They denigrated the Tea Party, and now they have to deal with raucus working-class Trumpsters. They deserve whatever they get.
41 thoughts on “Trump Was Created By The Likes Of David Brooks”
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They denigrated the Tea Party, and now they have to deal with raucus working-class Trumpsters. They deserve whatever they get.
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This theory doesn’t sound right to me. If the Tea Party was flourishing, if everyone had taken it extremely seriously with no denigration, I don’t think it would make any difference. I think Donald Trump would simply come along and dominate anyway. He is a crowd-pleasing spectacle, not a reaction to the Tea Party’s fortunes.
“When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly”
Also, I don’t understand the causation here. The betrayal was from elected officials. After the betrayal, why wouldn’t the same crowd still want to clean up after themselves and eschew violence (and racism) if they assembled for a political rally? It isn’t like the politicians who did the betrayal are going to have to take any punches that are thrown! They aren’t even going to have to pick up the trash! I think Glenn got it wrong here. Otherwise, the crowd sounds like a bunch of nitwits.
You are showing yourself to be as completely out of touch as David Brooks.
No one here is shocked.
Your criticism of me is pretty empty – it would be more interesting to hear what you think.
Do you think Donald Trump wouldn’t want to be President if the Tea Party had _successfully_ transformed the GOP? Do you think the crowds would now be rejecting Donald Trump if every currently elected GOP politician was dedicated to Tea Party principles?
“Do you think Donald Trump wouldn’t want to be President if the Tea Party had _successfully_ transformed the GOP? ”
Wrong question. No one can predict what Trump would want to do in that case as we are not inside his head.
Trump may or may not have decided to run, but if the GOP was transformed into a once-again Conservative party, then everyone would be laughing at Trump.
“Do you think the crowds would now be rejecting Donald Trump if every currently elected GOP politician was dedicated to Tea Party principles?”
I do indeed.
I think you need to consider the likelihood that Trump is making the appeal he is specifically because he poll tested it, and found that it is what people were wanting. Had the Tea Party been successful, he likely would have gone lower key to attract their votes.
Let me ask my question as clearly as I can:
If they had not denigrated the Tea Party,would they now _not_ have to deal with raucus working-class Trumpsters? If so, why?
They would not. The Tea Party was a manifestation of the number of people who would respond to the question “Is the country heading in the wrong direction” with an emphatic “Yes!” Citing declining jobs, an ongoing recession (measured in workplace participation and wage growth), a massive illegal immigration problem, and utter weakness abroad.
If the GOP had succeeded in allaying those problems, there wouldn’t be so many people who were so intense about those issues because the country would have been steered back on course enough to keep the revolution from catching hold.
Instead Mitch McConnell & Co tried the “play fight” strategy, where they simultaneously gave Obama anything Obama wanted by setting up a chance to slam what Obama was doing. Unfortunately for the GOP that proved quite transparent. The Republicans were saying all the right words while making Republican voters angrier and angrier.
Some consultants probably said that would boost the GOP by increasing the intensity of the base. But that anger was directed at the elites and their games, and people got fed up with the slick and empty promises of the establishment politicians who promise all the right things but refuse to deliver. The feeling took hold that the establishment was playing the same game with both sides (let’s drag Bernie into this).
The base of both parties have huge concerns, and those concerns become more intense when they’re not actually addressed but left to fester and intensify. The GOP establishment started behaving uncomfortably like the Democrat establishment acts regarding blacks – where keeping them angry and miserable makes them ever more loyal as long as the DNC continues with empty promises and lots of virtue signalling.
So the problems that created the Tea Party were allowed to grow much worse, which under one theory would make them even more determined to vote against Democrats (or against Republicans if they already were Democrats). Under another theory, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, they would realize that their government had become abusive of their desired ends and seek to institute new government.
So along comes the 2016 primary, and the candidates who said all the right things the pundits said they should say, which are the same things they had said in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 – went nowhere. We’d heard it before and knew it meant nothing. Then there was Donald, who said the rest of the candidates were all losers and chokers, aside from Hillary who was a corrupt criminal. To beat Donald there would have to have been a candidate promising to put half the people in Washington up against a wall and shoot them, including the GOP establishment.
