategy. How long can you milk the cow of turning back Keynes and Roosevelt before people turn away? Bannon will surround himself with dervishes who for all their ranting won't pose a threat to his leadership. Because it's all about Steve being on top. Can't build a dynamic movement by dumbing it down to the Bannon denominator. There just isn't enough substance there.
Lets see, so far the Mercer money has pushed Ted Cruz, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump. Mr. Moore from Alabama, Mr. Grimm of NYC and Kellyanne Conway into the upper echelons of American government.
And now we are advised that the Mercers will be adding to this list across the country. Now that is a very scary idea.
Why don't the Koch Brothers and the Mercers line up all their bought candidates on a stage so the American public can get a look at "our" choices. We could "vote" like at the Miss USA pagents with the Donald groping in the wings.
The Republican party and conservatives and far alt-righters have all sold their souls to the billionaires. The elite swamp is fighting amongst itself.
And policy? The same for all: Look over there at "them" they are the problem and let us get on with making more money. Some add little flourishes such as Christian Sharia Law or war with Islam but they are all one and the same.
The 1% using whatever they need to to maintain their wealth, money and power.
4
I'm a conservative, a registered Republican and someone who voted for Obama twice. I voted for Hillary in 2016 because a couldn't fathom a buffoon like Trump actually serving as president. Boy was I wrong.
I've read all the articles and reader comments about how awful the GOP and its voters are and I don't disagree that there is a terrible infection in the party that has pushed it in the direction of the Know Nothing's of the 19th century. Trump didn't cause this but he tapped into the strain and has made it worse. Compounding that is the stance the party took in 2009 where it basically decided to not participate in governing while Obama was president. That decision, thank you Senator McConnell, opened the Pandora's box of fringe rightist that are an embarrassment to all of us who want a functioning government that can find a path between conservative and progressive demands. It also opened the door to a strain of political hatred of Mr. Obama that I just cant understand. Not just political opposition but base insults, slander and an unfathomable desire to not only reverse policy but obliterate any sense that he was an honorable, thoughtful man who just happened to have a different point of view than that of his political opponents.
This enmity, to which both sides have now adopted, will come back to haunt us.
5
I agree with you that some on the right have a lot of venom towards Obama, Hillary, Pelosi.
I don't see that kind of venom from liberals.
I think Trump will be one of our worst presidents ever. But I don't have venom. I do want him prevented from doing things to the country that will hurt our children and grandchildren.
You would think the McConnell and Ryan would think the same.
No, Ross. That first paragraph is not "too much." In terms of truth-telling insight, it equals, in Bannon-terms, a piece on Trump by the New Yorker magazine's editor. Each piece engenders a profound sense of unease. Remnick said this: "This is the inescapable fact: on November 9th, the United States elected a dishonest, inept, unbalanced, and immoral human being as its President and Commander-in-Chief. Trump has daily proven unyielding to appeals of decency unity, moderation, or fact. He is willing to imperil the civil peace and the social fabric of his country simply to satisfy his narcissism and to excite the worst inclinations of his core followers."
4
After 40 years of bogus wars and bogus tax cuts and bogus presidents, the professed shock of the 'regular' Republicans at the disastrous 45th POTUS is guffaw-inducing.
They made their own bed and now they should definitely lie in it.
Because they're obviously good for little else, that's why.
Speaking of race baiting, perhaps I've been too busy just being disgusted with Trump's, and not very thoughtful about the "why." Perhaps the "why" should not matter, but in this case maybe it does.
Trump seems to spend his whole existence enriching himself and his family while lashing out at former slights, real or percieved. He wants to undo Obama's legacy mostly because of the White House Correspondents' dinner where Obama made fun of him.
Trump probably has always been a racist, but those lawsuits related to his practice of housing discrimination are probably a key driver of his assigning false equivalence for rasist protesters and counter protesters. Trump has long felt slighted by those pursuing racial justice and so those who oppose racial justice are to Trump "on his side." Maybe I'm wrong, I am no psychologist, but Trump's derangements are generally transparently on display. It seems consistent with what I observe about the man.
We live in scary times.
2
I think the Republicans should retire from politics. They have proven over and over that they do not know how to govern. It is what happens when politicians become myopic
Are you looking for a leader for your party, Mr. Douthat, or a leader of our nation, with a vision that includes us all? That's what's missing in all factions of the Republican Party, and it's missing by design. Why be inclusive when you can gerrymander your way to a majority, and elect a President who has lost the popular vote?
3
Once again we find Republicans trying to see order where only chaos exists. Trying to detect a coherent "vision" in Bannon's nihilism is like the pre-inauguration efforts to distill a philosophy of "Trumpism" from Don's disconnected dislikes and biases. There is no long-term vision of reconstructing governance behind Bannon's promulgation of candidates like Moore. Bannon rejects the premise of governance, and people like Moore are too regressive to think beyond their primitive hates. Bannon isn't a populist, he doesn't care any more for the coal miners of KY than Trump does; his only purpose is a twisted libertarian goal of negation driven by his resentments.
2
It isn't a lack of a leader so much as that "vision thing" that Bush The Elder articulated, in redux.
Conservatives have a never-ending shopping list of things they hate, but no coherent, realistic, or even remotely understandable vision of what America should look like.
For the want of a vision, they are doomed to wander the land, winning, but never succeeding, preying on each other, and dooming the country to a slow disintegration of neglect and lack of governance.
2
You forget, Mr. Douthat, the inconvenient truth that Trump was rejected by the majority of American voters.
We didn't want him, but had him forced upon us by electoral sleight of hand, by lies and by active collusion with foreign agents. Not that Hillary Clinton was a popular candidate who inspired much positive passion, but at least she was competent and, above all, Not Him.
We rejected the race baiting, the misogyny, the vulgarity, the lack of coherent policies, the ethical morass, the overt unfitness for the presidency. But he was forced down our throats.
Now the GOP is trying desperately to continue to override Americans' wishes through executive actions and policies that will defile the environment, support racism, destroy education, condemn the sick, the elderly and the poor to disease, suffering, bankruptcy and premature death, give the richest of the rich more and more while continuing to drain away the middle class, and provoke international nuclear war. These policies are utterly antithetical to most Americans, but your Republicans, having imposed Trump on an unwilling nation, are resorting to force, stealth and trickery to further subvert the will of the people.
There is no interest in compromise, in hearing competing voices. Bannon's fascist tactics are too easy, and the potential powers too tempting, for the GOP to eschew. And without respect and incorporation of a variety of ideas, the GOP will move farther out the extremist limb.
2
The two things the country desperately needs are wealth redistribution and regulation of digital oligopolies. That means taxes on the wealthy and government controls of corporations like Google and Facebook. No way any kind of Republican can ever do that. Trump said he would and got himself elected, but look what he's proposing now. The Republicans might as well tear each other apart because the basic principles they stand for-- weak government and low taxes for the rich- are exactly the opposite of what this country wants and needs, But the establishment politicians and the press won't admit it so extremists like Bannon and Trump the candidate fill the vacuum
3
Bannon is now backing "white-identity politics and the fear of liberalism" rather than nationalism because he wants to win, period. His data analytics indicate that racism and reactionism will sell to the non-suppressed white voters in the districts that are needed to win the Electoral College and the House. Who cares if that produces a crop of cranks and crooks as Congressmen? The aim is not ideological coherence; the aim is to destroy the established GOP power structure in its rearward bases.
Bannon seems to be attempting a move to become the King of the United States by hijacking the GOP grip on Congressional seats and statehouses. Since GOP control is protected by gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, it really doesn't matter what the message is. If hating brown people, the "educated Liberal elite", and foreign nations drives sufficient voters to the polls, that's the message. Bannon has revealed himself as a self-described genius who believes that the United States must militarily engage in the Ultimate Cage Match between Christianity and Islam. He sees himself as a historical figure for the ages, a prophet who can save "White Christian Civilization" using the most deadly arsenal ever assembled.
This isn't about the demise of a US political party. It is about the incineration of most of the globe.
2
There are thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of men and women who could lead both your Republican and Democratic parties into the future but real leaders fail the the neoliberal test of what is today's Dow.
The problem is that eggs have to be cracked to make an omelet and there is the 37 years of the Reagan catastrophe that have to be taken care of and it is not the leader that is needed so much as an electorate that needs educating.
I am constantly being amazed by the genius that is out there and the gargantuan ability of American society to suppress the men and women with the 21st century plans to build a 21st century society.
Looking for someone with a magic wand is folly. Today's chaos is the result of Reagan and his all too defective magic wand. Jimmy Carter told you to roll up your sleeves and get to work and America chose Reagan and wishes can come true.
Paying high taxes to build the infrastructure and educate the masses is not a message Republicans want to hear except in a small corner room isolated from the crowd who they have fed the lies for half a century.
5
Steve Bannon is indicative of the entire philosophy at the root of the Tea Party "revolution". They start from the premise that the cabability to behave like a reasonably adult -- that is the capacity to actually govern in a responsible manner -- is in and of itself a disqualification for holding public office.
Trump is the perfect example. The man was (and remains) clearly unfit to hold any public office whatsoever. Which in the Bannonesque/Tea Party alternate reality, makes him their perfect candidate.
It's striking that after summarizing a series of uninspiring Republican agendas and styles, the best you can offer hopes for is a leader. No indication of what key objectives might be worth leading the country toward, no particular policy preferences, just someone who be a leader and a Republican. And within bounds of reason, which might stop just short of Trump, that's all that is required for your support. There is not a possibility that all the uninspiring Republican agendas you summarized could lead you to wonder perhaps the problem is that the Republican party is simply on the wrong side of most every issue, domestic or foreign, ranging from health care to the environment to taxes to Iran, on none of which is Trump substantially different from mainstream Republicans. You will support a "leader" who espouses the same policies in a manner that is simply more polite than Trump.
1
With Trump as its head the Republican Party is teetering on the brink of disaster. If the party can't produce more courageous men like Bob Corker then it is doomed. The fall of Trump will carry all its standard bearers with it and the Grand Old Party will exist only in memory.
The Tea Party didn't bring Bannon's economic nationalism, which shares some very real similarities to the ideologies of some rust belt liberal Democrats like Sherrod Brown and Dennis Kucinich. This economic nationalism was practiced in Teddy Roosevelt's days, where import duties accounted for most of the national revenues and personal taxation was sporadic and limited.
So, to compare Bannon's ideology with the early days of the Tea Party is not really true. Instead, Bannon gave this hobbled movement a real economic ideology, economic nationalism, and that obviously transformed the entire movement.
This isn't Trump's movement either. This is Steve Bannon's and Alabama proved that to all onlookers. If this movement can sustain itself without a so-called "political leader", it frankly will make it stronger.
Trump took politics away from the politicians. Bannon kept it that way. It's an interesting twist in the tale.
You've written a fine essay that gets to the heart of the matter, Ross. It's a revealing treatise. You have several key passages.
This one,
"Alas when it comes to governance, Trumpism turns to have two fatal weaknesses: the dearth of Trumpists among elected Republicans, and the total policy incapacity of Trump himself."
describes the difficulty to mount revolutionary activity in a political system that is based on dialog. And, as you state, this underpinning has degraded, which is an entry for Bannonites.
One thing that I'll bring up is the elephant in the room, the Right Wing media machine. Spinning Bannonititc tales gives them a lucrative market; not enough to control political dialog, but, indeed, enough to *destroy* it through Trump and Bannon. It's enough to make money for them.
If Right Wing media is going to continue to stir the political pot without putting any good ingredients into it, we're in for a long period of political upheaval. Any fool can alter the mix for his own gain.
You are absolutely correct, there has to be a centralizing figure at the top. We could evoke Reagan's name, but the Right Wing political looniness was only beginning when he was president. Today, those loonies disparage Reagan, even as they feign admiration for him.
The GOP is too broken. Right Wing media has goaded the eccentrics into a false confidence. Republican politics is reality TV. In order to fix it, it seems as if this generation is just going to have to die off.
"It was just seven years ago that Republican incumbents were facing populist challengers who promised ideological revolution, just a little while ago that the establishment was losing primaries"
Well, the Republican establishment is still there, Ryan and McConnell, and they are still in the process of being driven out.
The Republican Party is self-destructing. It is wonderful to see. Trump has advanced that process, and so does Bannon. That is near their only virtue, but it is a real virtue.
4
I don't think its about governing. Its the book sales, speakers fees and self-serving billionaire donors. Governing is like work.
3
I see the comment bots have been reprogrammed - they now squawk "Mercer" instead of "Koch". Such progress.
2
That ole Paradigm Shift that everyone used to ballyhoo? Yep. Thats what is actually happening now.
Whether you are a pawn of the DNC or a pawn of the RNC......you are really confused, angry, upset right now.
Everything you know....is wrong.
the labels that were once very precise...liberal. conservative. dem. repub. fascist .racist. black. white. on and on.......
They no longer have any true value or meaning. Every man/woman/whatever for him/her/its? self.
Our entire body politic and its media supporters are devoted to preserving the past. NOT one single individual is looking towards the future. Not One. We are enduring the leadership(or lack thereof) of the aging, atrophying, myopic hippie generation.
Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump.....all were looking backwards into the past. Meanwhile the younger politicians John Kasich, Lizzie Warren, Gary Johnson were all mocked and goaded into obscurity.
The Senate...currently the object of Press Corps Worship...was created to deliberately STALL progress....not encourage progress....anybody expecting the Senate to be the solution .... is only kidding themselves. The Senate, whether ruled by Harry Reid or by Mitch McConnell IS the problem.
Worse...the body designed as the voice of the people...the House...has shamefully SHIRKED its responsibilities. Paul Ryan is a very weak leader, set up for his role by who?.....the Senate, thats who........Ryan's reach exceeds his grasp.
1
Bannon represents the lie at the center of Trumpism that substitutes expedience and power above sound policy and national interests.
Objective truth, facts, science and reality are obliterated to make way for cheap slogans, distractions and propaganda.
Even treason is not off the table.
Bannon Trump will lie to any voter, violate any election law, engineer any crisis in a naked grab for power and money and self-enrichment.
Even Trump’s earliest Republican supporters are finding no loyalty returned. They were useful only to carry his water for a point in time.
Those Republicans who think Trump can be controlled to further party interests are idiots. He will turn on everyone and everything in due time.
This will forever follow Trump’s enablers and the Republican party for generations to come.
9
So is failing to prioritize GOP party interests over the interests of ordinary non elite Americans a bad thing?
I used to protect myself with the belief that "nationalist-populist" ideas were effectively, even artfully, influencing white middle class voters. They couldn't see through the patriotic cloud to notice the betrayal of their economic best interests. I hear old white guys like me talk about affirmative action that kept their darlings from the best state college. They move their kids to schools with fewer Asians so their grades will look better. They refuse to pay the taxes necessary to support the colleges (and thus limit the number of full-fee Chinese kids we import to pay the college's bills). As I have become old, ancient to some, I can see that the permanent fix favoring whites over blacks is becoming more transparent. There was no cloud; now we have the leader that fully represents the murdering racist hearts of white America. Getting rid of Bannon won't clothe the emperor. Every NFL knee on the ground is a beam of pure light in the monster's eyes.
12
Please explain why ageism is morally superior to racism.
Odd that one can look at Bannon's mouthpiece, Breitbart.com, for ages (please, don't do this) and find not a word on infrastructure spending or anti-trust. New GOP seems a lot like the old GOP: Come for the contempt and paranoia, please stay for some other warmed over garbage.
4
I was very disturbed by your conclusion that Bannon should be searching for "a leader" for his "economic nationalist" program. Have you studied how facism developed in Italy in the 1930s? Mussolini originally was a socialist. Transforming himself into "Il Duce" enabled him to win allegiance from people attracted by his economic program as he ended democracy. It could happen here. My big fear is that Bannon will accomplish exactly what you are proposing -- finding a charismatic, capable leader who will ride a progressive economic program for "real Americans" into power and then undermine the independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press so as to weaken democracy and attack people who are not "real Americans." If I were you, I'd use Trump's proclivity to toss hot potatoes to Congress to strengthen the legislative branch of government.
90
Why is the continued betrayal of working class Americans fine with you?
2
Good piece. I would also suggest they (functional Republicans):
a. get a spine;
b. Get ride o Trump...the most dangerous and destructive man on the planet;
b. abandon the race based "scorched earth" anti-Obama EAs;
c. admit that supply-side "trickle-down" is a lie and does not work;
d. acknowledge science;
e. abandon polarizing ideology for the greater good.
f. focus on "governance" and outcomes: infrastructure, education, healthcare, taxes, immigration reform;
g. focus on the future...we are being left in the dust and the dust is moving at an exponential rate whilst we tread water or fall back.
This is not too hard: see item (a).
5
This is the Democratic agenda.
2
If I was Kim Jong-un right now, I’d be saying to myself why should I bother to nuke anybody when the U.S. is busy destroying itself politically and morally; and all I have to do is stick around for a few more months until it finishes the job; and then take over anything my little heart desires.
6
I think it is a stretch to suggest Bannon has any vision at all. He is the embodiment of the angry white male, railing against the system. Bannon is not dumb, but possibly delusional. I think sometimes we simply attempt to over-analyze things, without using our gut to inform us of the obvious. Bannon is by his demonstrated behaviors and anarchist. He wants disruption in the Republican Party and then by extension, our government. Nothing Bannon says or does has long-term viability. Given that, this simply looks like disruption for disruption's sake.
6
Republicans' policy ideas all fail because they are unworkable in the real world, usually for one of two reasons:
One, they are libertarian fantasies, like the "health care" plan that removes funding along with every underpinning that allows health insurance markets to function.
