Then there were three. Fourteen Republican candidates (including my first choice, Marco Rubio) have departed from the campaign, leaving me with my second choice (Ted Cruz), an acceptable scold (John Kasich), and the guy who will force me to leave the Republican Party (Trump). Of course, this is just my view, others on BD see things differently.
Meanwhile, John Podhoretz presented his Trump theory, one which I think comes closer to reality than any other I’ve seen (although I have my own amendments to it).
I want to propose an alternate theory of Trump’s popularity. It also takes us into the past, but at least it’s our own immediate past. In September 2008, after months of uncertainty following the collapse of Bear Stearns, the financial system went into its terrifying tailspin. A disastrous recession shrank the overall economy by 9 percent, and the unemployment rate rose to 10 percent a year later.
Now imagine that the meltdown had taken place not in September 2008 but rather in September 2006. Imagine that housing prices and stock prices had fallen in the same way—such that the wealth invested in the 63 percent of home-owned American households and in the stocks owned by 62 percent of all Americans had declined by 40 percent.
Further, imagine that serious proposals arose that the 8 percent of homeowners who had defaulted on their home loans be forgiven their debts—the very proposal in 2009 that led investor Rick Santelli to call for a new “tea party” uprising on the part of the 92 percent who paid their bills on time. Only this time Santelli’s comments had been spoken in 2007. Imagine all these things. And then imagine the presidential race that would have followed. Does the rise of Trump and Bernie Sanders suddenly make all the sense in the world? Of course.
But of course the meltdown didn’t happen in 2006. It took place a mere seven weeks before an election.
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And this is why, I think, the meaning of Trump is being misused and misunderstood. He says he wants to “make America great again,” but I don’t think that’s what his acolytes hear. I think they hear that he is going to turn his vicious temper and unbalanced rage on the large-scale forces they feel are hindering them. They want someone punished. Could be China. Could be Muslims. Could be Mexicans. Could be bankers. Could be the GOP “establishment.” Whatever. He’s their Punisher.
In the section I sliced out, Podhoretz gives a brief rundown of the Obama Administration, but in my opinion that doesn’t explain enough what happened. While I continue to get grief for bringing it up eight years later, TARP (a.k.a., the bank bailout) was a major inflection point in American politics. In addition to being wildly unpopular and, in my view, seriously misguided policy, TARP badly shook the confidence of the American people in the free market, in Washington leadership, and even in America itself. Moreover, it exemplified so much of Washington policy that normally is left quiet: policies that redistribute income upward.
Finally, TARP badly split the Republican Party at a moment where it was in no position to process the division (seven weeks prior to a presidential election). Afterwards, the GOP had to sort out its internal differences on the matter while opposing the Obama Administration’s policy fiascos. Given that much of the Republican leadership was on the wrong side of TARP (at least from the average Republican’s perspective), it did whatever it could to avoid and smother the discussion. That was largely successful, but the resentment from the issue remained, waiting to be exploited by the likes of Donald Trump.
The passage of time has made memories fade on the issue itself for some, but the bad blood never went away, and the notion that the insiders were getting rich off their government contacts at the expense of the American people didn’t either.
So I certainly understand the resentment out there. Here’s the problem: Donald Trump is the least equipped Republican candidate to deal with it, if he even wanted to do so.
Of the three candidates left, only one has been firm and resolute in opposing bank bailouts like TARP: not Donald Trump, but Ted Cruz.
Of the three candidates left, only one stood up for consumers (employed, unemployed, discouraged out of the labor force, etc.) against Big Corn in Iowa on ethanol mandates (to the point of having the entire IA GOP leadership arrayed against him: not Donald Trump, but Ted Cruz.
Of the three candidates left, only one has opposed both the 2013 and 2015 budget deals that reversed in part the spending reductions of the Budget Control Act: not Donald Trump, but Ted Cruz (John Kasich largely ignored Iowa).
Of the three candidates left, only one has insisted on more accountability and transparency from the Federal Reserve to ensure the bubble-forming policies of the early aughts aren’t repeated: not Donald Trump, but Ted Cruz.
There are several more examples I could use, but the point is this: Donald Trump can exploit anger and resentment, but of the remaining candidates, only Ted Cruz has battled to reverse the underyling causes of that resentment, meaning he has a far better shot at actually solving the problems that about which Trump squawks.
More to the point, only Ted Cruz can reshape the Republican Party into what it needs to be: a political party that eschews corporatism of all kinds, from bank bailouts to automobile-oligopoly bailouts to farm subsidies to bubble–forming loose monetary policy (last decade it was real estate; this decade it’s government paper and stocks) and everything else in between.
The people most likely to support Trump – outside of the racialists and outright racists – are essentially looking for a government that treats them like citizens rather than chumps. Donald Trump cannot do that (in fact, he would make it worse by taxing the poor and calling it “progress”); Ted Cruz can.