You can get elected by carefully noting the concerns of the people who put you in office, but trying to increase your margins and drive up your support by making those voters feel those concerns much more acutely is a devil’s bargain. As soon as they feel that the root of the problem is the people they’ve been electing, they’ll go elect someone else.
As clear as the first time and just as pointless.
The Tea Party was a manifestation of the number of people who would respond to the question “Is the country heading in the wrong direction” with an emphatic “Yes!” Citing declining jobs, an ongoing recession (measured in workplace participation and wage growth), a massive illegal immigration problem, and utter weakness abroad.
My recollection is that when the Tea Party started, the concerns were different: e.g. the deficit and debt (e.g. “Porkulus”), the bailout of “losers’ mortgages” (Rick Santelli’s rant) and Obamacare. Immigration and foreign policy weren’t such big issues. But the overriding concern, with the Tea Party then and Trump supporters today, was/is that the country is going in the wrong direction.
There are always going to be a sizable number of people who think things are getting worse, even in times of relative peace and prosperity. Right now the U.S. is in the process of becoming a country without a majority ethnic group. Social norms about women’s roles and sexual/gender orientation are changing quickly. The economy is continuing to shift from manufacturing and resource extraction to services. The creative destruction of global capitalism rages on, wiping out some companies and the localities they supported, while showering us with new products. It isn’t surprising that a lot of people are hurt and/or frightened by the way this is all playing out, and Trump has proven very skillful at reaching those voters.
As usual, Jim, you absolutely belittle the tea party. Frightened? Please. When somebody is upset that our country’s leaders are selling out to groups other than their constituents, it isn’t fear.
Of course there are major changes taking place. Everybody who has a pulse knows this. But when you disagree with the solutions, even get a little angry, it isn’t reactionary or it isn’t being afraid. When health care is a disaster and the solution is theft, the resulting anger isn’t fear. When your leader sells out to thugs around the world and belittles his allies, the anger isn’t fear. When teachers unions destroy charter schools, it isn’t fear.
You see how this works Jim? You see how your interpretation of the right’s anger is put in silly little terms that only a student who has learned a few vocabulary words from Psych 101 would use?
Would you say that the riots caused by Black Lives Matter is out of fear? Probably not, because you think they have legitimate concerns. But those on the right, oh my, they’re just angry little peasants with simple reactionary emotions. But you understand their fear, don’t you, because you’re above all of them.
Also, I don’t understand the causation here. The betrayal was from elected officials.
The contempt comes from a larger group, including Brooks. As to the spiral into more disorderly conduct, this is a typical aspect of revolutions. The French Revolution, for example, had a very orderly start and it ended with the Terror. My view is that the apparatus of the establishment and society can be brought to bear effectively on the more respectable or lukewarm supporters of a movement. (For example, the massive and ongoing slander of tea partiers as religious nuts and racists.)
But these tactics are far less effective on the rule breakers. Thus, whenever there is a heavy-handed response to a strong movement, you get the same slide into “more disorderly conduct”. The power and initiative goes to the people who can weather or even thrive under this abuse.
Karl, nice comment, but I don’t understand why the rule breakers need the nice people to be suppressed before they can act, and act effectively. Seems to me that the rule-breakers can rise up whenever a good leader like Trump comes along. Do you think Trump couldn’t have led a crowd of rule-breakers if the apparatus of the establishment and society had strongly supported the more respectable supporters of the Tea Party?
Karl, nice comment, but I don’t understand why the rule breakers need the nice people to be suppressed before they can act, and act effectively.
Why would it be any other way? We wouldn’t have societies in the first place, if rule breaking was the norm. There’s always some sort of pressure to keep people in line. This pressure can be used productively to prevent murder in the streets or crass behavior that helps no one, and it can be used unproductively to suppress political opinion and rivals.
Seems to me that the rule-breakers can rise up whenever a good leader like Trump comes along.
Opportunity. Trump “came along” because he was the only one who would take an anti-immigration stance of any sort. That’s not tea party, but it is a huge thing for a lot of people, including a lot of tea party people. Personally, I think a lenient immigration policy, which doesn’t create captive classes of workers, is the only thing that is sustainable long term in a healthy US economy, but people won’t stop caring about immigration just because the “nicer” political leaders can’t talk about it or because parts of society deem it “racist” to have the wrong opinion on the matter.