Two, they are frauds, like the "tax reform" plan that is simply an obvious and massive transfer of wealth from everyone else to the top.
Douthat is correct that the GOP is an empty shell, full of anger but bereft of ideas. What he glosses over is that this doesn't just apply to Bannon or the Tea Party but to all modern conservatism since Reagan. The concepts are simply false.
9
Why can't we have a third party in this country? I know there are structural reasons why it would be hard. But the reality is that the Republican administration careens on a daily basis between keystone cops incompetence and knuckle-biting dangerous recklessness. We're either laughing, or crying, or not paying attention. Notwithstanding that, there are people who will never vote for a Democrat.
Isn't a third party the only answer at this point?
4
The problem is the Republican voter coalition is impossible. The racist, religous bigot component also tends to be New Dealer. So the Republican core voter is neo-fascist populist. Meanwhile the Randers, from the crazy billionaire wing needs the neo-fascists to elect a dogcatcher yet alone a Senator. The goals of the billionaires don't match the voter from a double wide in Alabama and that is the coalition of Republican voters. It can win elections but it can't govern.
2
The problem with disgruntled pot stirrers is that they don't know what to do with the contents after they've stirred the pot. The tea party shook things up, period, end of story.
4
Poor Mr. Douthat, still imagining that the Republican party and conservatism is anything more than white nationalism in service of the plutocracy. The racists/homophobes/misogynists have decided they aren't going to be put off with some tax cuts for the wealthy and the smiling mask has been torn off to reveal the ugly heart of the cause he has served for decades.
12
Bannon's "faux populism" serves as a cover for his vision of nihilistic fascism which is shot through and animated by racism.
It's unclear to me whether the version of "populism" he espouses is a delusion which he truly believes or something more sinister, but in the end it's probably a distinction without a difference anyway.
But again, Trump or Bannon don't get a foothold without this ground having been trod by generations of craven political GOP subversion of our political norms.
They've tapped into forces that cannot be throttled which are going to eat us alive.
2
When I think of Bannon I think of the character John Goodman played in the satiric farce O' Brother Where Art Thou?, an intelligent man engaging in dishonest and inflammatory slander to further a supposedly moral agenda. The actual agenda of the character was money, where Bannon's is power, but both put on a great populist show.
5
Name one thing Democrats post LBJ ever did to help working class Americans.
Plenty; but first name one thing the GOP ever did to help working class Americans.
1
I didn't claim that the GOP has been pro worker until now. But both Bannon and Trump HAVE taken pro worker positions, which is why they aren't traditional, right wing Republicans. Didn't Trump himself say that the parties may be in process of switching positions - The GOP becoming the working people's party and the Dems the party of yuppies and elites? If that doesn't happen, then there really is a need for a third party, because no one at all is standing up for working class people.
I do not understand why the media give so much publicity to a low life, living in the past, like Steve Bannon.
One of his employees said yesterday that "They will fight against anyone that does not support the Trump's agenda, and that Bannon has "deep pockets" with the donors.... Hmmmm his behind still hurts of the quick on it in the "Maison Blanche, and the arms of being escorted out of it ¿Is that the dude with so much influence?
2
I'm confused as to exactly what Steve Bannon wants.
He already pushed the right wing of the republican party so far to the right that even with both houses and the presidency the GOP seems unable to pass meaningful legislation.
Whats the end game here?
If he gets more cooky right-wing nut-cases like Eric Prince and Roy Moore elected, surely any Democrat, even someone as horrid as HRC, will win the Presidency in 2020.
2
"...with the election of an effective, policy-oriented conservative president (which Donald Trump is not), surrounded by people who understand the ways of power (which Bannon, for all his bluster, didn’t) and prepared to both negotiate with Democrats and bend his own party to his will."
Then you would support, Ross, the repeal of the 22nd amendment so that Obama could run for a third term. Because that is the person you are describing to a tee.
1
Douthat never mentions that this was all been brought about by a razor-thin corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court who opened Pandora's box with Citizen's United and unlimited campaign contributions.
Oligarchs with extreme wealth will rule until we enact campaign finance reform or tax billionaires like the Mercers so they leave and we can take our country back.
8
Mr. Douthat is right that there's a void of leadership in the Republican Party. I think a major reason for this is that the core libertarian goals of the party, as embodied in House leader Paul Ryan's agenda, are not actually popular with a majority of voters, even Republican voters. The party doesn't have the courage of its convictions to be honest about these goals, so it lies about them, or lies about what the other party's goals are. This has been going on for years, decades. A party habitually selling lies to voters will attract the type of leaders, the type of human beings, comfortable with lies and deception.
2
I've come to enjoy Douthat's columns as his conservative base moves increasingly into demented territory. But' let's look at this word: Nationalism. Current nationalistic, populism in the US is not directed against other countries (such as Russia, obviously), but against a component of our own citizenry, the blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, other non-whites and non-Christians. But, this is not Germany in 1933. The aforementioned targets of 'nationalism' represents over 40% of the population, a number that is not only growing but projected to exceed 50% in another generation. In effect, therefore, the populist agitation is directed against a soon-to-be _majority_ of ghe population. And there's the rub. The revolt is by a whining, frantic, self pitying, portion of that coming minority, who are, at best no greater than half the less than the 60% of the current proportion of the population not counted within the aforementioned 40%+ (and growing), a demographic component that I often refer to as the 'Other'. The remaining 30% have the guns but not History on their side.
2
Republicans have lost that truly charismatic leader and the information-hiding culture to pull-off what all Republican politicians depend upon: the ability to lie to the middle, working-class voters they desperately need, making them think that the legislative agenda is: tax breaks for working-class Americans, higher wages, more, better, and cheaper healthcare, a clean environment for the future while no unnecessary legislation needlessly gets in the way of honest businesses, safety from a strong military that never overreaches into other countries who aren't threatening us, preservation of the safety net for the really needy, stronger social security & medicare but no increase in the deficit or debt...
All the while they really: enact higher taxes on wages of middle and working-class Americans while shrinking taxes on the rich, Wall Street, CEOs, and corporations that pay less and less, take jobs abroad, and get taxpayers to subsidize their workers' diets, healthcare & housing needs....ignore debt & deficit...legalize pollution, poisons (coal plants) and subsidize them out of raises in utility bills...crash the safety net for members of the working class...take away healthcare assistance from working class & poor Americans...dramatically increase military hardware, weapons....threaten war...repeatedly try to give social security to Wall Street.
Trump was elected on populist promises, then tried to govern on old Repub lies--but word leaked out in spite of attacks on media.
2
Regarding Douthat's opening claim, that Bannon's assault on mainstream Republicans is bad...
Well, that's bad if one is a tribal Republican that cannot make decisions independently of the Republican brand.
The Republican Party has demonstrated, for a long time, that it's hide bound and a party of malaise.
Whether or not it good comes of it, the Republican Party is facing a moment of truth. It has the opportunity to determine if it wants to limp along as a divisive and corrosive party. A party that appears to be anathema to America's well-being.
1
"Which is not to say Bannon is delusional. He and his allies are the latest group to recognize the void at the heart of the contemporary Republican Party, the vacuum that somebody, somehow needs to fill."
Indeed.
But there is another element that Douthat intentionally fails to mention.
They also recognize that the radical collectivist progressives have seized the Democratic Party and that the Democrats themselves are no longer able to define their own way forward.
So a general evisceration of both parties is in order. And that's exactly what Bannon et al. are pursuing. The Republicans are far closer to Constitutional federalism and less statist than the Democrats so they are the logical starting point.
By putting Republican focus back where it belongs, and waste-binning the Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryans of the party, the disaffected moderate Democrats have a place to go and will abandon the Democratic Party for forever, and the world will become a better place.
At least, that's what these folks seem to believe, and they are probably right.
1
Keep telling yourself that, a majority of the population, including independents, and large numbers of Republicans, favor universal health care, higher taxes on the wealthy, etc, all of which are moderate policies, not the radical collectivism of your fantasies and right wing propaganda.
As I have pointed out, Bannon himself has advocated higher taxes for the wealthy. Universal healthcare is not as magnificent as you think, because it DOES lead to rationing. If you don't believe me, please look at Europe and Canada where euthanasia IS being practiced, over the objections of patients and their families.
If Republican politicians got their wish, we'd have lower taxes on the rich, deregulation of finance and other industries leading to even more oligopoly and monopoly, millions more without health insurance, higher defense spending, higher deficits and debt (unavoidable with tax cuts and defense increases in the real world), and even more guns.
This future is appealing because...oh yeah, they also want to keep a few million immigrants out of the country.
Are that many of us confused about that actual course of the nation that splitting the GOP into Right and Further Right has any prayer of being elected?
Let me help those who have lost their place....Since 1977, U.S. GDP has added $17T - from $2T to $19T. Over that period our population added about 100 million (from 220 to 320 million, about 32%). The number of Americans in poverty has grown by 72%!! (25 million to 43 million). The growth in the poverty rate is over twice the growth in the population. Our tax system - heavy rewards to capital, heavy burdens to labor - is the cause of this imbalance. And if we don't vote out 'status quo' politicians who just vote tax cuts and bigger deficits, the problem will get worse.
Stop ignoring the problem and vote for the pols who articulate the problem and have reasonable answers.
That's the problem as I see it and we need to vote out politicians who see it any other way than this.
1
The thing is that Republican conservatives and Trumpists do not recognize the implications of what they say and do. Dogma is easy, but when the next great recession or depression hits they too will call for the progressive safety net promoted by democrats. After all Reagan himself could only go so far in dismantling them and in the depths of our last great recession we called on a democrat president Obama to clean up the mess. So conservatives can say what they will but they too have become dependent on government programs that will bail them out after the failed conservative policies send us cashing down.
1
"I would not be wasting my time trying to elect a few cranks and gadflies who will make Mitch McConnell’s life more difficult."
Since McConnell's agenda involves taking health care insurance away from tens of millions of Americans, allowing polluters to poison our air and water and deregulating the financial market while giving huge tax cuts to benefit the richest Americans, potentially causing catastrophic deficits and extreme damage to the economy, anything that makes his job more difficult is a good thing.
He needs to be contained until he's out of office, for the good of America, just like the "president".
5
The problem Bannon has is that despite its vociferous base, his is still an extremist opinion. The default American political opinion is somewhere around moderate Republicanism. It would be closer to moderate liberalism if it weren't for the continuous efforts of the Koch's et al to traduce progressive politics.
2
"I would not be wasting my time trying to elect a few cranks and gadflies who will make Mitch McConnell’s life more difficult."
Anything that makes McConnell's job more difficult is a good thing , since his goals, repealing the ACA to take away health insurance from tens of millions of people, gutting environmental protections to allow polluters to poison our water and air, and huge tax cuts and financial deregulation for the richest Americans and financial deregulation that would damage the economy are destructive to America. He needs to be contained until he's out of office.
1
If the Democrats want to prevail in the next election there is one simple solution. Cure voter apathy. Bannon can influence certain elections with outlier candidates but if all the registered Democrats show up to vote then the next President will be a Democrat. Do the math, 2 million fewer Democrats voted in 2016 than in 2012. This is why Trump was elected. There is currently a need for more attention to be given to the phenomenon of voter apathy and less attention given to the extreme rhetoric of Bannon. The Republicans do not want any press on voter apathy but this is what ails our democracy.
4
Life is tough for you Republicans. When you inspire people to rise up with pitchforks -- because you destroyed their unions, poisoned their mountaintops and rivers, threaten their retirements and healthcare -- you shouldn't be surprised if the pitchforks come for you.
Bannon's genius is to cobble together some hope for economic relief -- with baldfaced nationalism and bigotry. It worked for Hitler too, and the rest of us should be terrified it could work again.
2
I think you miss the point. The main reason for the gridlock of American politics is the 2 party system and separate presidential elections. That smuthers differences of opinion WITHIN one of the 2 parties (both GOP and Democrats) because it weakens their position, and it blows up differences of opinion BETWEEN the 2 parties into unbridgeable fights.. The separate election of the president provides 2 separate governmental legislative bodies that will almost always end up in a mutual fight.
What the US needs is a representational democracy with 3 or even 4 different parties that govern on the basis of cooperation and compromise with a prime minister as head of state and head of the coalition. A 2 party system makes war. Representational democracy makes peace.
10
Well-written and timely. Quite apt to compare the Bannon situation to Ground Hog Day, The Movie, as the deposed strategist pivots to building his fiefdom.
My gut says with each stress-filled day of this presidency we'll grow a national "never again a Trump" movement---as the daily shocking rhetoric of this president continues---and it will.
What might stall Bannon's revolutionary plot are continued revelations that generals often talk Donald Trump down from the cliff to nuke nations and build more nukes. He doesn't understand the treaties we have.The men surrounding him curtail him from annihilating the globe.
Senator Corker is absolutely correct: our president is being "contained" by 3 key administrative staff because he's a danger to himself and others. It's a gigantic news story that isn't going away. Every American should be alarmed, and more will certainly become alarmed. Double digit numbers of Trump's
staff are notifying the media of this enormous problem. It's real, and now.
Bannon studied the chief propagandists Hitler used. He might reach the under-educated, but has a long way to go. The daily news on this dangerous presidency is sounding a loud alarm since his access to the nuclear codes is immediate and within the reach of his fingers. It's a system designed to operate at Trump's will, and without discussion.
12
Ah, Tea-Partyism, Trumpism, Bannonism -- the worst possible government that Bob Mercer's money can buy.
39
Wow. Great column Ross. The first paragraph bordered on poetic.
I stare across the aisle at the "opposition" and they seem about as confused and lost as I do right about now. The crew elected to "serve" in Washington is ignorant in the ways of governance, cynical greedy and nihilistic in the extreme. They are incapable of building anything. They are, however, ready, willing and able to destroy.
It was terrifying to hear that billionaire Robert Mercer is behind Bannon. He is a hedge fund billionaire who would like to see our system of government destroyed. He has very deep pockets and money is everything in this country now. Virtually nothing else matters or is a predictor of success.
So I ask you Mr. Douthat is this what Republicans really want? The destruction of our system of government? The unravelling of our social contract? When folks go to the polls in 2018 how are they going to feel about voting for the ignorant, reactionary, bible thumping, neo-nazi, white nationalist, bigoted party who wants to destroy America? How are you guys even going to sell that? By bashing Obama and Hillary? By disenfranchising as many brown people as possible? By changing the voting laws so only white males are allowed within 50 yards of a polling place? Because with the exception of a bunch crazed zombies wearing MAGA hats nobody seems thrilled with the GOP brand. When I hear GOP now my mind jumps to Tiki Torch Nazis. I'm sure I'm not alone. Is that really what you guys want?
21
"empty, race-baiting culture war."
Perhaps the most succinct and accurate description of the republican political strategy.
Seriously, if you are a sentient, thinking human being capable of judgement based on fact and fairness, how can you possibly vote for politicians who represent the republican party?
Don't believe the trope that all democrats subscribe to the mirror image social race baiting of the so-called progressive movement of the democratic party. There is room for pragmatic compromise when intelligent people discuss issues factually for the purpose of finding solutions to otherwise intractable problems.
Far more so than when neo-nazi wannabes run the show.
Think about it.
12
But you're missing the point. Bannon wanted to destroy the administrative state. Backing anyone against 'establishment' GOP such as Moore, who if he wins will throw plenty more wack into Congress.
Bannon sez we're in War of Civilizations: white Christian vs brown anything esp Muslim. Meantime tear structure of gov't down.
His vision is far more grandiose and less bourgeois than yours, Frank, plus w Mercers bankrolling. Groundhog Day will get worse.
5
Since Reagan, The Gand Old Party of Knaves & Fools has used bigotry and cultural resentments to attract electoral cannon fodder, who could be counted on to vote against their own interests. Now, the fodder has seized the cannons, but created a circular firing squad. Bannon offers a black hole of bigotry and delusion, and calls it "revolution". He claims to speak for "the real people", but is merely a mouthpiece for the wealthy corrupt. Ross Douthat pines for a principled conservatism that has not existed for a very long time.
9
YOu might try some decent, ethical policies. Like health care for all and a tax code that favors poor women and children instead of favoring trump and his sick cronies like the Koch Brothers.
You republicans deserve death by the unkindest of cuts. Go for the jugular, Ross - as long as you stick it to your own. The rest of us - who ARE decent human beings - are really sick of your tribe.
16
Steve Bannon has said many times that the rich should pay higher taxes. But you refuse to listen to the truth.
Tell us how you really feel!
so what we need is some ideologue to lead some other idealogues to enact an agenda designed to return to the mythical days of yesteryear? is there some charming aspect of any republican plan real or faux that suggests membership in the 21st century universe...I must have been out the day it was announced
watching the attempted destruction of everything PRESIDENT OBAMA tried to build must fill you with some sense of satisfaction else how could you come to suggest the dignification of anything the current gang portends
3
I get your point, Ross, but take issue your objection to electing "a few cranks and gadflies who will make Mitch McConnell's life more difficult."
McConnell had an easy 8 years of doing nothing but obstruct during Obama's terms. Now that the senator needs to actually legislate, he is hamstrung and has no idea how to govern. While it's horrifying to see Bannon aid in getting racists and crooks like Roy Moore and Michael Grimm elected, McConnell owns this party and its future.
14
History actually doesn't repeat itself, exactly in this way. Bannon's work to elect right wing extremists is a calculated prelude to legitimize what they are really after: They want civil war, violence and bloodshed. There are sufficient number of people in this country who share their racial hatred and penchant for believing in lies that demonize moderates to make it happen. The writing is on the wall. revolution goes down. Anyone who can leave, leave before the 2018 elections.
