It is appropriate that on official Tax Day, I look over the legacy of Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, who this week announced he would not run for re-election. This links to Paul Ryan’s mostly consistent support for Donald Trump, since Trump as president was instrumental to Ryan’s long-term goals of cutting taxes and government. Thus Ryan’s decision stands as a verdict on how well his loyalty to Trump paid off for himself and the Republican Party.
The first point, which most pundits haven’t spelled out, is that Ryan’s decision means it is no longer a matter of whether Republicans will lose the House in the 2018 midterms, it is just a matter of how badly. Prior to this decision one could argue that the matter was up in the air. But Ryan’s value to the Republican rank-and-file was his formidable fund-raising ability, and that has been undermined. If Ryan had kept his decision to himself and only retired after the November election results (whether Republicans kept the House or not) he would have been a more credible spokesman for other candidates on the campaign trail. Now even though he’s still going to stump for other Republicans, everyone is going to know that he’s campaigning for them when he won’t run himself.
That in itself leads to a broader implication. The fact that Ryan did not conceal his position until after the election (when he probably would have won his own seat) implies that he saw no point in fighting for the House. This is what gets to the question of Donald Trump’s real effect on Republican policy and its chances of long-term survival. The press has noted for some time that even before the primary process is finished, many Republicans are simply not running for re-election. Including House members who are running for other offices, only 19 House Democrats are resigning or leaving after 2018, compared to 40 Republicans. Democrats need 23 more seats to take the House. Normally the majority party would have the edge because incumbents usually win re-election. By not contesting certain seats, Republicans render them open and thus increase the chances that they’ll go to Democrats. But given the stakes of the last Republican Congress, where Paul Ryan and his caucus gutted many of the regulations on Obamacare and passed a surprisingly unpopular tax cut whose benefits went mostly to the party’s donor class, the stakes for retaining control of the chamber are dire. Why then is Paul Ryan doing something that will do more to hurt the Republican majority than any other single act?
Well, let’s just consider This Week in Trumpworld.
On Monday April 9, the FBI raided the home, hotel room and law office of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, on the recommendation of Robert Mueller and the specific permission of Mueller’s supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. It has since been reported that several of Trump’s confidants are afraid that Cohen may have taped conversations that prosecutors could use against both him and his boss. And since this (and several other cases) are being processed through state offices in New York, firing Rosenstein or Mueller, or giving a federal pardon to Cohen or other confidants, would not make the cases go away. Then it turned out that Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, had also handled a hush-money settlement to a former Playboy Playmate who had an affair with Elliot Broidy, deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. (This was a position also held at one point by Cohen.) Then towards the end of the week, Jim Comey, the FBI director that Trump fired after handing him the election, previewed his new tell-all book by leaking copies to the press, excerpts saying things like “As I found myself thrust into the Trump orbit, I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and the truth”, and that when he mentioned the possibility that Russians had taped Trump in a room with two prostitutes, Trump “began discussing cases where women had accused him of sexual assault, a subject I had not raised. He mentioned a number of women, and seemed to have memorized their allegations.”
It’s not looking good. So what do you do if you’re Trump?
Yep, you bomb another country!
As I said after Trump’s last missile wank, almost exactly a year ago, Trump wasn’t trying to send a message to Syria and Russia over Syria’s chemical warfare. He was trying to send a message to gullible American establishment types, including the liberal media, that he was trying to be serious. If he was serious, then there would be more of a broad-based policy for achieving a peace in Syria. The fact that Chump tossed off one missile strike and pronounced “Mission Accomplished” demonstrates that the whole thing is just a diversion.
So why does he need a diversion? And again, why did Paul Ryan throw away the last chance to maintain control of Congress when they and Trump rely on each other for mutual protection?
Maybe it has something to do with what conservative Erick Erickson posted this week as the latest set of catastrophes were coming to light. He talked with a local Republican Congressman who told him “If we’re going to lose because of (Trump), we might as well impeach the motherf**ker”. Erickson goes, “What’s the problem, though? Well, get ready…
“It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can’t help himself. He’s just a f**king idiot who thinks he’s winning when people are b*tching about him. He really does see the world as ratings and attention. I hate Forrest Gump. I listen to your podcast and heard you hate it too. What an overrated piece of sh*t movie. Can you believe it beat the Shawshank Redemption?'”
Then consider that for some time, long-time Trumpnik Ann Coulter has been calling herself a “Former Trumper.” She has gone so far as to do an interview with Teh Failing New York Times admitting, among other things, that a $1.3 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that had hardly any money for Trump’s (alleged) immigration agenda sent her over the edge. “I don’t know what more horrible thing you could come up with than violating your central campaign promise that became the chant and the theme of the campaign that he promised at every single rally. I mean, implementing the principles of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ wouldn’t be more of a betrayal than that.”
Wow, the Jersey casino boss who went bankrupt four times couldn’t follow through on his commitments, and you’re surprised?