The “first betrayals” of the Tea Party weren’t the elected officials, it was the press. As usual.
Going to a rally of 99% smiling-happy-people and interviewing the three Lyndon Larouche supporters who are -trying- to be outrageous. Or taking a picture of an armed black man … but -cropping- the hands and head out of the picture and then immediately claiming “Look at the racists trying to put the minorities down by force!”
This type of insane coverage allowed many of the politicians to “deliberately misunderstand”.
–If the Tea Party was flourishing, if everyone had taken it extremely seriously with no denigration, I don’t think it would make any difference.–
You missing point- Washington ignored what people were saying.
An example of ignoring- Tea party was a fad, and is current fading in terms of importance.
But it not fading, it’s transforming.
And the next stage after this, is hanging Pols on street lamps.
So a return to a more civilized/enlighten age, where pols paid attention because their very life depends on doing so.
Is it a reaction? Of course. Is it a different group of people? Not exactly. It’s a wider group. It now includes 78 yo guys that will punch you if you’re a thug starting trouble.
They are still salt of the earth that didn’t start this fight. They are saying enough! and it’s long past time. They still pick up their trash and are not idiots.
They’ve had nobody to inspire them until now. They forgive their un-PC candidate because he fights back… even if ugly and inelegant. He fights against those that got us into this mess… the lying media. A media which keeps thoroughly discredited ideas alive.
When Trump paints with a too wide brush, but clearly true, the media encourages the idea that he used a fire hose. He says some, they say he said all, when he never did.
Many accept Trump’s faults because they reasonably find other’s faults to be the ones that got us here. They aren’t looking for a well mannered liar that will do nothing to stop us from going over the cliff. For them, Trump is no risk at all.
“They’ve had nobody to inspire them until now.”
Andrew Breitbart’s death sure was convenient for Obama. As was the sudden death of Breitbart’s coroner.
Oh, that’s nothing. You should hear the inside story of how Obama sabotaged Scott Walker!
You mean the coordinated campaign of violence by Democrat activist groups? Or do you mean the John Doe case where elected Democrats conducted midnight paramilitary raids of Walker supporters and then forbid them from talking about it? The John Doe scandal even targeted non-Democrats all over the country for surveillance and seizure of confidential records.
The amazing thing is you appear upset that a couple Democrat fascists get punched when they provoke a physical confrontation by using physical intimidation and hate speech but not concerned about the blatant illegal persecution of non-Democrats and the violent hateful actions of Democrat’s militant activists.
How is it Democrats escape condemnation in this? Near as I can tell, Trump’s events are still mostly peaceful despite Democrats best efforts to use violence to shut them down. If there were no Democrats in the crowd yelling things in people’s faces that would start a fight any where else, there wouldn’t be any violence except that of the Democrat protesters outside the events.
Its insane that Democrats get a case of the how dare yous after using violence in the name of politics for decades and especially after the last 15 years. How dare people respond to Democrats trying to instigate a response? Isn’t the response exactly what Democrats are trying to engineer?
How about Democrats just stop being violent and acting like a giant bag of d**ks?
The problem is that Democrats don’t view non-Democrats as human beings. They view them as monsters, incarnated evil, and this allows them to rationalize their actions used against them. When dealing with humans, there are standards of treatment. When fighting evil, literally anything goes. No level of violence, hateful rhetoric, persecution by government agencies is too much, rather it is required in the name of righteousness.
Which is why you blame Trump for the actions of Democrat’s militant activists despite Democrats not behaving any differently than they have for decades.
Breitbart was a sad loss. We need more like him.
Breitbart smeared Juan Carlos Vera, lied about it, and left the smear up on his site. We don’t need more of that.
NPR has smeared people but I never heard you complain about them.
There ya go Jim. You’ve just given an example of what’s wrong with the left. Assuming your point is valid, it’s just one point and does not negate the whole picture.
Breitbart took the fight to the left with facts. We need more of that. He is missed.
What was the lie that Breitbart told? What was the smear?