1
50 years ago The Republican Party created the Southern Strategy, the conscious effort to appeal to the segregationist Strom Thurmond and George Wallace Democratic voters.
In the 1980’s the Republican Party gave us the culture wars and Reagan and the dog whistle politics of welfare queens and States Rights and created the Reagan Democrats.
In the 1990’s we got the Newt Gingrich House of Representatives take no prisoners confrontation, the Clinton impeachment, Whitewater, and Vince Foster murder conspiracy.
With Obama, they created the Tea Party and gave us the birthers, death panels, and support of the Confederate flag.
And all these years, the Republican politicians have been using the Reaganomics talking points of small government and tax cuts for the job creators coming from the right-wing think tanks.
For thirty five years, the rising tide of Trickle Down Economics has mostly helped the wealthy at the expense of the rest.
And Mr. Douthat is sick, just sick I tell you, to think of Trump representing the Republican Party.
He can’t understand how the Republican voters, who have been losing their manufacturing jobs all these years as Mitt Romney and his Wall St. colleagues sent those jobs to China, these same voters who have been listening to talk radio all these years, how they can blindly follow Trump and not listen to reason.
230
You left out Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes (remember him?) and Robert Teeter who helped elect Bush I with the Willie Horton ads and race-baiting.
1
Exactly, exactly. Thank you.
Death panels ARE a reality, but they exist within hospices and hospitals.
The United States has had a strong belief in white supremacy for decades. It has also had very strong strains of anti-intellectualism, intolerance, and cruelty for a very long time in its make up. This is the country that allowed lynchings to take place, that still uses the death penalty, that refuses to acknowledge that health care is a human right, and bows to the second amendment of the constitution like it's the gospel.
If America self destructs it will be because of the choices we've made about who runs our country. Trump, McConnell, Bannon, Sessions, and the others didn't make it into the spotlight without our help. If Americans choose to vote against their own interests in order to make sure that Those People can't have a chance at a better life we get what we deserve: our lives looked at by the people in power as Those People because the GOP is not going to improve anyone's lives unless they are rich, white, and male.
Welcome to life in America under the GOP: nasty, brutish, cruel, stomped upon, and with no rights at all.
41
I think Douthat subtly gives Bannon more credit than his due: "If you squint at the Bannon vision, you can almost imagine it." Actually the only vision that Bannon has is the one that Charles Manson had, only Bannon will probably go much further in achieving it: fomenting race war.
8
Let's not premise this argument on the assumption Bannon has a vision for the future of the GOP. The synthesis he and his followers are pursuing begins with scorching the earth and salting the fields but in the end it's only about another ad nauseam scramble for power. Idiot monarchs wouldn't have lasted to their coronation had there not always been some evil genius(s) in the shadows pulling the strings and keeping a step ahead of the competition. The imbecile, Peter the III, the Russian successor to Elizabeth, lasted only a few months because he mistakenly thought he was in charge. Trump, I will argue, suffers the same delusion.
3
The idea of Mr. Douthat advising Steve Bannon on the best way to achieve his "revolution" is an astounding display of sophisticated naiveté, to coin an oxymoron. But its the same approach that traditional conservatives took towards Adolf Hitler's decision to turn away from street violence and into electoral politics to lead his National Socialists into power. Douthat is advising racists and fascists how to take control of the US government. His armchair intellectual conservatism speaks of Bannon as if he were just another political activist whose fundamental racism, which Douthat acknowledges, were just another quaint ideological stance in a bona fide democratic movement. What he should see, as a political theorist and a student of history, is the parallel between the deadlock paralysis of the German parliaments of the early 1930s and what is happening in the US Congress: the populace is frustrated and desperate and is about to turn to even more dangerous demagogues than the feckless Donald Trump (who may yet turn out to be more dangerous himself than Douthat imagines). And Ross Douthat is calmly advising Bannon how to do this better than they are: just find yourselves a good leader, boys, and you'll be fine. Ross, you yourself will be one of the first victims of this steamroller movement that will swallow up our democratic ideals. You should be finding your place in history right now by warning of a Weimar-like collapse of our system and the emergence of an American Hitler.
14
Emperor or Fuhrer, Bannon will accept either. The merging of the political state with the capitalist elite is and always has been the backbone of the Republican Party, more openly since RR and new come to fruition with our own Berlusconi.
Up next our own Mussolini?
10
Bannon is our "Robespierre on the Right", and like his predecessor, he will overstep his tenuous authority and be brought low once he is seen to be the charlatan he is.
4
Ross does not want to admit that white identitarians, incidental idiots, cynics and fanatics turning in an endless darkness in a race-baiting culture war are the current Republican Party. What awaits us is inconceivably worse and it's coming. The hostile Bannon takeover is underway and it will succeed. I see it in my neighborhood everyday. Confederate flags hanging proudly over rural western New York and every yard with some or another culture war lawn sign now framed like permanent landmarks. We might have to wait for Judge Moore, Kelli Ward, and Erik Prince to assume their rightful roles but this current "establishment," which created policies rooted in cruelty, paranoia, oppression, delusion, and resentment already rules the three branches of government. Their successors will be _more_ of the same, not appreciably different. We cannot count on their incompetence and bungling stupidity alone to save us from them, not with the likes of Scott Pruitt or Betsey DeVos implementing policies of ruin. Unless Democrats find some way to win in our coming non-majoritarian government (see Ornstein, Mann, and Dionne), the future is now. Only worse.
17
A long series of wrong turns have caught up with us:
1) The breakdown of order in the family and the schools means that we are raising a 3rd generation of ignorant idiots who lack sufficient knowledge and self-restraint to self-govern. The collapse of adult media, and the rise of electronic distractions, mean that the ignorance won't be cured in adulthood.
2) By the time of Reagan, the New Deal State had lost focus on productivity and instead of restoring the work ethic and addressing moral hazards, to fix the New Deal State, Reagan attacked the New Deal. Clinton further attacked the New Deal with a globalist vision that was plausible in the 1990s, but its failure now feeds the reaction of the impoverished against it.
3) The ending of the fixed exchange rate system in 1973 began a deregulation of financial capital that Clinton capped off with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, setting up the securitized-mortgage crisis and the ongoing increases in inequality.
4) Democrats allowed Reagan appointees to end the Fairness Doctrine in 1986, allowing for the rise of major institutions of pure misinformation -- Trump is unimaginable without 25-30 percent of the population having been actively made stupid by Fox "news," Rush Limbaugh, et al.
5) The road back is going to start with more disciplined child-rearing and education requiring retained substantive knowledge in civics and history, and cultivating the self-discipline to patiently listen to "offensive" facts.
22
Unfortunately, the president and his supporters glorify a lack of education, while, if they are rich, sending their own kids to the highest quality school they can buy themselves into, without explaining why their kids should get that kind of education while it is bad for the rest of us. Sometimes education elites act elitist, and that only fuels the anti-intellectual fires. However, those who hate the elites have nothing to replace them with that will supply the same wide-ranging liberal education without the elitist attitude they hate. As a result, too many young Americans today don't learn how to figure out what makes sense or even to value what makes sense as an essential component of building productive, fulfilling and, yes, happy lives for themselves. Indeed, if we are to take the Trump/Bannon approach to life as a model, the goal would seem to be to make dissatisfaction with life as the hallmark of future American culture.
Not in this lifetime.
I must protest the disproportionate amount of blame you place on schools.
The ignorant, uneducated folks strutting around with Nazi flags and tiki torches are not suffering from a lack of appropriate history and civics instruction! I assure you no public school curriculum provided them with the dogma they now live by, most likely attained in the sewers of the internet.
Large numbers of white men with only a high school education (or less) who were expecting to land good middle class decent paying jobs with security, healthcare and retirement funds are likewise not suffering from faulty lessons at school. I guarantee they were taught the need for higher education or at least skilled job training, but chose instead to leave school and hitch their wagon onto industries vulnerable to automation or outsourcing. There are very few school districts in America with High Schools that are not aimed at college readiness.
Yes, schools have lots of problems, including being the repository of blame for an absurd amount of society's ills. Please understand that funding for things like healthcare, food for poor kids, homelessness, after school programs, reduced class size (many NYC elementary schools have 32 in a class) child and adolescent mental illness, child abuse, etc. are all stretched thin or in danger of disappearing.
Teachers struggle valiantly to teach the hungry, traumatized, exhausted, abused children who flock through the doors each morning.
Bannon has correctly observed that the cardiac cavity of the Republican Party is a perfect vacuum and he is attempting to remedy this by filling it with a toxic blend of vitriol and poison. We can only hope that this will prove lethal.
4
Trump, Bannon, Moore... indeed. Spot on Mr, Douthat in dissecting these incoherent blowhards. And yet. And yet a large percentage of Americans enthusiastically support these people. The fault lies not in these stars dear Ross, it lies in these voters. Please Mr. Douthat. Please. Explain to me who cannot understand. Who are these voters and how can they support these truly awful human beings?
6
No mention of Mercer Money funding quacks like Bannon. Breitbart, the petri dish of political germ warfare, would collapse without their support. Thanks Citizen United - a license for the rich to superimpose their entitled mania on the rest of us. Reagan and Kemp were wolves in sheep's clothing.
25
If one defines "populism as an ideology that "pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous 'others' who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice" [Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008], then it is evident that Bannon has tapped into public paranoia in ways that the Tea Party did not. Their austere economic agenda never succeeded; Bannon thrives by fanning flames of overt racism and classism.
The irony of Bannon's incursion into politics is that he rose to power through standard "elitist" means - including Goldman Sachs and Hollywood - that led to his involvement with Breitbart and the Trump campaign.
Bannon has made it abundantly clear that he will support anyone who aligns with his racist and classist viewpoint, Moore in Alabama being a shining example. Coupled with the fact that he out-Trumped Trump on this, it bodes ill for the coming GOP primaries, and can explain the deafening silence of the "establishment" Republicans in Congress.
"Deconstruction of government" is Bannon's sole agenda, both inside and outside of the White House. What does he mean by this? Apparently, he means creating enough political chaos that a rational public can be bamboozled into thinking that white privilege does not exist, that all immigrants are "bad hombres," that climate change is a hoax, and that "good people" can be Neo-Nazis and KKK members. Sound familiar?
3
"Policy oriented conservative president..?" - Oxymoron. By their very nature, Conservatives tend to embrace status quo as opposed to notions of policy. "What Policy ? " might well be a platform that the GOP can run on.
As for the Republican party and its one step forward and ten steps backward philosophy, I blame cluelessness and lack of ethical foundations. Reagan, Bush, Palin, Tea Party, Trump, etc. points to a future where they will openly embrace the likes of the KKK.
Wait ! That's being done already.
7
Mitch McConnell’s life is and will be difficult because he is too weak and cagey. Politicians like McConnell and Ryan are simultaneously Libertarians, zombie Reaganites, pseudo-nationalists and closet Tea Partiers. Stand for too much, stand for nothing. This party has fractured.
3
The Republican Party does not need a leader. It just doesn't have the policies that truly help the American people , and I mean all the forgotten black, brown , and white people. Congress is supposed to provide for the general welfare of the nation. That's what it says in the U.S. Constitution. If the private sector can't handle the job on its own, the Govenment has to take the reins . That's what happened during the Great Depression for example. That's why we have Social Security , and minimum wage laws.
Where today is our universal access to health care , so people don't die because they can't go to the doctor? Affordable housing so people don't carry their stuff in shopping carts or live in their cars? Fair taxes, not giveaways to the rich? Gun legislation to protect us from mass shootings, and decrease suicides? Education that is not dependent on your zip code? Protecting our environment? Stimulating effective job growth? Addressing the opiod crisis? Perhaps if The Republican majority Congress and its leader would address these issues instead of pandering to racism and flag adulation , we could have a great America. But with the way the Republican Party conducts itself , don't hold your breath. And the fact these people can even get elected says a lot about our political system and the state of our electorate. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
6
The Republican Party, or at least the establishment Republican Party is simply an agent for crank billionaires, the fossil fuel industry and the very rich. They are little more than lobbyists in legislator's clothing.
None of the policy issues you raise are of any interest to the Republican Party. Their function is to convince enough voters that all of our problems are caused by black and brown people; immigrants and Muslims to keep themselves in power so that the oligarchy that really runs America can remain in power.
1
You are watching the unintended consequences of the elimination of "earmarks". That do good-er move turned legislative politics from a cynical form of "win-win" to an ideological "win-lose" scenario. You can no longer construct a "good" for your region by compromising. Congress reaps what it sows.
3
One thing Bannon et al. may not have reckoned with is that the next time around they most likely won't be running against a candidate as unpopular and incompetent as Hillary Clinton. It remains an open question as to whether the Democrats can nominate candidates with the charisma and capability to effectively articulate a left-of-center vision, but if they do I think it likely they will wipe the floor with the likes of Trump and Bannonist candidates everywhere but the deepest, darkest recesses of rural Evangelical America.
4
You mean "someone who isn't a woman". Just say it.
2
Hillary Clinton was certainly unpopular, as a foreigner I have no idea why.
Hillary however wasn't incompetent, aside from incumbent office holders, I can't think of another more competent candidate since the seventies.
I do hope that you're correct that next time they have a candidate that can win.
1
She clearly sided with criminals against law abiding citizens, who she called "deplorable".
When Bannon was interviewed by 60 Minutes he clearly stated that he would take on the entrenched Republican political class first and then go after the Democrats. I think that he might do just that, and I am all for it.
This piece stumbles in its assumption that "culture wars" is only the default fail place of politics that can't do its business.
The alternative hypothesis -- "culture wars" is the engine that seeks change through a political system captured by two self interested party institutions -- does better work.
Most commentators state that the political process fails for political reasons -- reasons like "lack of leadership". The alternative is that the process fails because of forces outside political control, such as a widening cultural gap.
I don't demean Mr. Douthat's scholarship, but it's naive to assume that politics is the metaphysics of life. There are real events greater than politics, which routinely drive politics to hysterical reaction.
What events? I'd name three: population growth, increasing social complexity, fragmentation of control institutions. All problems now are like a blob of mercury: seeking to grasp it only divides it in two. The more we attempt to cure, the more we traumatize.
Admittedly, human is a stupid species, doomed to repeat and repeat the same mistakes. But ever since the French Revolution, the biggest mistake has been the idea that politics can solve problems beyond political control.
1
Steve Bannon and white nationalism?
America politically appears to have removed itself from genuine and respectful religion, the inward look, examination of self for sin (and admittedly relatively few people were capable of a truly merciful religious outlook in the first place over history) without making much headway into science of biology and psychology with respect to the human, which is to say introspection, examination of self has declined whether you want to speak of religion or science. This has left raw and crude identity, caricature of race, ethnicity, religion, culture and nation itself from every political quarter, or rather I should say each political half because only two parties exist and a couple tokens are tossed elsewhere. The tendency is to be the victim, that all shortcomings are blamed on other people. Whether you want to speak of whites or blacks or latinos or women or gay people, other people are at fault. Worse, the advance of the sciences of biology and psychology seem to favor no group, identity, race, ethnicity, religious, cultural impulse in the crude, but seem to point to a fineness of discrimination, a separation of people into individuals, thus forcing the birds of the human to flock more desperately to their own. Biology and psychology while superficially seeming to favor this group for this, that group for that insofar as we are getting more accurate about interplay of genes and environment, seems psychologically a disaster to all Americans.
There is a reason this ideology is only popular with 40% of the electorate. There is a reason the Republicans have to resort to gerrymandering and voter suppression. The majority of Americans do not want this radical shift in the direction of the country. That majority is not exclusively liberal. The thing that frightens the right the most would be if all eligible Americans voted. People like Trump would never get elected. That is their strategy. Embrace even offensive groups and keep out minorities. What Americans want is for politicians to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and work on fixing the bent spokes of the wheel instead. What Trump and Bannon offer is a square wheel they want you to believe will make the country run like it was round. What most want is a round wheel with some of the wobble eliminated.
9
I don't watch Fox News any more, but I have seen the widely-replayed Bannon interview where he makes the ludicrous assertion that if Corker or others cannot support the president's agenda, they should resign immediately. What country does that pompous fool think this is? Our senators and representatives are elected to represent the will of their constituents, not the will of president nor party. Granted, that particular commitment seems to be too often overridden by special interest dollars and demagogues these days. But the fact still remains that the sole mechanism for changing course at every level is the ballot box. Is Bannon afraid that the Trump fever might break sometime before 2018, when Corker's seat will be available? I for one pray that it does!
6
I imagine/hope that Bannon ends up sharing the fate of Maximilien Robespierre, architect and celebrated victim of his own Revolution.
On the question of leadership, it's abundantly clear that Donald Trump has no interest in or knowledge of the concept of "servant leadership" that gets lots of lip service among his Evangelical cheer squad. He expected the GOP Congress to deliver unto him an Obamacare replacement bill sprung full-grown like Athena from Zeus's brow, and apparently hopes for better results with tax "reform."
Good luck with THAT!
3
And when one finishes creating, as well as reading, descriptions transmitted as explanations about .., hinting prognostically at what could-should be, if...within an unmentioned reality of uncertainty, unpredictability,
lack of total control what ever the quality and levels of our efforts, one is left with an undelineated word. Leader.A mantrafied balm? There are all kinds, types, levels and qualities of leaders. Styles of leadership.How odd it is that being permitted to work in a range of professions, skilled-doings, one needs to be licensed. To adequately demonstrate...Yet, to legislate, to effect the life, and well being, of individuals, families, neighborhoods, communities, values, norms, there are no standardized exams. No minimum levels and qualities of experienced demanded. No licenses documenting abilities, and skills, to learn from experiences are required!