It goes to show how damn stupid the Trumpniks are. And by that I’m not just referring to the rednecks on social media who commit eight grammatical errors in a five-word sentence. I’m referring to the articulate people like Coulter, and the Billionaire Stringpullers like the Mercers and the Koch Brothers, who are supposed to be smart enough to know better. And of course I’m referring to Paul Ryan, the supposed “policy wonk.” All of these people wanted to believe that Trump was something other than what he was. And it just ties into the point that while Republicans have spent some time appealing only to a certain section of the country, their long-term problem is that they can’t appeal to everyone in their coalition at once.
Libertarian-adjacent writer Will Wilkerson had a great autopsy in the Times where he went over Ryan’s Faustian bargain with Trump: “Politics isn’t physics, but a governing Republican philosophy that sees it as a moral imperative to slash the budgets of social programs that benefit mainly older and working-class white people is bound, sooner or later, to drive a party of mainly older and working-class white people off a cliff.” The only way Ryan could accomplish his legislative goals was to get a Republican in the White House, and the only one who could get in the White House was the one who least hewed to Republican orthodoxy. “Mr. Trump spotted opportunity in the injured dignity of the Republican base and the feckless irrelevance of the establishment’s agenda. He told Republicans shaken by the reality and risk of downward mobility that they were the only Americans who counted, and that they had been cheated and betrayed. He promised never to cut their Social Security or Medicare, and expressed admiration for single-payer health care. He took their side against immigrant rapists, murderous jihadis, plundering trade deals, dangerous city people and disloyal, condescending elites of all parties and persuasions. He promised to use his billionaire superpowers to rig the economy to their advantage. It didn’t matter that he is a transparently corrupt, bigoted, sexually abusive, compulsive liar. He offered the dignity of recognition, promised to fight, and won. … As soon as Mr. Trump clinched the nomination, Mr. Ryan became as tame as a poodle (but) the Republican majority was crippled from the start by the fundamental conflict between a government-shrinking agenda and the immediate material interests of Republican voters.”
It comes down to the point that the fundamental dynamic of the Republican Party is the conflict between a financial elite that sponsors the politicians and a populist voter base that actually elects them. And there’s only one person who can credibly be listed as both a populist and a member of the financial elite: Donald Trump. (And yes, that means that the policies of the Trump Administration in practice are unbelievably schizoid, but what would you expect?)
The end result is that the “conservative” Republican Party has become a personality cult that invests itself in the whims and vagaries of one man who is well into the second half of his lifespan, rather than in philosophical principles that are supposed to stand the test of time against political fashion. In other words, the opposite of conservatism in theory.
This explains why the various groups in the current Republican tent don’t just prep Mike Pence for the White House (apart from the fact that he may be tainted, too). While the Religious Right guys would love Pence, neither the Koch-style “economic libertarians” nor the Roseanne types who think the Kochs are trying to rob them care all that much about fundamentalist priorities, such as gay rights or what trans people call themselves. (They don’t care that much about queer people, but by the same token, they aren’t strongly motivated to disenfranchise them.) But what the plutocrats, the fundies and the Tea Party working class all want is someone who’s going to fulfill their dreams by cutting through all the dross of the democratic republic and run things the right way – even when they have different ideas as to what that means. They are all desperate for a strongman, even if he isn’t really strong. Or smart. Or politically skilled. And might be compromised by organized crime and the Russians.
Poor little Trumpniks. They wanted a Leader. They wanted a great man on horseback. What they got was Liddle Donnie Clown Boy.
And while Trump retains some popularity in the Heartland, those policy wonks who may disagree with liberals but know how Washington actually works day-to-day have gotten to see how Trump operates day-to-day. And they’re coming around to the realization that he is doing to their party what he did to the Atlantic City gambling industry.
But now that they finally have the White House and both houses of Congress, they’re all in on the philosophy that there is no rule of law and all that matters is being in the biggest gang. There’s just one problem with that attitude.
Republicans aren’t the biggest gang.
Indeed, the deliberate Republican strategy for the past few election cycles has been to game the federal system and their own primary election process to marginalize everyone outside a few set opinions so that anyone who isn’t “politically correct” can’t get nominated and voter ID laws and other schemes limit the potential voter pool for general elections. Rather than try to appeal to the broadest possible group (the way Democrats have been), Republicans purge their own ranks for purity, run on issues that appeal only to the hardcore, then try to make sure that only the “right” people vote for them. And then some of them wake up and realize they’re screwed because no one will vote for them.
This is a serious lesson for any group, Left or Right, that wants to change the system. The knowledge that not everyone is going to agree with you ought to indicate that you aren’t going to retain power indefinitely, and thus you should start with the changes that everyone can agree with and have a chance at enduring, rather than deliberately making radical changes that are guaranteed to piss off everybody who isn’t you. Otherwise, antagonizing the rest of the country on the premise that you’ll get away with it forever not only reduces the chance of you staying a majority, it increases the chance that the opposition will try to roll back everything you did when, NOT if, they take the government back.