The article you cite notes that suit was brought over being filmed without permission and being portrayed untruthfully. The evidence presented in the article, isn’t that the video was untruthful but that the man called a family member, who was a cop, and talked to a coworker at ACORN after they left.
What he did after they left, doesn’t change how he acted in the video. Also, what he did after they left, doesn’t absolve him of what he did on the video. He didn’t call the cops, he called a family member. He didn’t report the incident to a superior, at least initially, he just talked to a coworker. Yet the article you linked tries to spin this as somehow changing what is in the video.
They settled out of court with no admission of guilt. Likely because it was cheaper than litigation.
When 60 minutes or Democrat activists use hidden cameras, it’s journalism, when non-Democrats do it’s the how dare yous.
Breitbart took the fight to the left with facts.
Facts? Here’s Breitbart:
And here are the facts:
Breitbart was given multiple opportunities to post a correction. He didn’t.
That’s a pretty slim thing to be outraged over, especially in light of your positions on the outrage over the truthfulness of other issues.
Calling one’s cousin isn’t really much of a defense. What was his cousin going to do? Why not go through the proper law enforcement channels rather than consult a relative? The article you cited doesn’t mention anything about trying to stop child sex trafficking, only that he called his cousin. Was the issue taken up with the proper authorities at the local police department?
The article you cited doesn’t mention anything about trying to stop child sex trafficking, only that he called his cousin.
The article reports that the cousin, a police detective, then contacted a federal task force on human trafficking.
Breitbart’s claim is that Vera went along with human trafficking. The reality is the exact opposite: Vera immediately reported the possibility of a crime to the proper authorities. It would have been easy for Breitbart to add an editor’s note to the story, or take it down; he didn’t. It would have been easy for him to post a follow-up tweet, or take down the one that falsely accuses Vera; he didn’t.
If the Tea Party had been listened to, Trump would not have had half the GOP voters ready to vote for him. He’d have had maybe 10% or something, and been out after the first couple of primaries, *assuming* he ran in the first place. “Making America great again” plus a big middle finger to the GOPe… that’s a combo hard to beat for the disaffected Tea Partier.
Thank you Gregg, Karl, Agent J, George and Ken for the thoughtful comments. I just don’t understand how to connect the dots. Karl said:
” Trump “came along” because he was the only one who would take an anti-immigration stance of any sort. That’s not tea party, but it is a huge thing for a lot of people, including a lot of tea party people.”
If the Tea Party politicians had not been denigrated, and moreover, if they had already been successful in achieving their goals in Washington, the people’s immigration concerns still wouldn’t have been addressed, and Trump would still have been able to exploit immigration as an issue, right? There was (and is) a mismatch between Tea Party politicians and tea party supporters on immigration, right?
Protectionism is similar. This Cato Institute piece from 2010 points out that there is a mismatch between Tea Party politicians (who are free trade advocates) and Tea Party supporters (in polls in 2010, more than 60 percent held a negative view on free trade).
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/are-tea-partiers-antitrade
The Cato Institute piece goes to hopefully say “worries that the tea party movement will pull the Republican Party in a protectionist direction are probably overblown”, but that turned out to be wrong, because of Trump, not because of the Tea Party leaders own positions, and not because of the Tea Party’s reception in the media or in Washington.
Finally, if wasn’t anti-immigration and protectionism that Trump could exploit, I think Trump would have used his media skills to exploit some other divisive issue – there is always something for people to get angry about, and I think Trump would have harnessed it.
But thank you again for your comments, maybe I’m wrong and you’re right, and as I read about Trump this week, I’m sure I will think more about what you’re saying here.
Fred Thompson once quipped, “Nothing in Hollywood is real”. Donald Trump is Hollywood. He is a consummate performer. You have to be to stay on top in the world he inhabits. His segue into reality TV was a natural transition.
Don’t be fooled by the bluster and bravado – these are just affectations he uses to set the terms of negotiation, battlefield prep, if you will. He knows exactly what he is doing, and to whom he is making his appeal. You can be sure his team have gamed this thing up the wazoo, and he is following a carefully crafted script.