Is this just a human oddity? A fixable flaw? In what ways can, will, a leader
successfully intervene with the implications and consequences of an enabled, violating, WE-THEY culture? Anchored in our past. Seeded daily. What can realistically be expected of any leader when many of us live as if we expect little outcome from our own efforts to make needed changes for equitable well being.For all. In safe life spaces "protected" and fed by, and with civility. Mutual respect. caring inter-relationships.Trust. Mutual help, when, and if, needed. Menschlichkeit as a way of daily living and not only as a concept.
Living in Alabama, a bastion of Trump-ism, what I see and hear are voters who feel utterly helpless and confused and desperate.
They know that the world is changing under them, and that they don't feel as competent, secure and in control as they once did. They're scared, and that fear makes them angry.
For decades our leaders have refused to tell them the truth: that their problems have solutions -- but not easy ones. Our leaders have tried to fob us off with simplistic slogans, instead of talking to us like intelligent adults.
That's our fault. We let them get away with it, and we didn't insist on complexity and complete information. We let ourselves feel instead of think.
But our leaders co-operated in that. It's easier to make a complicated dish if you keep the common herd out of the kitchen.
If any party wants to revive our democratic republic and keep us from slipping down history's well-trodden slope into an oligarchy or empire, then they need to stop settling for the easy route and short-term "solutions" that make us feel better.
It's time to show the electorate the respect of telling us the hard truths, and leading us to get off our behinds and digging in to fix our favorite problems.
3
Telling people the hard truth went out of fashion when Mondale told the voters that he would have to raise taxes.
People want easy painless answers. They like politicians who can find villains to blame for the state of the universe. Until enough of our voters, by some miracle, become capable of voting for candidates and policies that actually serve their enlightened self-interests, we will continue to elect demagogues who prey on our fears and offer solutions that protect only the 1% that understands how to manipulate democracy to create oligarchy.
1
Bannon, as with everything about Trump, is at once a thug and a fraud.
6
"Instead I would be looking for the thing that too many people deceived themselves into believing Trump might be, and that Bannonite populism for all its potential strength now lacks: a leader."
German word for "leader" is "Führer". (This is the literal translation for hundreds of years. The word itself has nothing to do with Hitler.)
If "the system" is crashing and there are any ideas but endless sermons without any clue they all are going to call for (strong) "leaders". Nothing new. You don´t have to look in history books for this. Look at all the strongmen of today´s world. On the real ones and even on the wannabes.
So if you want some you can get some. But then you will only have this "leader" and nothing else any more.
Remember: "Leader" is the contrary of Mr. Ryan or Mr. McConnell. "Leaders" look more like Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Putin or Mr. Orban, to mention just a few and not the most nasty ones. You never know what you will get in the end. When Mr. Erdogan took power most in Western world found him a true democrat for example.
So be careful what you are calling for.
You are looking for a leader? Really? Do you know the German word for leader? It's "Führer". Rings a bell? My take on it: Be careful what you wish for! This movement with a de-facto irremovable leader - be it Trump, Bannon, or somebody else - would be fascism outright. How about filling this void of ideas, you are talking about with ideas instead?
Tea Party. Trumpism. Bannon.
Racist-motivated hate. The last President ran on Hope. I honestly don't know what 'great' is. If you break it down, it looks like intolerant white male supremacy. Ask any black man if America ever was great? Ask any woman if the past was better?
3
The "ideological revolution" of the "Tea Party" was the just the core of the white racist Republican Base putting on tri-corner hats and waving flags, trying to disassociate themselves from the catastrophic Bush administration, which they all ecstatically supported, while reacting to GWB's greatest crime, allowing the ascension of the first black president. They are exactly the same population glued to Fox News and Hate radio, who believe any lie that strokes their warped ideological convictions. Now looking to the even more extreme Briebart for what to believe. They are Trump's base. Ignoring who they are, and how they are destroying our democracy and nation, is the gospel of op-ed writers like Brooks and Douthat.
First off, thanks to Ross for stepping down from the pulpit and getting back to writing about politics - he was starting to become as tedious as the right reverend Chuckie Blow there with the past couple of columns. But I digress...
I agree with most of what you say, but I'll take a "shambolic repository for anti-liberalism" any day of the week over "Actual" liberalism. At worst we have 4 years of gridlock without making things worse in the form of unconstitutional mandates, stifling regulation, and Identity politics. Oh, and we got Gorsuch.
Gotta make some lemonade now and again...
1
Oh, the angry white man and his "disgust with status quo institutional politics". Angry that taxes have to paid, angry that there are rules in society, angry that equal rights movements have left them a little less in charge.
This anger is the animating force for white male billionaires to fund a fanatic like Bannon in the cause of tearing the whole house down just to ensure that their power remains unchallenged by change. I'd call that regression, not revolution.
10
"Drown it in a bathtub" is not an answer to how you run the government. And Trump's kleptocracy is no better.
1
Ross, where in this dreamworld of yours should we seek to find the so-called conservatives who are afraid of non-white people, afraid of women, and afraid of the rest of the world?
1
Bannon the firebrand simply provides a human visage to the new Trumpist idiom of White Nationalism and American Exceptionalism. But, if this is how American Exceptionalism looks - pollution, nuclear brinksmanship, Isolationism, and bizarre Christianity - then I tremble for our Nation as we stumble toward legitimized prejudice, class and wealth disparity, a Military Industrial complex out of control, and a President who more closely resembles a 16th Autocrat than the President of a Republic.
Yet, the armed, ever-so devoted Bannon/Palin/Limbaugh/Cruz acolytes continue their Lemming like march to the Sea of Ignorance, Hate and Vindictiveness.
1
Mr. Douthat has made some frightening observations today.
His solution to the problems of the GOP is "the election of an effective, policy-oriented conservative president ... surrounded by people who understand the ways of power ... and prepared to both negotiate with Democrats and bend his own party to his will" is something which could happen, with the right leadership. Under such a GOP there could be bipartisan efforts to address climate change, the hollowing-out of the American economy and our incoherent foreign policy.
My fear is that Bannon will bring to power someone who aspires to be a leader in a different translation of that word: in German "Ein Anführer".
1
The world's rarest, most priceless element is Unobtanium. If we could just get our hands on some, it would solve all our problems and ensure a peaceful transition from post-enlightenment, post-modernist America to whatever is coming next. Now if we could just find leadership who knew where to mine the stuff, we would be all set. It finally turns out that "E Pluribus Unum" is the Unobtanium we desperately need to find. Find us a leader who can guide us to rapprochement and a way forward that addresses the serious flaws, deficiencies and outright lies of our present socio-economic and cultural alignment and we'll be all set. Oh wait, we crucified him 2000 years ago.
The crisis in the GOP is self-inflicted. All the wishing in the world for an "effective, policy-oriented conservative president" will come to nothing while the Republican party's big tent includes racist, hate-filled, angry idealogues. As long as the party tolerates opportunistic thugs and inflexible, bomb-throwing extremists, its dysfunction will continue and its decline is inevitable.
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Voters increasingly insist on ideological purity and moral probity beyond the reach of mere mortals. They retreat to tribalism and provincialism in an era when problems of income and resource disparity, environmental degradation and overpopulation can only be addressed through approaches that incorporate globalism and altruism. The promises of the internet, to connect everyone to one another across the globe and offer access to the corpus of human knowledge to all, have been largely squandered as the web is increasingly used to spread propaganda and misinformation, allow us to verbally abuse total strangers, and conduct commerce without personal contact. Wisdom, knowledge, compassion and will power are being supplanted by myopia, avarice, judgemental vindictiveness and instant gratification.
American governance, corrupted as it is by polarization fueled by gerrymandering, (anti)social media, and 'news' outlets more intent on delivering ideology than facts, has a dark catch 22 at its center: At this juncture, someone who wants the job of president should be considered too crazy to serve.
"Bannonism" has a fatal flaw that renders it ultimately futile. It proposes a return to something that never actually existed: a racially homogenous United States.
1
Trump gets up in the morning and thinks one thing: what can I do to make my base cheer for me. He knows a surefire agenda item is to bash anything Obama would champion, and rescind at least one piece of his policies. Since Trump can't do much but sign his name, he leaves the details to his lackeys, who he selected only based on how well they scored on the sycophancy test. Trump knows how to pick them.
Other than that, he plays golf and insults people, just like he did before he became president. The worst he can do, if he doesn't get us all killed, is set us back eight years.
As for the Republican party in general, let me clue you in: the only reason it's all came to naught so far is because they don't yet have enough Republican Extremists. You seem to think voters will understand the policy differences between Tea Partiers and Trumpists. Nope. They understand nothing now, what makes you think they'll suddenly pay attention? Tea Party, Trump, all the same to them. Both are destroyers.
Republicans have weakened this country for decades by fomenting hate and resentment. Cranks and nut-jobs are going to fill the void you created, not thoughtful, sane statesmen. Congress is going to become a Colosseum for the epic battles of the Republican Extremists.
Me? I've got two choices: let my liberal splodey-head explode, or enjoy the show.
My stockpile of popcorn is considerable.
2
The ability to compromise is what conservatives in major politics still lack and what needs to be added to their skill set. The only competent ideal that Bannon ever supported was that infuriating the North Koreans was dumb.
After observing and living in our political world for the last 57 years, it's becoming evident the Conservative paradigm has broken the Republican Party. Ideological purists have replaced moderates who could actually govern with nihilists & bomb throwers.
These are the same people who have brought the American Republic to its present state where we are told "money is speech" & "corporations are people". We have anonymous "Super Pacs" bankrolled by billionaires & their cronies professing "a desire to return America to its previous greatness", while lining their pockets with their filthy lucre. They con Americans into believe we are overtaxed by the Federal Government, while hedge fund managers & venture capitalists get a preferential 15% tax on "carried interest". When did earnings become a "performance fee" for enhancing earnings? The GOP has become a "Free Lunch Party" for the 1%.
Meanwhile, multinational corporations & the super wealthy pay little or nothing in taxes by employing savvy accountants & tax attorneys, or sheltering profits offshore. Why are offshore tax "havens" or "shelters" allowed to exist? They force Middle Class taxpayers to partially makeup for the shortfall, putting the rest of the deficit in taxes on our National Tab.
Republican populists are an oxymoron; the conservative cognitive dissonance has become deafening. How much longer will Americans keep drinking that poisonous brand of Kool Aid? We will find out in November of 2018 & 2020.
3
Does anyone have a clue as to what the Mercers want other than to attack the Republican establishment?
Did anyone notice that of all the hedge fund and private equity people who stand to benefit from the proposals in the tax "plan," Robert Mercer may among those with the biggest payoff?
The census of 2000 told us that whites would be a minority by 2040.
The race-baiting culture war is nothing new and it has been going on since the sixties. What is new is that every white person in America is now aware that they will one day be a minority in what many of them consider to be their country.
Although Steve Bannon dismisses the alt-right as a fringe group he understands instinctively that racism has been at the core of republicanism for quite some time now. Was it a coincidence that the tea party sprung up shorty after Obama was inaugurated?
The republican party is quickly morphing into a white nationalist party just like some of the political parties in Europe. Trump supporters dismiss his crassness because he has addressed the one issue that most republicans care about most. Why else would they support his flip-flopping on other issues.
They are single issue voters at this point. They want the wall and they want to stop immigration. They want to retain their racial majority. Period.
God help us if that collection of plutocrat lackeys and wild eyed cranks that masquerades as the Republican Party these days finds themselves a charismatic leader. It is a blessing to all of us that their champion in the White House could not organize a wedding reception.
Steve Bannon has no ideology other than to destroy. He and the Mercers money are backing candidates who have no intention of governing. In his heart (if he has one) in an anarchist.
He is aided and abetted by the intense gerrymandering of the last 20 years. Representatives for secure congressional districts have no incentive to compromise.
Bannon is the fruit of the Reagan revolution - rotten to the core.
2
And if Bannonite populism lacks a 'leader' the real thing to worry about with the imperial leaning electorate that supports this type of nonsense is that they will anoint a king for themselves.
Don't laugh. The trajectory is already there.
1
I have a fantasy project of cataloguing types of errors. "Post hoc ergo Propter hoc" is very common, and misunderstanding/transcription errors like Rosanne Rosanadana's "never mind"; or right/left errors like Costa Concordia. I read with interest your erudite polemics. The errors of the Conservative movement are that there is an "all or none" outcome, followed by "add facts to support a conclusion". Do we need a "revolution" in our system? We have 200+ years of success inching up progress using both conservative and liberal ideas. The way to solve problems is to get many people into a civilized discussion that hashes out problems. Neither "Conservatism" nor "liberalism" is a religious doctrine. Conservatism is actually a form of behavior that among other things has come to hate liberals. Thus: all or none, no consensus, zero sum etc.
Erudite, theoretical conservatives are convinced that "the many" are conservative because they want small government, but then big government gives them Social Security, which works. The other definition of conservatism, which the theoretical conservatives, until now, have half-suppressed in favor of tax cuts, is the bad behavior of hating your different neighbor. That is the tail that wags the dog, aka human nature.
Conservatives have to accept that liberals have good ideas. We can't run a successful nation only on the ideas of half of our citizens, all must be involved to get consensus. To a lesser extent I aim the same homily to liberals.
1
The GOP is just continuing its internal civil war whilst in power... and all the while getting nothing done for the American citizens. The sad thing is, Bannon, as despicable as he is to much of the readership of this newspaper, is unfortunately correct in his assessment of what modern average white America is feeling, thinking and voting for. There is a huge chasm between what is written about, agreed upon and advocated in the NY Times, and what is believed, defended and felt between the coasts of this country. People see endless immigration/migration. Endless food stamp/entitlement costs. Racial tensions and failed multiculturalism. Less labor intensive, low education jobs. Less tradition and community with modernized entertainment and technology. This is what happens when people get both increasingly isolated and increasingly diverse, and Bannon is using all those trends in the economy and culture of America to advocate for an alternative solution. This isn't about agreeing with Bannon's ideology or viewpoints. Pay attention to who he is talking to and why they are responding. It appears the future sanity of this nation's leadership is at stake.
The Republican party and the nation are facing the uncontrolled firestorm of bigotry, greed and willful stupidity they've been kindling for generations. And just as climate change is now being understood as an existential threat, not to our children and grandchildren, but to our own immediate future. The soul and corpus of the Republican party is probably beyond redemption and Democrats are saddled with an aged and exhausted leadership unwilling or unable to inspire the dwindling majority of despairing whites. Rational, caring people need to unite to save their country and planet, not their party.
1
Douthat fails to recognize that the Republican Party has been morally and philosophically bankrupt for years. What ideas Republicans do have are shams meant to deceive their conservatives supporters and enrich the 1%/
1
As a retired middle manager I woke up each day with the goal of making my organization better place to work and a better service to be offered. I cannot understand how Trump and his hanger on's wake up each morning with the goal of how can I insult the people around me and how can I make the service we offer our citizens worse. Putting aside the optics of such behavior, the daily regime of insult and incompetence pushes out any process for continuous improvement. If the goal is to make America great again, that goal is a cumulative process--everyday to make little adjustments/little additions/that in the long term result in big improvements. In fact, Trump's mix of insult and incompetence is or has already created a great big dark hole of nothingness---an entire governmental structure that wakes up each day whose only job is recounting the outrage of the day.
"ambition and resentment" That statement should be put on Republican banners. It succinctly states the foundation of what the GOP base has devolved into. It is now their primary motivation.
I think Douthat is wrong. I do not think the Republican Party can be saved. The Party has spent decades brainwashing its base to feel aggrieved, to literally hate and fear Progressives. You cannot undo years of negative conditioning. Trump, Bannon and the entire cast of horribles now leading the government are a predictable, inevitable outcome of that conditioning. The GOP base voter cannot be reprogrammed or reeducated. They have been captured by the Dark Side.
I believe that true conservatives, people that have rational, but different views than progressives need a new party. If I were a conservative leader in that movement (and I'm liberal Democrat) I would declare the current Republican Party the Trump/Bannon Party and form a new party. I would make it clear that the 20% who see what Trump is and still approve of him are not welcome.
The party will stand for conservative principles, but it will cooperate with Democrats to govern, it will embrace science, it will focus on real economic principles, while it will always stand for limited government it will govern. The focus would be on Independent voters and any moderate Republicans left with a brain. That party might not win elections for a while, but would stop destroying the country and be a reasonable legacy to Abraham Lincoln.
1
Trump is open to a challenge on his populist right, from someone who criticizes him for not being religious and developing tax legislation designed, it seems foremost, to benefit himself. What insights could Pence reveal about Trump's lack of Christian faith and boundless greed in 2020?
I find it more than a little depressing and disconcerting that Douthat has thrown in the towel and conceded the U.S. is an empire, not a republic; that Trump is the emperor with no clothes; and that the Republican Party's best hope lies in finding a "leader." It smacks a bit much of Star Wars' Empire vs. the Republic to me.
All the vast of majority of people wants is a president and government that will help ameliorate problems in their lives that the market can't fix (and there are plenty), but to stay out of their lives otherwise. Why is that so difficult for politicians to get?
1
Populism has always been a necessary and fraudulent response to inequality. It begins with a general realization that the wealth gap has grown to dangerous levels. An appeal to the downtrodden is necessary to achieve and maintain sufficient votes. The populist message focus is on “the people” or “families” to appeal to the decent, hardworking folks. Without making specific promises that can’t be kept, leaders like Donald Trump will promise great health care or tax reform which will help the people, while making sure that most financial benefit actually goes to the wealthy few. Health care block grants to the states might lead to both better and worse programs, but it will definitely lower taxes for the wealthy - nationwide. Tax reform will expand standard deductions for the middle class and may even add a tax bracket for high earners (as long as the Estate Tax is eliminated and business tax exemptions remain for the wealthy).
Honest populism should support 90% of the people - middle class (13.9% wealth share) and poor (0.05% wealth share); and occasionally stand up to the upper class (85.6 wealth share) when necessary. Policy reforms should reverse the growing wealth gap by limiting the wealthy to a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.
Throughout the world populism had turned out to be a disaster for the people because it is really a cover for greed. Steve Bannon needs to prove this is not his plan – a hard task for any of the Goldman Sachs alumni.
1
Well-written lesson for all who think the answer lies somewhere near the middle, and where no one is yet looking. Never give up, Ross. You never know.
It's hard to find a leader with the plebiscite hovering at 45-45-10 undecided, which they always will be. They don't make 45-45 candidates any more, if the ever did.
Instead, we have the Sisyphean rock-rolling of up and down, and over and over. Wonder why Dante didn't make that endless, useless rock-rolling one of the seven levels of his "Inferno."
A just reward for those who won't call upon an opponent to actually help move the rock up a notch for both of them.
1
Virtually every thoughtful American (of any party) can see and understand that our current government has stopped serving the needs of working Americans. There are many folks like Bannon and Trump who will attempt to use this situation to further their own selfish goals. Others like Bernie Sanders have seen the same problem and made an earnest (if less than perfect) attempt to return the government to serve working people. We can only hope that voters are waking up and learning to discern the difference between those who are sincerely hoping to serve the voters vs. those with selfish motivation. We voters need to do a much better job at this than we did in the last election cycle.
No matter how appalled we are by Bannon and his supporters, this movement is deadly serious. People have been stirred up for generation now by the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News. As has been pointed out numerous times, there is no agenda to make it better, just constant complaining about government and liberals to appeal to those who feel marginalized and to keep ratings up.
Trump was applauded because he made empty, foolish promises which were unworkable but appealed to those who believe in simple solutions to complex problems and those who think they know what the country should look like from their very narrow view. But it hasn't happened and they are still restless.
A charlatan like Bannon appeals to those who are now angrier because they haven't seen results. So no matter how bad he and the candidates he supports are, his followers will turn out in support. Here is where the danger lies. Desperate men take desperate measures. And emotion, as Trump showed us, is a greater driver of votes than logic or intelligence.
The only way to beat this is for everyone who doesn't believe Bannon and his followers are good for the country to also vote. His supporters will be out en masse, his opponents must be greater. Drive this fringe movement back. That might allow more moderate Republicans to begin working with Democrats to actually move the country forward.
This all has echoes of Germany in the thirties and we know how that turned out.
3
Calling the United States imperial is a pretty bold statement. The legislative branch has the power to reclaim their influence. They simply won't act on their authority. The G.O.P. is more than willing to in-fight while our country is effectively ungoverned. However, 95% of the party still refuses to cross the aisle on any issue. We're still a republic. The problem is the party, not our form of government. We'd probably be better off if they all found that abyss and quietly contented themselves to spinning in the dark.
However, that won't happen. With extreme gerrymandering and an electoral college that favors less populated states, the battle for change is now only fought within the party. Republicans are guaranteed a strong representation in the legislature no matter who runs for office virtually insuring girdlock for both parties. People are acting like the Tea Party was a capable governing coalition. Since when? All they ever accomplished was obstruction. Unfit to govern is an understatement to say the least.
Republicans need to go into the wilderness for a decade or two until they sort themselves out. That's the only real solution.
Mr. Douthat uses the words "conservative" and "conservatism" as if they automatically imparted an over-arching sense of virtue and inherent good governance, and yet his descriptions of all these various flawed versions of conservatism give the lie to that.
I know what the virtues of liberalism are: equal opportunity and justice for all, fairness and empathy, a sense of the common good, and, above all, optimism.
The problem with conservatism, as I see it, is that it is, at its heart, negative and pessimistic. It springs from an assumption that people ought not to be trusted to do the right thing and, worse, will always be that way.
America was founded on liberal principles -- the conservatives were the ones who wanted us to remain colonies of the English crown -- and our cultural optimism has time and again been the thing that has saved us from our worst moments.
258
"The problem with conservatism, as I see it, is that it is, at its heart, negative and pessimistic. It springs from an assumption that people ought not to be trusted to do the right thing and, worse, will always be that way."
Add to this the idea that only a certain type, with the correct conservative mindset, should rule. Now guess whom has the correct conservative mindset?
Not only negative and pessimistic, but utterly unimaginative. Present-day conservatives seem unable to envision a better/fairer/cleaner/more prosperous world than the one we have today (or rather, 1950s-era U.S.).
Steve Bannon is the Second Coming of Patrick J. Buchanan. They both belong to Mr. Douthat's tribe of Papists. Chronicles, "A Magazine of American Culture" calls Mr. Bannon "A Man for all Seasons". Lovely.
9
Mr. Bannon is a man for one season: winter, at midnight, during the hivernal solstice. Joining Mr. Banning is most of the remaining Republican Party. Nihilism is very dark.
"Which is not to say Bannon is delusional." But Bannon IS delusional. He says his version of populism is anti elitist. Does he think the Mercers, his financial backers of Brietbart, aren't elite billionaires? Does he think Eric Prince is a regular guy? Does he think you would run into Betsy DeVos at the bowling alley? Bannon lives in a dream world. Just watch his movie Generation Zero and tell me he isn't deluded.
62
"But Bannon IS delusional. He says his version of populism is anti elitist."
That doesn't mean he's delusional. It just means he's a liar.
Given Bannon's billionaire backer, pretty much ignorant of real politics, the appropriate assumption is all his populist words are empty. They will do nothing for the people but in the dark his actions , like Trumps. will ust enrich his billionaire backers. The people will eat dirt. The cons just get bigger and bigger.
4
Steve (Sachs) Bannon and tax hikes for the rich...in the same sentence...now that's rich!
And just to also say this: a man behind the scenes like SB will not be the leader for any successful new Republican coalition.
2
It’s ironic that the only thing that can save the Republicans from themselves is the courts by overturning the ridiculous gerrymandered districts.
I’d offer that maybe they’ll learn a lesson, but we all know that they won’t.
10
Good column. Next stop Mr. Douthat: a comprehensive interview of Robert Mercer so he can lay out the vision for America that he hopes to buy between now and the next two elections. Bannon is simply his paid egomaniac.
61
Good luck with that. He never leaves his train set at home.
Very good point. Bannon is just riding a gravy train of money in politics. This is true for virtually all the elected republicans and Trump. The pay offs for them will be extraordinary. For "the people," shall we call them the "liddle people," expect a return to the poohouse days of victorian England. Only I don't even think porridge will be provided this time around.
Douthat employs the term "Trumpism" as though such a thing exists.
Elevating the pathologically dishonest, narcissistic, childish, empty, self-aggrandizing behavior of Donald Trump to an "ism" is an insult to every legitimate ideology. He has no ideology, as the root of "ideology" is ideas, of which he is utterly bereft.
37
Ross, suggesting that the 'tea party' was not a hot bed of racist, white supremacist, 'alt-right', homophobic, sexist, xenophobic folks ignores the facts. They were not as blatant but the 'dog whistles' blew load and strong and many of the people supported by them (some elected) had those leanings as well. From 'we want our county back' to 'the food stamp President' or 'you can only understand Obama if you "understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior." (thanks Newt for both), or the many 'Obama is not eligible to be President' memes or 'calves as big as cantaloupes' or the the many post cards, emails, etc along the same lines and there are thousands of examples supporting this.
44
What is lost in all of this is that there is a large number of Americans - of both parties - that are looking for a consistent, Centrist American Government -one that "wobbles" from Center Left to Center Right. Trump's nomination and election was a sign that voters are tired of the fraud that our Government is becoming ( Thank heaven for Roger Ailes - without him, Harvey Weinstein would still be a sexual predator and loved by the liberal left ). Both the current Democratic Party and Republican Party have lost touch with the Country as a whole - whichever one figures this out first will do rather well.
As for Mr Bannon - he works best in the background - now that he is out in the open and can be seen on a regular basis - he will eventually wear thin with people and become a faint, whiny voice
I agree. The Democrats are being pulled left, and the Republicans are being pulled right. And they’re both cracked. Who do the Centrists turn?
I am convinced that, despite her baggage, Clinton would’ve been the far better choice. So I voted for her.
But the Republicans (and the Russians) detested her, and the Left was convinced that Sanders would save the world.
And now, we’re here in this unimaginable mess.
Bannon will definitely not be "a faint, whiny voice" at least until November, 2018. He has the Mercers bankrolling this quest to take over the Republican Party. They will recruit their candidates, buy lots of ads, and disrupt Republican senatorial primaries across the country. They may even get a few Democrats elected to the Senate as a result.
Hang on: did you just say Thank God for Roger Ailes? The same Roger Ailes whose unscrupulous behavior with women got him in the very same hot water Weinstein's in?
Someone needs an eye exam.
Are you really recommending that Bannon, who has funded one of the most corrosive, reactionary media conglomerates in our nation,
who stated in an interview that he admires Satan, the prince of darkness, and Cheney,
who admires Lenin for his absolute annihilation of the state by any means necessary,
and who has walked overt white supremacy into the White House and pounded it into a platform plank of the republican party
.... are you really recommending that this guy will have anything at all to do with a 'effective, policy oriented conservative president... , surrounded by people who understand the ways of power' and will both 'negotiate with Democrats and bend his own party his will."
I mean, Ross, Republicans are going to have to face the fact that since the southern strategy they have been cultivating the Bannon revolution. Stephen Miller makes Bannon seem reasonable. Republicans are also going to have to decide where they stand on a truly reactionary , police state, that rolls back women's rights, voting rights, religious freedom, health care for children, and climate protection.
It's one thing to feed the base to get elected on these issues, but now the extremist, reactionary ideology is sitting in the White House, and Bannon is on the flank.
Frankenstein is bursting the restraining straps and getting up from the table, and you, the 'reasonable' voice of the right in the paper of record, are looking to Bannon to find a strong leader? May God help us all...
15
" ... who will bend his own party to his will."
It's telling that Mr. Douthat longs for a Great Leader and clearly assumes this powerful savior of the (perennially racist) Republican Party will be male.
Mr. Douthat, the key problem with the GOP is not that it lacks a Big Guy who can really take charge. Your Party has been splintered and exposed in all sorts of ugly ways now because it lacks heart.
44
Do the Dems have any "heart" at all for working class whites?
Hello Me,
Yes the Democrats do their best to write and support policies that would provide reliable and affordable healthcare to as many citizens as possible (white, black, brown, etc.) and to sustain Medicare and Medicaid; to insure American citizens, and their children, clean water and air; to see that corporations and the wealthy top 1% pay taxes to help everybody else; to support our public schools and make certain that all the students, regardless of their family's income, do get some lunch to eat; to support women's rights and women's health, which requires that contraception be accessible and affordable (half the folk in the "white working class" are female); to guarantee the rights of LGBT teens and adults (plenty of them are white too). Democrats are more likely to support labor unions than Republicans are.
On the campaign trail, Hillary proposed many detailed plans that would help American workers. What did Trump do? Rallies and macho rants and insults.
Do you honestly believe that Trump, McConnell, and Ryan give a hoot about the lives of the white working class? Then (in my opinion) you took the bait.
1
Bannon is intolerable, and he leads with Mercer's money because there is no one else. Trump is in the same category as the two losers he now pushes and we are stuck with him. Listening to Bannon is enough to make Republicans and Democrats to unite and solve the miserable problems we now experience daily, first to urge Trump to resign. Bannon/Mercer brought us here.
7
"O.K., maybe that's all a little much."
No, sir, it's not nearly enough.
6
I know it will be hard, yet I believe it is time we all turn our backs on Trump, Bannon etc. It’s seems that it’s our inability to not look away that feeds this cancer on our Nation. We must find a way to feed what we love, not them
2
If the American people let Mercer and Bannon succeed, it will be the final stage in the transformation of the Republican Party from a traditionally conservative party operating in the framework of our democratic political system, to a collection of extremist nut jobs wreaking havoc onto that system. It will become the spear poised to pierce the heart of American democracy, placed in the hands of those who wish to see it fail.
Are we so determined to see our experiment in self-governance begun over 200 years ago destroyed by such mean and foolish people?
9
Along with Donald Trump, Steve Bannon is one of the biggest dangers to this country to come down the pike in many years. Couple those two with the truly fanatic Republican Base and its clones, and wonder to yourself: "Why did I ever doubt George W. Bush"? The Trump Bunch make W. look statesmanlike. As I have written before: I am very glad to be very old.
17
Why is it "dangerous" for someone to care about working class Americans?
Trump cares about the working class as much as he cares about respecting women.
1
How did the Republicans take over the Southern vote? Between Reconstruction and the civil rights era the Democrats had a solid lock on the South. Richard Nixon implemented the "Southern Strategy."
White supremacists in the South kept the New Deal policies that helped the poor from helping poor blacks. Wage and labor policies specifically excluded agricultural laborers and domestics, who were mostly black. Then the Democrats started supporting equal rights. Nixon seized the opportunity. Reagan started the general election campaign in Philadelphia, MS, where civil rights workers had been murdered. Donald Trump has made the white supremacist tendencies of the Republican party overt. Steve Bannon expects to ride the race hatred to victory.
Until the US deals with the remnants of the white supremacist psyche, these throwbacks will crawl out from under their rocks and disturb the body politic. John Oliver showed an interesting video clip on his latest show in which a white man carrying a confederate flag is screaming at a black man in a suit. The black man is describing why confederate monuments cause fear for some black people. The white man screams that his ancestors fought for the South. When the black man says they were fighting to preserve slavery, the white man screams they were too poor to own slaves.
Don't blame me for supporting the cause of enslaving your ancestors because my ancestors were too poor to own your ancestors.
The South shall rise again.
3
South Boston?
Actually, Ross, that "thing" the Republicans should be looking for, is not a "leader".
First, one must have an idea of what one wants; that's the "idea" part of "ideology".
First you get the idea, THEN you get the "leader".
And, there's the rub.
Republicans don't have "ideas". They have "tax cuts".
They can't be bothered with all that nonsense like "health care", "equality", "functioning schools", that silly "clean air" nonsense, and what in the world are those women whining about NOW???
Republicans spell "religion" as "discrimination".
From where I sit (and, believe me - it's far, far away from where you sit) the Republican Party is right on the mark for where it is supposed to be, given its "ideology". Remember: an "ideology" is not a "philosophy". A "philosophy" at least claims to be concerned with "everything" - an "ideology" makes no such claims. It starts out narrow... and proceeds to get narrower. That's how the Party has devolved: From Nixon, who could at least fake being a statesman; to Reagan, who couldn't fake it but sure made you feel he was sure going to help you.... someday....but he was a glorious puppet, Iran-Contra aside; to "W"; and now Trump.
Trump IS the logical extension of Nixon.
Strip out all the fancy-talk over 50 years, any pretense of caring about anyone but one's self, and you get exactly what you have.
Chaos.
Indifference.
Squabbling.
Active stripping out of this nation.
Stripping out women of any rights.
A"leader"?
Too late.
"Ideas"?
Ditto.
13
Sigh.
The usual commenters will attack Ross as delusional - the Republicans are all cast from the same dark, dare-they-say-it-demonic mode (see Corey Robin). And then Richard will, as he castigates the commenters for failing to see the wisdom of his comments, lash out for the 405th time at the commenters, explaining to them (once again!) that "this is not the way to win over your critics)
People! Wake up! The country is falling apart. There's no time for these silly antics. Don't believe everything you see on the net. We really really are one people. No matter how much you love or hate him, Barack Obama got it right at the 2004 convention. And not just the US ,but the entire planet.
Look, within the next 10 years, the climate will be so verklempt that climate denialism will be available only in 8 track. And perhaps folks here will then look back and wonder why they wasting so much time on hatred and conflict creation.
If you don't do anything else, take some time to craft a comment that might inspire someone to do something to foster greater unity.
3
I suggest Bannon's strategy may indirectly "foster greater unity." By backing extremist candidates in the Republican primaries, Bannon and Mercer make it more likely that center-left Democrats can win Senate seats in states like Arizona or Nevada. We could be seeing reruns of the Claire McCaskell versus Todd Akin Missouri race of 2010.
Sorry, but this is not your grandfather's politics. This genteel, smote them with vocabulary style, reminiscent of a 'Firing Line' segment, is so passe it's era hasn't even been given a name. This is the era of "victory or death"...to the political opponents. Triumph at the polls means no compromises, insult as conversation, twitter as news and a total disdain for governance beyond retribution. Now being born too late is not the author's fault; but if one intends to participate, one will have to choose - which polarized side do you detest more? That's our calculus when voting and thus far we must admit the liberals are far more obnoxious than the conservatives, amd the arsonists are far more appealing than the activists. Alas, we vote to burn it down; feel free to man the water cannons if Sisyphus be your guide.
1
The sad thing is that a version of the problems the R have are the same problems the Dems have. We live in a nowhere world of non politics with a madman with his hand on the button. And no one will stop him.
2
But, Ross, aren’t you a little nervous that Bannon has an authoritarian agenda and that these “cranks” are more nefarious than incompetent? Trump’s victory proves that 63 million Americans are willing to vote for someone who will Make America Great Again just because he says so. We are a society which has evolved into a “blame someone else for my problems” ethos. There will be a Bannon-guy who will play on fears, resentments and ignorance to achieve political power and might be more politically astute than Mr Trump and then God help us!