“If your enemy is superior, evade him. If angry, irritate him. If equally matched, fight, and if not, split and reevaluate. “
– Bud Fox’ rendition of Sun Tzu from the movie “Wall Street”
That is what I am seeing The Donald do. It’s basically in his book, “The Art of the Deal” from 1987. Standard 1980’s era business tactics. Which brings to mind another movie quote:
“[Trump], you magnificent bastard! I read your book!
I’m sure Bob-1, like “Uncle Dave” (the Hive media’s docile, gelded, polite “house” RINO), would just like the serfs stop being so uppity, and quietly bend ’em and spread’em
Oh, I forgot: even though the meaning of the term seems to me pretty obvious in context, Bob-1 doesn’t get the concept of the Hive, or so he claims:
http://www.sobran.com/hive/hive.shtml
Are the Trump supporters the same people as the Tea Party?
The Tea Party motto: We’re against bailouts and insulation from markets!
Trump supporter motto: We want the bailouts and insulation from markets!
Any port in a storm…
JH: I pointed out something like that to Trump supporters in a discussion on Breitbart News, and how they even use the Argument from Pity, possibly the favorite fallacious argument of “liberals.” Basically they called me an idiot without making any further argument. Not impressed.
I think this is on-topic, but it concerns House Speaker Paul Ryan, someone much more important than David Brooks.
Ryan gave a speech today on the state of American politics, and he said some things that I would love to hear Rand and the commenters at Transterrestrial comment on. Is Speaker Ryan, like Brooks, part of the problem in your eyes? Or, do you agree with what he said? I’d be very interested in hearing your reaction.
The video and a transcript can be found here:
http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/full-text-speaker-ryan-state-american-politics
Excerpt:
“”I’m certainly not going to stand here and tell you I have always met this standard. There was a time when I would talk about a difference between ‘makers’ and ‘takers’ in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. ‘Takers’ wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don’t want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point.
So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way. But I didn’t come out and say all this to be politically correct. I was just wrong.
I know poor people who do not take anything and are content with the choices they made in life that lead to their poverty. I also know poor people who take things and are in their current condition not through bad luck but because of past and current choices in how they live their lives, and they deny this. The latter view they are entitled to other people’s money to subsidize an extravagant lifestyle.
When people would talk about makers and takers, I never took that as being against people who need help but rather people who don’t really need help, who refuse to take ownership of their decisions, who think they are entitled to other people’s money, and have zero respect for the people whose money they are taking.
Have you ever seen gratitude expressed by Democrats toward those whose taxes fund our generous welfare state?
People who think this way have nothing to do with Trump or Brooks but rather the ideology Democrats inculcate in people. Its an ideology of hatred and bigotry that puts different racial, gender, and class groups against each other. Not out of concern for the wellbeing of the groups in question but because they gain political power by using these groups as weapons against others.
Now, this ^^ might actually have something to do with Trump. People are tired of being dehumanized by Democrats and segregated into little groups to be used as weapons against others and then tossed away when no longer convenient. Tired of being pandered to but then never seeing the problems solved that Democrats promised to solve. For decades and decades people have voted Democrat only to see the problems in their cities get worse and worse.
Thanks to Democrats treating their own party like dirt, we will get Trump as the GOP nominee because they are switching party affiliation to vote for him.
Not really sure what your comment had to do with the topic but I brought it around for you.
Oh, no, no, I provided an excerpt of the speech, but the speech wasn’t about makers and takers, it was about calling for a new civility in American politics.
My question is whether you (all of you, but also you, Wodun) think that Ryan is being like David Brooks?
I quoted the bit about makers and takers because Ryan said “I was wrong”, and I wanted to put that admission in context. It has been widely pointed out that Trump is incapable of saying that. In general, the speech was anti-Trump, and it was about providing an antidote to Trump. I’m wondering whether you think that this is the sort of David Brooksian talk that you think led to Trump’s current success.
Watch or read the speech – it was a good one!
Shorter me: I think Ryan’s speech was very on-topic. The excerpt was not.
“Have you ever seen gratitude expressed by Democrats toward those whose taxes fund our generous welfare state?” Of course not! Serfs were born to be serfs. Or as that font of wisdom, Eli Wallach’s bandit chief in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, said about the peons he regularly plundered: “If God did not want them shorn, he would not have made them sheep.”