Not sure why Bannon warrants this much coverage. He has zero credibility, and is well known to be a conspiracy theorist, spreading lies. Of course he, like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and others of their ilk, will always have a certain type of follower, but to give him this platform seems like we buying into something that should be left on the bottom of our shoe.
1
Mr. Douthat, there you have it. Leadership. Direction. Vision. None of which Americans have from their elected senators, representatives, or president. Stephen Bannon's vision would have Roy Moore and right wing insurgents humble Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and produce more Charlottesville confrontations to promote his white ethnicity agenda. Since Bannon sold the president on race-baiting, he'll do the same with Roy Moores across the country. Bannon and his ilk care more about division and disruption than any governing philosophy. And when Bannon guided the GOP nominee to the White House, he knew even then that his man was no leader but a mere vehicle for his populist agenda.
2
The Tea Party, whatever their underlying values (if that is the correct word), essentially kicked the lid off of the GOP's race-baiting, culture war nature, largely suppressed by Reagan's affable personality and the Bush's genuine compassion for individuals. Pandora's Box, filled with anger, distrust, narrow-mindedness, religious zealotry and xenophobia, was wide open, and in walked the moral corruption but marketing genius of Donald Trump and the Rasputin-like Steve Bannon.
Nationalist Populist sounds an awful lot like National Socialist to me. Mr. Douthat may be looking for a leader. Beware the leader with a vision and a lot of anger.
2
Forgive me for dating myself, but as Pogo use to say, "We have met the enemy and it is us." I am a Democrat and in my part of he country (Pensacola) would be labeled a liberal. But I agree with JFK's dscription of the both political parties being like two great rivers with many tributaries. And so Ihave enjoyed banter with my consrevative friends and watching the Republican Conventions in the past until 2016. In those days both parties recognized that problems existed that government had to address but disagreed strongly on the role the federal government should play.
Bannon's tax policy is contrary to every thing Ronald Reagan believed in. To the extent Bannon is saying the rich need to carry a greater burdern I agree with him. But he is really another demagogue falsely ranting that soaking the rich is the solution. And that is simply not true. The Left puts out the same line. The truth is we have to answer JFK's call for sacrifice. We have to make choices. As long as we demand that our leaders make false promises that require no pain to keep, we will get the same results whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge. We need to demand accountability of ourselves as well as our leaders.
The Republican Party is stuck with Trump. Like it or not, he is what the Rebpublicans want. The result Douthat seeks will not be gained in 2018 or 2020. For the sake of the Republican Party and the country, I hope his aspiration is realized some day.
1
Bannon is also against costly US military "involvements" overseas. And against offshoring entire industries.
Ross, you speak of "the void at the heart of the contemporary Republican Party, the vacuum that somebody, somehow needs to fill." Why does somebody need to fill that void? You identified that void in your previous paragraph: "white-identity politics and the fear of liberalism". Nobody needs to fill that void. That void is something to be ashamed of, not given voice to.
5
Bannon helped to create Trumpism which means liars trying to get you to believe an alternate version of reality with no basis in facts and then publicly shaming you for saying that the would-be emperor has no clothes. Bannon is a Trumpist.
You really had me going until you said "tax hikes on the rich." There is no possibility that anybody in the GOP is going to support such an egalitarian measure and Bannon and those he supports are not exceptions.
Bannon is just a Rush Limbaugh clone. He likes to dress up his opinion as facts and sound knowledgeable when he deliberately obfuscates reality and puts down everyone who doesn't believe him. I would say "yawn" except that Trump has his finger on the nuclear trigger. We should all be very afraid; he has never been to war but he likes to make things blowup.
3
Ross, what is it that your Republican Party stands for? Ever lower taxes on everyone except for the really poor people who need to pay some more taxes so that they have some "skin in the game", mathematical gerrymandering so that with 45% of the vote you can control 55% of the seats, making it more and more difficult to vote instead of easier, a constantly growing military that is never big enough, constant war, zero tolerance for protest, zero tolerance for drugs, zero tolerance for science and in economics deficits that really matter, but only if a Democrat is president. And so you win with gerrymandering and racism and by sowing division instead of unity. You Republicans ruined what was once a really great country.
2
In the 1920's fascist movements in Europe challenged liberal democracies, many newly formed in the wake of WWI. These new governments were mostly coalitions that included socialists and other left parties and were overwhelmed by the world wide depression.
Fascists saw these governments as weak, too accommodating to the left and without clear direction, or lacking "greatness." First Italy fell, then Germany and then Spain. Their success emboldened other fascist movements all across Europe. The rest as they say is history.
But Bannon's movement seeks to claim governmental power not from liberals, but from a conservative surge that already rules all three branches of government and nearly two thirds of the state houses. There are no leftists or liberal to contend with and the power of the sate is fully in the hands of reactionaries.
So the only real appeal that he has left is race. And therein lies his real danger. Candidates that Bannon supports are really no different from those already in power. But race stirs up the pot. It provides the convenient scapegoat. Look at Trump's demand that black NFL players abandon the constitution and bend to his will. Worse will surely come.
Bannon, and for that matter Trump resemble the internal fights with the National Socialists of Germany that ended with the assassination of Ernst Rhome.
We are not a fascist state, at least not yet, but it's clear where both Trump's and Bannon's sympathies lie. We are living in dangerous times.
291
I just finished reading Paul Preston's excellent history of the Spanish Civil War. The parallels between the US now and Spain in the 1930s are frightening.
I think the football players should stop playing football right now and start getting ready to do real battle with Trump and Bannon's troops.
The Republican Party has made this bed and unfortunately for now the entire country has to lie in it. There are many origin stories -- Gingrich's scorched earth approach, McConnell's defeat Obama at all costs strategy, the gerrymandering that made state and federal legislative districts comfortable only for extremists-- but the foundation of all of them was the wink and nod that the GOP leadership always gave to the racists -- yes, deplorables -- in their base. Eventually this group found a leader who would give them more than a wink and a nod, but instead wave their banner high, and took over the party. The GOP is now a shipwreck with a drunken admiral at the helm. Let's just hope they don't sink the whole country.
4
The GOP has proven itself an empty shell and a farce ever since the second Bush ran for President.
What’s amazing is how long this clown car of a party has managed to hang on, by every crooked and corrupt means possible.
Ultimately, I lay the blame for its survival not on the GOP itself, though, but on the equally sclerotic and self-serving nature of the Democratic Party.
There are many equivalences that are false in this case, but one is true: neither of the major parties in the US represent the citizens of this country in any way that is remotely democratic. Plutocracy is thoroughly in charge.
The election of Trump has been the first stage in the populist revolt against this fact; ridding ourselves of plutocracy will, however, clearly require so much more.
I doubt we, the people at this point are really up to it. Ahead of us lies a generation or two more of slavery, and then civilizational collapse. After that, the deluge.
2
"The GOP has proven itself an empty shell and a farce"
And yet most of us still hail it as a "Grand Old Party."
The way you did just now.
Don't.
Bannon sees himself as a modern-day western Shiva, dedicated to "the deconstruction of the administrative state.” To expect him to create a new governing coalition dedicated to the rule of law misses his entire purpose.
Douthat correctly notes that the proposed revolution promised by Bannon merely returns one to an "empty, race-baiting culture war." Cops can shoot black people with impunity and anyone protesting that is called a racist. And these days their patriotism is also called into question, even as Trump has shady dealings with Russians and calls for them to hack into Clinton's emails. Whatever happened to patriotism while issuing that odious call, I wonder.
This analysis overlooks another important Bannon/Trump contribution - misogyny. After all this is the man who claimed that he can get his way with women because he is a start. What Trump proudly proclaimed many years ago, a message that surfaced last October just prior to the election, has been the modus operandi of Ailes, O'Reilly, Weinstein and many yet to be discovered lecherous men.
It is now clear that when Trump promised to "drain the swamp" he intended to drain it of all the good men only leaving behind the likes of Bannon, Miller, Mnuchin, Pence and other sycophants.
2
"Our system isn't really all that republican anymore; it's imperial...."
Actually it's oligarchical. An incompetent emperor wannabe like Trump has to serve the oligarchy to score points. And the points he wants to score are not a change in policy or a vision of American - other than his formulaic (-1 X Obama = Trump) - but essentially ratings. We have the first Nielsen President.
Bannon is a nihilist who believes himself to be the smartest creature ever. As he shed skins and philosophies over the years, annual molts of previous discarded belief systems, he grew in his power to spread his voice. When you dig deep down, Bannon seems to be mostly for Bannon, with an overlay of nationalism and a wallpapering of populism spread over it all. He has not real plans either, that will create jobs or change the trajectory of global corporate interests, mostly because there is a lot of things that are simply not going to change.
Populism is hollow and leaderless because behind the words, there is not set of realistic actions. Hot air, vanity and showmanship appealing to emotions and bound to ultimately disappoint. When you rile up the crowd with false hope and rhetoric, and disappoint them, unrest is sure to follow.
1
Republican dogma has failed. There's no need nor place for the party's philosophy of laissez-faire, small government mixed with social conservatism and ascendent religiosity. It's over. The country needs real solutions to its problems and to truly let people be who they want to be, and all Republicans offer is a stranglehold on power and more economic inequality. Douthat is one of the most dishonest commentators out there because he obviously has the intellect to understand, but can't face reality. He thinks the Tea Party or Trump or Bannon is the problem, but meanwhile his party is in the paper bag it can't lie its way out of. The answer is democracy. Let people vote, make it easy for them to vote and let the chips fall where they may.
2
It's actually fairly simple. The Republicans have expertly gerrymandered and voter suppressed themselves into Congressional majorities, but their policies , be they the quasi-libertarianism of Ryan, the cronyism of McConnell or the racist nationalism of Bannon, mercifully do not command a majority of the country. That is the source of their legislative failures. They are trying to remake America into an image which enjoys only minority, and a shrinking minority at that, support. That's the definition of a fool's errand whose wages are Trump.
1
What's going on right now with the Republicans is a marvelous opportunity for the Democrats. What a pity that they are so disorganized, greedy, inept, and/or self-centered to realize it and capitalize on it.
The old Democratic Party - you know, the one that could more or less honestly claim to be "The Party of the People" - is needed more than ever. Sorry it's gone missing.
2
The current populist nationalist movement is supported by people who want the government to give them more stuff. The group is made up of individuals who want the government to give them, individually, more stuff. These people are fearful that too much of the government's stuff is going to other people. They all understand that they cannot force the government to give them stuff individually, but if they eliminate people who do not look like them, people of color for example, there will be more stuff to go around for the people that do look like them - you know, other white people. And since these individuals are also white, they get more stuff. It is all about getting stuff.
It is easy to assume that populism is not a normal reaction to income and wealth inequality, but as these inequalities increase, we can expect more of it. People who are under economic pressure are much more likely to become bitter, selfish and more than a little irrational. In the end they mindlessly vote for candidates that promise them stuff.
1
"The only fitting reaction to the news that Steve Bannon intends to support primary challengers against Republican incumbents from sea to shining sea is a terrible, almost Teutonic sort of world-weariness."
And, to think, you helped bring this mess about. Nice going, Ross.
2
To the "common mix of ambition and resentment" cited by Mr. Douthat as the feeble glue holding the core of GOP "reformism," please add nihilism.
By definition, nothing good ever comes of nihilism because it offers nothing but burning down the edifice of civil society after smashing all the furniture and bric-a-brac. What then? Don't bother me with trivial details!
What constructive vision has Steve Banning ever articulated? None that I can see, unless building an infernal border wall is deemed "constructive."
2
Bannon hasn't changed and neither has Trump. Actually, Ross, you are expressing buyer's remorse. Everything you now decry was there to see all through the primaries and the presidential campaign. And you know it. But he said he liked your God, and you loved him for it. Next time, look at the broader picture.
13
Touche Ross. It's about governance. The one thing that true believers don't and apparently won't ever get is that after the election, the hard part comes: governing (like the hard part of a marriage starts after we sat "I do").
Governance requires give and take, and the lobbyists tossed out on their ear. It requires discussion, not belittlement. It requirs openess , and serious well thought ideas-noit this warmed over Ayn Rand high school nonsense.
It requires actually listening to and then acceeding to the wishes of the governed-us, the people. When radicals of any side, (in this case it is far right) get into office, they fall flat on their face.
Compromise, diplomacy, the art of the possible-that's the deal in governing. Rhetorical nonsense that tells people only what they want to hear: that's failure . We have failure, and the Bannon led white nationalists will also fall flat on their face, sooner if the demographics keep changing like they are.
When your focus is on cutting taxes because it benefits you personally, living high off of the government, while you simultaneously criticize it for being big and bloated and cut social programs, while refusing to provide birth control options to those who need them the most, you have the GOP platform.
4
Bannon has called for higher taxes on the rich.
With respect to Bannon, a couple of quotes come to mind, the first from Bannon, the second from the Steele Dossier:
"America's built on our citizens. Look at the 19th century. What built America is called the American System. "
--Steve Bannon on 60 Minutes
"...a senior Russian financial official said the TRUMP operation should be seen in terms of PUTIN's desire to return to Nineteenth Century 'Great Power' politics anchored upon countries' interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War Two, S/he had overheard PUTIN talking in this way to close associates on several occasions."
-- Steele dossier, p.2.
Seemingly, both Bannon and Putin have a common passion for a return to a nationalistic 19th century. And both see that return to be promoted by undermining current Western norms. Toss in Trump's love (financial?) affair with Putin/Russia, along with many of his and friend's acts, and recent activities by all three make sense.
I supposed our upcoming elections will measure of how many wish to cancel much of the last two centuries.
1
Why don't we just cut to the chase. Give the people what they want and go from Republic to Empire. Make Trump Emperor and break the country into feudal fiefdoms with petty satraps as tyrants answerable to Trump. We already have a line of succession. The little Trumps can poison each other off along the way. I'm sure Fox News can spin out how this will fit into our Constitution as they and the NRA have rationalized how an 18th century muzzle loading flintlock is now a fully automatic. And coal is king again. Bring back the bubonic plague while we are at it.
What Trump/Bannon et al have to fear is the rise of a more informed populism. Yes, the natives are restless, but they have begun looking around and thinking, "what is the way things should be, but are not? How can I help?"
At this propitious moment along come Sanders/Warren et al with their drumbeat, "the emporer has no clothes." Not Trump, not Hillary; they represent an empire that has failed. Trump's cabinet is just an in your face version of Hillary's Wall St. friends. Their bottom line is their mantra, and the devil take the hindmost.
And it's dawning on us that all this humongous military budget cannot make us ruler of the world. It does enrich the private contractors, but they are not us. Other countries are leaving us in the dust with humanitarian laws like the Paris Accords, healthcare for all, and free education.
Republicans must consider whether they want to continue to empower global monopolies or ordinary conservative citizens who don't want more than their share.
Others have pointed out that Bannon and Cruz share the same sugar daddy, who pushes the same ideology as the Kochs and the rest of their ilk: "I've got mine and the rest of you can fend for yourselves."
Galbraith's words were never more accurate: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
87
Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter: these people, esp. Bannon have little ideological principles other than "I got mine...."
There's little difference between Bannon, Cruz, the Mercers, the Koch Bros. and all of the other oligarchal families.
When are conservatives like Ross Douthat going to recognize that their twin fetishes of small government and tax cuts helped set the table for Trumpism?
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Reagan.
For conservatives, government became the problem all of the time.
It was President Bush who derided Reagan’s economic program (supply side theory) as “voodoo economic.”
For decades conservatives have complained about and derided the federal government and supported economic policies which have help contribute to the upward shift in wealth and the stagnation of the middle and working class.
As Charlie Sykes has pointed out, the conservative MSM (Fox, right wing talk radio, Breitbart etc.) streadily eroded people’s ability to distinguish fact from opinion and helped create the hermetically sealed world in which Trumpian lies become “alternative facts.”
Now conservatives are chagrined to witness the nihilistic fury they help to unleash in the person of Steve Bannon.
353
Well said!
Good comment, Michael. I'd add that Reagan's call to arms was meant to be modified in time to "Better government" or "More efficient government" which left and right agree on but leaves open how to achieve that. The problem is that the right never knew how to shift gears and just continued to burn the villages in order to save them. Now Republicans are faced with a generation of social arsonists raised solely on fire and brimstone.
1
A government should never be smaller or weaker than the businesses it governs . . . Old Chinese proverb, or just something I read.
1
Yes Ross, the person in the Oval office needs to have leadership skills;they also need to have an overall grasp on reality and set realistic goals to achieve things that will improve things for the majority of US citizens. On top of that, the Commander in Chief also needs a team around him/her who operate on mutual trust and respect; by now it should be clear to anyone with an IQ higher than a yogurt that Trump has none of these things.
To make matters worse, not only has big money taken over the overall goal-setting - tax cuts for the rich and throwing those pesky regulations in the shredder - but they own enough of the media to enable them to convince enough people to vote against their own best interests simply by lying to them and paying for propaganda. When real news sites call out these lies the real news is flagged as fake by the fake news organizations
I'm not sure how it will happen but we need to get the money out of politics and Citizen's United needs to be overturned. We also need to get the religion out of politics and we need to ban gerrymandering.
Only then will we make America great again.
4
When one's objective is disruption, which is what Bannon seeks, organization isn't possible. The one thing that can strengthen a Democratic Party that lacks a unified vision is it being galvanized by dysfunctional, dystopian quasi-Republicans like Bannon/Mercer.
1
Republicans should be frightened of something more than the consequences to their party's hijacking at the ballot box. There is a price already being paid that effects the entire nation, both at home and abroad, as America careens towards a madness fueled by ignorance, hate, and fear. Even the Democratic Party seems so mesmerized and terrified that they've become defensive, reacting almost entirely to the clear and present danger from the nationalist right instead of having a cohesive vision of their own.
Is this a nightmare from which we will awaken or is it a permanent change of direction for the great American experiment? We are more than merely forewarned. We are on a new path and we had better find our way back to a course defined by our better angels and find it soon.
1
"...ignorance, hate, and fear." And greed, of course, which is the controlling force driving ignorance, hate, and fear.
The only good thing arising from the Trump and Bannon ascendancy is the country now can see in its unvarnished truth that the GOP is openly a radical white supremacists cadre that openly has contempt for free elections (e.g., it’s extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression initiatives), science (e.g., climate science denial and opposition to contraceptives) and basic norms of governance (e.g., McConnell and Ryan destroying normal order to strip tens of millions of health care to fund tax cuts for the rich and appointing radical extremist judges).
All thinking Americans now can see who the GOP are and their essential contempt for our freedoms. Party of Lincoln? Not anymore. They’re now the party of the Confederacy.
7
It's clear that Bannon now sees himself as some kind of kingmaker. Were I running against his hand-picked candidate, my tactic would be to ask the electorate, over and over, whether they wanted Steve Bannon's marionette as their Congressman or Senator.
1
And what would this leader look like? In 2008 you had a pretty good one. A strong conservative with decades of experience working across the aisle. But the loons on the right drove him crazy and foisted Palin on him. In 2012 you had a picture perfect candidate who had to run against his own record as a successful governor time and time again.
Maybe neither could have beaten Obama in any case (I as an independent certainly would have voted for Obama anyway). But even in 2016, where was this leader? And if one emerges, how will she/he avoid the lunacy the right threw at McCain and Romney?
1
I recommend you watch the HBO movie "Game Change" (on Amazon) or read the book by the same name. Sarah Palin was not "foisted" on John McCain by "loons on the right." She was proposed by his campaign staff, particularly the usually sane Steve Schmidt, now a commentator for MSNBC. The staff saw little that would impede Obama from marching to victory, so they went with the "game change" strategy of picking Palin. They thought she would mobilize conservatives and evangelicals, especially women, and breathe new life into McCain's stagnant campaign.
I would be pleased if a leader emerged who brought Republicans back from this nihilism. But I'm still furious at the GOP––the cynical leaders, the opportunistic office holders and consultants, the talk show hosts and media executives who peddled lies just for the cash, and the more sensible voters who didn't resist it all––for bringing us to this terrible place.
Talk about lacking patriotism. We are now in a low-level civil war, with a horrific president, and it's nearly impossible to see a way back.
5
Bannon himself may be distasteful and even despicable, but he has tapped into the very real disaffection many Americans have for institutional politics as we have long known it. No doubt, past firebrands have ultimately moved the dial and moved into the inner circles of power. Goldwater, once regarded as a crank, became an "elder statesman." Nixon, long regarded as a devious individual, became president, though validated that characterization by ultimately succumbing to his inner demons. Reagan, once considered somewhat of an extremist, was elected twice to the presidency and is spoken of by many as a candidate for Mount Rushmore.
Bannon, however, is a special case. Like Trump, he appears to be a power hungry, a slash-and-burn type. He comes across as someone imbued with a heavy dose of anger and resentment, a boatload of money, and a predisposition for agitation. There appears to be no limit to the collateral damage he is willing to visit upon his growing list of enemies.
The risk for the Bannons of this world is that Americans have an increasingly short attention span, and a rapidly decreasing tolerance for people who promise the stars but don't deliver. Results matter.
Bannon may or may not be able to deliver on his promises, as the vast majority of Americans appear to want a government that may be smaller and less costly, but one that still works in their best interests. Outliers like Bannon don't get that. They want to burn the whole house down.
Sorry, but Bannon "gets" much more than you do. He is against the offshoring of entire industries that destroyed millions of American lives and communities. He is against low taxes on the rich, and he is against pointless world cop activity, which the US can no longer afford. Why are those ideas bad?
We keep hearing "Trumpism" but other than bullying and bad manners, it stands for nothing. Perhaps that is of a piece with the rest of current day Republicanism - which stands for little as well. Neither Trumpists nor regular Republicans are capable of governing.
4
The only reason Steve Bannon is out front these days and not ensconced in his DC townhouse is that when the winds of change were blowing in the Oval Office, little Stevie ran to Robert Mercer to yet again beg for money for himself so that he could maintain the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed to. Bannon was a good pairing with Trump on the campaign trail but both men failed in actual governance.
So Bannon is now leading the Mercers in their quest for a fight with the Koch Brothers and their ilk. Is this a fight between philosophies or just billionaires who throw money at politicians to achieve greater wealth and influence? Why should the ordinary Jane and John Doe voter care what these rich men want?
We want our vote to count for something. We want our vote to actually be counted, verified and tallied.
Trump's presidency is a beacon across our land that small 'd' democracy no longer works. The right to vote has been taken away from too many. The right to vote has been nullified and rendered useless by gerrymandering and hidden computer systems. Trump represents the modern day version of a robber baron.
And Bannon thinks that his faux populist, nationalist 'theories' can be pushed through with racism, bigotry and xenophobia.
1
I was right with you until you talked of the "Republican reformer." Then the coffee spurting from my nose distracted me. Trump's aim is solely to vindictively destroy the Obama legacy. The establishment Republicans' aim is to hobble government to the point it is powerless, and maintain it only to the point that it will protect the wealth and property of the powerful domestically and internationally. Mr. Douthat, you are confusing "reform" with "reactionary."
6
Is this what instability creates? Is a "conservative" pundit calling for a great leader who can mobilize the masses and channel the discontent that has been nurtured for more than a generation?
Do "conservatives" really want a more competent Trump?
You reap what you sow! It's probably been written a thousand times or more in this paper Ross about the Republican Party. It has spawned the Tea Party, Trump, Bannon, Price, Pruitt, DeVos, and dozens of others that have no other agenda except taking a wrecking ball to a previous Administration. And in doing so people like Roy Moore get elected.
And the result is; the Republicans are in the abyss and it may take a generation or more to climb out. If ever!
One can say the Democrats are going too far left but the principles of the Party remain in tact. Healthcare for all, a decent wage, better education, protection of our civil rights, etc. Rather lofty goals, but honorable ones.
9
Looking for a leader? My greatest fear is that right now there is person who is much smarter, more calculating, more ambitious, more demagogic, more ruthless and more authoritarian than Donald Trump. This is someone who is learning from the Trump playbook but is shrewd enough to avoid his glaring mistakes. This person is out there, somewhere between Silicon Valley and Washington D.C.
2
Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
The Republican Party my father supported generally supported civil rights, while southern Democrats resisted. The Democratic Party my mother supported was for workers' rights, Social Security, and Medicare, while northern and western Republicans resisted. (There were few southern Republicans back then.)
The big change came when one Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, got the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed and nominated a black justice to sit on the Supreme Court. That's when the Republicans grabbed the racism issue, and they've been running on it ever since.
If there ever was a "principled" conservatism in the Republican Party, it's not there any more. It was jettisoned long ago in the name of victory uber alles. America will eventually get past this, but the shame of it will forever taint the Republican Party. Surely Dad is rolling over in his grave.
403
My dad, too. Great post.
1
My dad and mom are rolling right along with him ( and occasionally, I even take a turn-because I remember the 'before' . . .
1
Looking for a leader? Please. The 2016 campaign started out with seventeen Republican contenders. Instead of a stately leader rising to the top, it became a mad rush to the bottom. Made all the more ironic by the weakness of a Democratic Party alternative. No, for a truly populist Republican who actually delivered on what Trump has so far only promised, you have to go back to Eisenhower who had the massive infrastructure project of the interstate highway system built. On the Democratic side you'd have to go back to Jack Kennedy, who challenged us to go to the Moon before the end of the decade, and we did. He also was far better at foreign policy, avoiding a nuclear catastrophe instead of trying to provoke one. If that leader is out there, she or he hasn't manifested themselves yet, but I hope they do, and soon. How much more of this present dysfunction can we take?
6
Basically, the great American experiment is failing. We are stuck in mud and there is no way out. The design of the American institution by a few great white men does have its historical background but we live in a different time now. I doubt the founding fathers ever dreamed about a diverse nation with white people as a minority group. But it is happening. I am very troubled by those people (originalist) who insist that the Constitution should be kept frozen. It doesn't make any sense to me. We set rules and we should change them when they become out of date. The nine Justices are not helping. Seriously, how could anybody think corporations are people too?! They might reach to the conclusion based on legal argument but what about common sense? This nation is a mess and they are a big part of the reason. The social fabric is broken and it will become worse and worse. Who doesn't want the good old days back? But this is a changed nation and we need to get real and be more realistic.
How about some fresh air from people like John Hickenlooper? How about let people who were entrepreneurs run this nation? We need common-sense people. Say no to extremists from both parties. Enough is enough.
2
Good job, Mr. Douthat. I wish the self-proclaimed conservatives in Congress would take their oath to support and defend the US Constitution more seriously than their lust for power.
1
Thought provoking. My thought is that a lot of this, especially the conclusion, is applicable to the Liberals, too. Liberal populism for all its potential strength now lacks: a leader.
If this is true: "Our politics are probably too polarized, our legislative branch too gridlocked ..." then the government we have is the accurate representation that Americans in a broad sense just don't like each other, we are in some way two nations for the first time since just before the Civil War. The checks & balances system the Founders designed is fine when you are as we were then, many nations acting as interest factions. But if you are just two factions at clear odds, the thing breaks down under the strain. To paraphrase Orwell, Many legs good, two legs bad.
1
"elect a few cranks and gadflies who will make Mitch McConnell’s life more difficult." - sounds like a good start to me. But please, Ross, take the time to recognize the culpability of your fellow "conservative" essayists in promoting the original white identity President, the sainted Ronnie Reagan, and the $18 trillion deficit his tax policies have given us. For all his flaws and the costs of investment in a Great Society, Lyndon Johnson produced balanced budgets. No president has since.
1
I am a dual nationality committed egalitarian social democrat( something I have learned to appreciate as a citizen of one of those dreaded Northern European countries with prosperous, healthy, well educated happy people( who don't fear their children will be slaughtered in their first grade classroom). But even I, miss the days of sound solid conservative policies and compromise. Why can't the republicans find a better way? Are they ruled by the Mob?
"Especially because the would-be senators he’s recruiting are a mix of cynics and fanatics who seem to share no coherent vision, just a common mix of ambition and resentment"
This is Bannon and Trump, two guys who made money and thought it would make them popular with the right people. It didn't, and look where we are. Bannon and Trump aren't populist as much as they're angry at the in-crowd in New York for not naming them most popular. Smart and rich as they are, there is a glass ceiling they can't break no matter how many votes they get in Clay County, Kentucky and they know it. They may put their arms around the Ray Moores of the world, but they are always looking to see if the cool kids in New York are watching them.
2
The problem here -- as much as I agree with the column -- is the people being led more than the leaders. We are so ungovernable. We can't even agree enough on guns to *try to stop mass killings. We don't listen to each other and we live in echo chambers. We don't want leaders. We want people who affirm us and stroke our ego and make us feel better about ourselves as a nation.
1
I think making it easier to vote and encouraging everyone to vote instead of suppressing the vote, getting rid of the electoral college in favor of a popular vote for the presidency, ending gerrymandering by drawing fair congressional districts would be good ways to begin to end the Bannon "Revolution" and release the country from the Republicans' grip on the American government they hold in disdain. Bannon, Trump and the Republicans know this well.
2
"Instead I would be looking for the thing that too many people deceived themselves into believing Trump might be, and that Bannonite populism for all its potential strength now lacks: a leader."
But perhaps it was not that they "deceived" themselves. Trump did firmly oppose the Iraq war, starting with 2004. He did inveigh against regime change. He did say that we should work WITH Russia rather than against it. And even his wall is a sort of insight. We cannot address the issue of the present undocumented immigrants unless we have an ironclad guarantee that there will not be more.
He did not turn out to be a leader. He is a businessman but a dictatorial one and not at all the salesman which a president MUST be when speaking to America and to Congress.
But his election did not take place because people deceived themselves. The Democrats had absolutely NOTHING to offer. Obama continued Bush's policy of regime change and sent even more troops to Afghanistan. He thought of half of Americans as "deplorables", a word which Hillary did eventually use.
Trump is the Democrats' gift to America.
2
Ross, if you think the GOP (Trump, Mitchell, Ryan, et al.) is capable of legitimate governance with health care for all, draining the swamp, freedom, liberty, and justice for all under the law, I have some affidavits attesting to the Russia-Trump Campaign's innocence to sell you.
3
Bannon is counting on Russia's continuing support to influence our elections--this is the basis of his confidence in fighting against Republican incumbents. This is the promised deconstruction of the administrative state--chaos and divisiveness designed to destroy American democracy. Let's see what google, facebook and twitter will do to combat russian meddling now. So far, we are seeing no intention of preventing russian fake news at all.
1
Isn't this all to say that the Republican grassroots doesn't know what it wants? They know they are angry, and believe that the country has fundamentally changed in ways they don't like, but cannot arrive at a vision for what the country should be that addressed the problems that exist. Until they do move from negative vision to a positive one, we, all of us, will be stuck in a political holding pattern.
2
This is a very good analysis of the contemporary political predicament in the United States. But it is as frightening as it is trenchant. There's no leadership from mainstream Republicans. The populist elements of the right have momentum but no ability to implement meaningful legislative policies. The center has little support policy wise. I think that the left and progressives are still vocal but lack reach. Mr. Douthat is spot on about Bannon and his overall analysis, and I find it unnerving.
1
This is what happens when your party's only competence is in winning elections but has no idea how to actually govern. This worked well for Republicans when they were the minority opposition party but is working much less well now that they are in power. They have no overarching unified governing principles and even less of an ability to accept compromise. The American voter should recognize this and separate them from the levers of power but what we learned this last election cycle is that the American voter isn't that bright either.
7
Republican gridlock caused this. If bipartisan deal making had been allowed during the Obama administration rather than temper tantrums that caused a government shutdown and a downgrade in our credit rating the Republican party wouldn't be in its current mess. Extremists only win when enough people are frustrated with the status quo that they feel they have nothing to lose.
Even if Bannon is largely unsuccessful all he needs is a few victories to become a thorn in the Republican party. Just look at how inconvenient Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have been when McConnell has been trying to pass legislation like the ACA repeal.
All is not lost. Republicans still have time to win voters good will by working on bipartisan legislation that addresses current concerns. If they refuse to do so than they deserve whatever happens in the next few elections.
2
During the Nixon era, Republicans pursuing economic freedom decided to court Democrats with low interest in economic issues but high interest in social issues: specifically constraining religious, racial, sexual freedoms - the so-called southern strategy.
Now Steve Bannon wants to break away those "social freedom constrainers", effectively Trumpsters, from the economic freedom Republicans. But if more of less, 50% of US voters vote Republican and the Trumpsters are ~66% of total Republicans, doesn't that indicate that Bannon can only garner 33% support nationally?
2
Yes, we have had an Imperial Presidency, out of necessity, since WWII. But, we still labor under the illusion that Congress is Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It is inevitable that since we have become a multi cultural nation, the push, pull from all sides will create gridlock.
Bannon is a whole different animal from the Tea Party. The Tea Party went after congressional seats based on an ideology--a noxious one in my book, but nonetheless a somewhat coherent platform of what they were seeking to accomplish. Bannon by contrast seems to be going after congressional seats purely to destroy the existing order and with no coherent answer (or at least none that I can discern) to the obvious question, "Then what?"
Conceivably--and his support of Roy Moore would support this theory--he is looking to establish a white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian Protestant state with impervious borders, closed to nonWASPs, foreign trade and the needs of our allies or the rest of the world. But his rhetoric sounds more like destruction for destruction's sake--with no discernible goal beyond dancing on America's grave.
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Not stating his goals is the key to Bannon's success. By inciting and fomenting anger, he allows the mob to fill in the negative space themselves, and interpret his policy as the most poisonous thing that scratches their ugly itch. It is an unhinged, yet brilliant strategy, and it got Trump elected.
1
Christian, maybe. Protestant, no. Bannon is that most bizarre of religionists, a nonpracticing traditional Catholic.
The Italian anarchists talked about the phoenix rising out of its ashes, which never happened, but anyway ...
Yes indeed, a very good column Ross. To exist, a democratic political system must have balance. That is, and has been, missing. The question is how to recover our senses as a nation.
Stepping into the neutral arena means we have a better view point to assess the damage. Neither a liberal nor a conservative then has to stand above the labels and provide leadership for all, not just whites. Can this happen?
1
The Republican Party harvests the poisonous fruit of decades of embracing Nixon's political methods of pitting aggrieved voters against bogeymen, usually outsiders in terms of skin color, religion, or cultural beliefs. For all the many failings of the Democratic Party it has made honest attempts to embrace our nation's diversity and to bring people together. The Republican Party's embrace of divisiveness has now become intramural. While fascinating to watch, it is horrible for our nation's future.
Successful leadership is fundamentally about the integrity and vision that unites and motivates people to work together for a cause that benefits the family, the community, the nation, the world of nations.
Religious, political, and business leaders for the most part are not the ones who will lead us into the next stage of our collective development on the planet. It will be the emerging science of Ivolution theory: a theory that describes how humans evolve in Self-consciousness, and why we as humans appear so divided when in fact we are all apples at different stages of development on the tree of life.
2
Steve Bannon has publicly criticized the US endless, ruinous addiction to playing world cop. He has called for higher taxes on the rich. He points out that for the past 40 years the GOP (and Dems) have waged economic war on working class Americans. I agree with him on all 3 points, and just because Mr. Bannon says something, that doesn't automatically make it false. It's sad that the only person in EITHER party sticking up for working class Americans appears to be Steve Bannon.
2
I would hide if I were you too. There are much more honorable ways to address the three issues that you present. Bannon injects only hateful destruction.
2
This is one of the first times I’ve ever seen Mr. Douthar not pivot in the middle of the piece to blame liberals for the current state of affairs.
Some of us would like to see what a moderate conservative who puts country over party looks like.
At 55 years old, I fear that that will never happen again. Charlie Sykes is correct, the right has lost its mind.
5
Here is another Douthat column that completely ignores the most powerful ringmasters in the GOP elephant circus and pretends their whips carry no sting.
Trump came in with promises of enacting populist policies, but he never lifted a finger to actually fulfill these promises. Instead, Trumpcare was designed only to shrink the federal healthcare budget as much as Republicans thought they could get away with- completely contradicting Trump's campaign promises of a health care bill that would cover everybody.
Now Trump pursues a tax overhaul that would deprive the federal government of trillions of dollars of revenue for the benefit of the before mentioned ringmasters.
Isn't it clear that the ultimate goal here is to starve the federal government so that it cannot afford a populist agenda or even the social programs already enjoyed and supported by most voters, such as Social Security and Medicare?
Bait and switch is the only strategy that can be used to force an agenda down the throats of American voters that is the opposite of what they wish for.
If Douthdat would like to see a Republican party that honestly pursues a conservative agenda beyond the dismantling of popular government programs, he should identify the powers that are actually snapping the whips that control the party.
4
Those of us who are shackled to, but cannot participate in, u.s. politics feel as though we are looking over the wall of the asylum. But the asylum surrounds us and we are enclosed within its outer walls in a tenuous safe zone from which there is no escape.
1
Want to know why the Republican brand is so empty? The party is controlled by two groups with agendas that counter the spirit of individuality that build this country. Those two groups are Christian Conservatives advancing an agenda which leads us to a theocracy and the uber rich advancing a no tax policy that allows them to control all the money. These agendas don't seem to get in each other's way, they have co existed for quite a while.
255
"the spirit of individuality" was and is a myth. by comparison slavery was much more tangibly what the country was built upon, i.e. during the first two thirds of its existence.
1
There is no natural alignment between the Wall Street Republicans and the Wall Mart Republicans. The former pays the latter for votes with guns and abortion restrictions, and both hate each other.
1
If there was a meaningful conservative agenda for the country and yes, the globe, it was radically compromised and left to waste with the GOP's Faustian (ironically) deal with Racism and extreme evangelical Christianity. It was exacerbated by big money of the Koch's, Mercer's and their ilk, and torn at the fabric of political conversations with the rise of Newt Gingrich and character assassination as the core to attaining political power.
Leadership is required but not leadeship that can "get things done" in the ideologically compromised and narrow perspective of Bannon and the Trump world, but leadership that can forge an agenda anchored in well conceived values, that recognizes the importance of governing with the interests of the entire nation, and with a serious appreciation of global issues a foreign policy that is coherently framed and implemented.
4
Yes, a leader would be nice. But since we are unable to define a wise and beneficial version of Conservatism, could we have a leader without an ideological agenda?
1
Yes, the Republicans need a leader. But a leader needs followers; people who might share and believe in a credible message beyond the palaver of current Republican incomplete ideas about independence, liberty, and American goals and aspirations. The leader Republicans need has to have more than charisma. He needs a foundation of beliefs and ideas which will appeal to the Republican constituency and beyond. I don't see that leader nor the constituency emerging anytime soon.
There is no such thing is an effective, policy-oriented conservative - well, unless you back to the monarchy, or rule by philosopher kings.
Republicans and their wealthy paymasters (either the extremely rich or corporations) have mastered the power game, the ability to polarize, pit one person against another, and to gerrymander. But because they serve private ends, their public ideas are based on distortions and lies.
Reality wins in the end. The American people may not, but Reality will.
2
Our leading pundits are still bewitched by the assumption that Trump and Bannon are to some degree Republicans. They are not. Both are authoritarians determined to gain power using the convenient fiction there is a Republican Party dedicated to something other than service to the very wealthy. While both Trump and Bannon are perfectly willing to keep tossing bones to the fundamentalist Republican base, and both will happily keep enriching the richest, their goal is authoritarian power. The party system is an obstacle, and they're succeeding in swiftly removing it, in part because too many of our supposedly qualified onlookers haven't yet grasped what's happening, despite the lessons of history and the mounds of evidence both men provide almost hourly that they're committed to destruction of government as we have known it.
Yes, ours is an imperial government and looking more and more like the Russian oligarchy every day.
7
Here's my sense of the American zeitgeist at the moment. There is no fervor to embrace the neoliberalism that drives the GOP donor class. Nor is there a tsunami of support for the social democracy that Bernie champions. Folks by and large are not gun fetishists, but they understand that guns have a place in some lives, especially in rural areas. A majority of Americans think abortion neither should be banned nor should be unregulated, especially in the later stages of pregnancy. The DACA Dreamers should be made welcome, but the country can't afford a completely open door. Free trade is good, but its downsides should be addressed. The Democrats are right to insist on a society free of prejudice, but in their condemnations they paint with too broad a brush. And so on. What the country needs is a leader or set of leaders able to rally the folks with these views, getting them to the polls and forcing to the sidelines the single-issue ideologues and all-or-nothing crowd who, it sometimes seems, would rather have a dictator who agrees with them than a messy democracy in which they constantly must settle for half a loaf.
487
And we're not going to get leaders who are decent until we stop letting the rumor of the moment or scandal of the moment run things. One benefit of seeing the GOP and Trump in power is this: they cannot blame Obama for anything now. The GOP has everything it said it needed to govern: a Republican in the White House, a majority in both houses, and the majority of governorships in the country. They are incapable of governing or of working for us. Every one of them ought to be voted out of office, forced to live on unemployment, and forced to go through what they have put us through for decades: misery.
2
I guess I'm crazy because I thought Obama was that guy and proved it through his willingness to compromise on many issues. Not sure there's anyone else like that out there now, on the right or left.
2
There is a tsunami of support for social democracy. It nearly toppled the anointed queen of the party, self-funded.
What is wrong with social democracy? Reigning in of the out of control wealthy whose greed is insatiable?
2
"Our system isn’t really all that republican anymore; it’s imperial, and even an incompetent emperor like Trump is unlike to restore the legislative branch to its former influence", writes Douthat.
Our system is in fact Russian-Republican, a right-wing, fascistic, oligarchic, Kremlinesque web of deceit carefully orchestrated to dupe the peasants so all the gold can be hoarded by an extended family of oligarchs.
Today's Russia utilizes Czar Putin to maintain the Russian model by crushing political dissent with KGB/FSB authoritarianism, propaganda and dirty tricks to maintain the crumbling, flag-waving petro-state that is semi-modern Russia.
America's Russian-Republicans use widespread voter-suppression, computerized black-box 'vote-counting', gerrymandering, jingoism, Fake News and Electoral College hijinks to maintain the crumbling, flag-waving petro-state that is semi-modern Republistan.
Enter Steve Bannon, a modern Leninist whose nihilistic instincts rose from the corrupt cesspool of unrelenting, oblivious greed that is modern Romanov Republicansim sweeping every last piece of gold to America's extended royal family of right-wing oligarchs and Robber Barons.
Lenin’s (and Bannon's and Trump's) political strategy is based on constant conflict and drama, shock tactics and a domineering, abusive, combative, vicious demagoguery.
The Leninist Revolution worked out nicely for Russia.
Welcome to the Bannon-Trumpian Revolution, thanks to the Russian-Republican-Romanov party.
229
Makes sense to me. Where to go from here. Pence?
While I find much of Mr.(?) Socrates analysis of the current state of our "democracy" pretty much spot on, there is at least a seeming implication in his/her (?) concluding remark that "The Leninist Revolution worked out nicely for Russia.", that we may be facing a similar situation in the US. I think this is highly unlikely because all the "Populist" anti-democratic revolutions, i.e. the Russian and Cuban Communist, the German and Italian fascist, had at least three important things that the Trumpists lack:
1] A dedicated and disciplined cadre of "true believers".
2] A formal coherent written ideology such as Marxism or fascism e.g. Das Kapital, Mein Kampf.
3] A quasi-military arm, e.g. the Nazi brownshirts.
I think that the first two are prime causes for the Republicans failure so far to pass any of Trumps egregious campaign promises, while the third should assuage any fears of some sort of a military coup that has been bruited about in the more unhinged portions of the left.
If this analysis is true, then it would predict that the Republican majority will continue to fail in it's efforts to pass any of Trump's legislative program. It would also predict that the Republican internecine warfare is likely to continue as well. Unfortunately whether or not the Democrats are capable of responding effectively to this reality remains to be seen.
2
Bannon's odd collection of senatorial aspirants seems designed to render the Senate so useless as to undo it totally. It brings to mind the story told by ancient Roman historians who tell that the Emperor Caligula named his favorite horse senator or consul, I don't remember which. If Rome could have a horse as senator, there is no reason why we shouldn't have donkeys in our Senate. Instead of swamps, we can have stables.
20
Although you certainly didn't mean it this way, one can only hope we get a lot more donkeys in the Senate AND House and put those old elephants out to pasture.
3
Leslie, believe it or not, I neglected the symbolism of the donkeys. But, just to keep the animal world in play, even the Romans eventually stopped being afraid of Hannibal's elephants
1
"If you squint at the Bannon vision, you can almost imagine it. His professed nationalism, with its promise of infrastructure projects and antitrust actions and maybe even tax hikes on the rich, is potentially more popular than the Tea Party vision..."
Bannon's "vision"? You are giving him too much credit. He's just a two-bit anarchist, funded by the extreme wealth of the Mercer family, itself an oxymoron by its support for someone who, on paper, wants to destroy the "uber rich.
Except the Bannon creed, whatever that is, is less a creed than an adolescent glee in destroying, not changing, institutions. What the Mercers see in his nihilism that's worthy of so much funding escapes me.
Because Bannon is smarter and more disciplined than Trump he "almost" cause more destruction. Trump may have the nukes (Unless Congress handcuffs his ability to use them), but Bannon has the smarts to get an even worse crew than Trump elected.
What they do afterwards isn't his concern. He gets off on antagonizing the "establishment" or what's left of it. Bannon is about as populist as I am revolutionary. Anyone who looks at his reading list or studies his marital history, will find a nut job, just like Trump--but angrier, more organized, and better funded.
463
Exactly. Stop talking about Bannon as if he was some brilliant political theorist with a grand new vision for the country. He's just the latest frontman for the grifter class looking to shift as much burden off their own backs and on to the rest of ours.
3
So name one real populist, in EITHER party, other than Sanders. And, btw, whose marital history do you admire? Bill Clinton's? Anthony Wiener's? Elliot Spitzer's? JFK's? Gary Hart's? I notice you don't acknowledge any of the real problems real Americans really are facing, so how do you qualify as an expert on the subject?
The Mercer family owe a lot of money in back taxes, and want to get the tax laws changed so they can keep all of their money. They also seem to harbor white nationalist beliefs they want the country to adopt. Those are partly what the Mercer family sees in funding Bannon.
Republicans as populists?
What a joke, what a lie, Mr. Douthat.
When Trump wrapped himself in the cloak of populism, saying things like he wouldn't cut taxes for the wealthy, wouldn't start stupid wars, would replace Obamacare with something better and cheaper, all these statements were outright lies. But, these are lies that are specific to Trump and his philosophy of lying all the time, about everything.
That is except for the lie of cutting taxes, which all Republicans lie about, all the time.
But the other joke is the abyss we are all staring into, i.e. the Republican Party. They have gerrymandered themselves, and all of us, into a corner by getting rid of the middle of their party.
By gerrymandering in places like Wisconsin, for instance, in secret behind closed doors, they managed to take over 60% of the seats, while only winning 47% of the vote.
By forcing all the moderates into distorted districts and allowing districts to be "safe," Republican leaders have destroyed the balance of our republic, have ruined our democracy.
Let's not forget as well that twice now in the last five presidential elections, the Republicans have lost the popular vote, but won the presidency.
Republicans have created a Frankenstein and we are all suffering for their feckless malfeasance.
613
Right on the mark. I've said it a hundred times: The republican party is the most successful criminal organization of modern times. For the depth and breadth of its penetration of the society the Corleones of the world could not touch it in their wildest dreams. Pete McGuire, Atlanta
6
when one runs out of ideas, they change the rules to stay on top. That's today;s GOP No ideas, no vision, no concept of what to do, how to govern. No interest in governing. The entire party should go down in flames taking Bannoin and Co with them.
7
You want to blame the GOP for everything??? You don't seem to understand - If the Dems had done anything at all for working class AMERICANS in the past 45 years, there wouldn't have been an opening for Trump. Yes, I know the Dems have helped working class Asians and Africans immensely, but how does that help Americans living in the US?
Bannon stated he will primary every establishment Republican except Ted Cruz. Why exempt Ted?
Cruz is funded by reclusive billionaire Robert Mercer, as is Bannon.
So Bannon is nothing but a poseur, an agent provacateur backed by a wealthy patron with a nihilist, anti-government philosophy making your average libertarian appear Marxist in comparison.
523
Great post - you nailed it.
4
Absolutely. Cruz and Rand Paul ar ein on this game with the Mercers. It is all about disgusting low life people with money wanting to control our country for thehir own benefit.
3
So Stephen Colbert and Ross Douthat have at least one thing in common in addition to a Catholic upbringing.
The ascension of Trump has compelled them to find their true public voice.
I'm a liberal—or something; I scarcely know what's what these days, since manichaeism isn't my style—who recognizes that sane conservatism is vital to our shared political health. Thank you, Ross, for the regular injections of strong and provocative columns that put some backbone into conservatism. I hope the body politic isn't past healing.
49
I am also a liberal who believes that "sane conservatism is vital" to our government. However, it is impossible to separate the Republican party from all the racist, woman hating, poor punishing "legislators" that represent it. Maybe the sane ones should make a new party, call it something else. Otherwise, people like me will never vote against the more liberal candidate, even if they are running as a communist, socialist, whatever. And that can't be good for our country, either.
9
Ross wasn't' "raised Catholic", a former hardcore fundamentalist, he converted during the teen years. Most Catholics are more nuanced. Think the current Pope.
8
Exactly what is the "backbone" of Mr. Douthat's conservatism - other than figuring out another way to protect the rich?
2
The corrupt, earmark-filled D.C. business-as-usual addressed some problems and got some things done. Problems were generally not solved but just patched up so they did not get unbearably bad. The ideological shake-up stopped this, so that gridlock and brinkmanship did away with business as usual and replaced it with drama that was actually a cover for dithering. Government was at last limited.
Trump is just an extension of this. The best vision for limited government is no coherent vision at all, along with a xenophobic cover that is not a vision but rather a distraction from the lack of vision and ability to actually do anything.
But limited government means that any other centers of concentrated power are unlimited -- except by each other. Large centers of power will limit small centers of power, and national and international centers of power will limit local centers of power. But the large centers of power recognize that fighting among themselves opens opportunities for other centers of power to arise and threaten them all, so the fights between them become games that are not allowed to get out of hand and destroy the playing field. Thus limited government turns into oligarchy, and individuals lose their freedom but not to government (and so this loss is not real).
49
Don't get caught up in Bannon's public persona; more important is what he's doing behind the scenes.. As the Mercers' front man, he knows what the levers of power are and how to pull them. It's not yet clear if the Mercers shared their deep-dive voter data profiles with the Russians but they were in the position to help Brad Pascale's firm amplify the alt-right fake news and pipe it into people's brains via social media. As computer folk gliterati -- they were likely well aware of other voting system vulnerabilities and how to shift the results.
269
People are suggesting Alabama's recent result is showing Bannon's clout but the more chilling reason may be the means being used to keep people from voting. http://Motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/this-republican-candidate-had-a-...
104
This is not accurate. According to the Alabama Secretary of State's website, the mailings are required under federal law. Furthermore, the first card simply confirms the relevant information for the addressee, such as address and polling place, and requires no further action. I am an Alabama voter and a democrat; I have received these cards for years. I simply glance at them to confirm that the information is accurate. I don't have to return the card. I've never had any problem voting.
5
Robert Mercer (and his demon spawn Rebekah) is a uniquely strange, frightening and dangerous influence on American politics. He doesn't believe in climate change; thinks radiation could be good for humans; and most tellingly, believes that humans are only as valuable as their net worth and earnings potential. It is the last notion that has most thoroughly infected the Republican Party. (If poor people aren't inherently valuable as human beings, then taking away their healthcare isn't such a big deal. They're just a drain on society and better - i.e., rich - people.)
If you want your blood chilled for 45 minutes or so, listen to the interview NPR's Fresh Air did with New Yorker writer Jane Mayer about the Mercers last spring: http://www.npr.org/2017/03/22/521083950/inside-the-wealthy-family-that-h....
(For what it's worth, I don't know how Jane Mayer is able to live without chronic anxiety considering she's plumbed the depths of our most despicable members of society: first the Koch brothers in "Dark Money" and now the Mercers. Stay safe, Jane, and Godspeed.)
8