Why Trump Won

The Republican nomination post-mortems have focused on Trump’s personality: the bombast, the fog of contradictions, the vulgar treatment of critics, etc. That has led far too many people to believe that Trump’s victory was a deviation of some kind. That is completely wrong.

In fact, Donald Trump’s win was more conventional than is realized: he won on his issues. This is why his opponents within the party will never rid themselves of him. Trump is not a temporary aberration for a small government party; it’s a terrifying affirmation of the new big government party.

Amidst the avalanche of words Trump has inflicted upon the campaign so far, he actually remained consistent – and largely unchallenged – on four issues. They were:

The Wall – this was, of course, Trump’s first and most prominent one. Sometimes he would speak of nothing else. However, he took hardly any criticism of it from the other Republican candidates, who spent most of their time slamming each other or going after Trump’s “character.” Even immigration restrictionists should have had a field day with Trump’s simplicity (all “wall” all the time, and practically no mention of visa jumping), yet they largely refused to do so.

The “Muslim” ban (quickly adjusted to immigrants only) – this one was frankly disturbing, and utterly foolish. As I noted when he first came up with the idea, the notion that Christian Ba’athists would be welcomed to America while the Muslim victims of said Ba’athist regime would be shunned was ludicrous. Yet few, if any, were willing to challenge Trump on the issue – and far more troubling, Republicans in state after state agreed with it, overwhelmingly. For the most part, this issue became the elephant in the room. Perhaps Republican candidates didn’t want to admit how many of their voters had succumbed to bigotry. The rest of the country noticed all the same. Meanwhile, Trump won again by default.

No Entitlement Reform – This one surprised me the least. Republicans have been skittish about entitlement reform for decades, and indeed, Trump had allies among his fellow candidates on this. In fact, only Chris Christie spent any time on entitlements, and he was so badly beaten he felt the need to endorse Trump before the end of February. Sadly, the possibility of reaching out to younger, more diverse voters (after all, it’s the Millennial generation who will bear the brunt of the ever-increasing bill for these), the Republicans Party – candidates, leaders, and voters alike – chose to appease their older, whiter base. Chalk up another Trump victory.

Trade – this is the one that disappointed me the most, yet was probably the most revelatory. Republicans had long been the party of freer trade before Trump came along. They dropped it without putting up a fight. The only candidate who took Trump on was Ted Cruz who (1) did it for less than 10 minutes, and (2) had already damaged his reputation and his credibility on this issue by flip-flopping on Trade Promotion Authority. Other than that, protectionism went from deviation to de rigeur in the Republican Party, thanks to Trump.

The pattern is fairly obvious. Trump raised issues that would expand – rather than contract – government’s size, scope, and cost. All of the issues were driven by racialism or bigotry (although on entitlements, it was more implicit than explicit). All of them were left largely unchallenged by Trump’s opponents. All of them are now enthusiastically embraced by Republican voters.

It wasn’t Trump’s personality or his mash of contradictory verbiage on other issues that won him the nomination. It was rather, his consistency on these four issues. These issues won him the nomination, largely without a fight.
The takeaways from this are as clear as they are depressing. Trump openly revealed his preference for Big Government for White People. His opponents did practically nothing to challenge his platform, and Republicans have embraced it as their own.

This is why simply hoping Trump will lose and then disappear is foolhardy. Trump’s issues are now the Republicans’ issues. His platform is their platform. His preference for big government is their preference for big government. His racialism is their racialism. His weakness for bigotry is their weakness for bigotry. Anti-Trump Republicans will never get themselves clear of that, ever again.

Had Donald Trump won on his silver, forked tongue, his victory could be seen as an aberration. Since he won on the above issues, it was actually an affirmation. He is what the Republican Party has become. He’s not a bug; he’s a feature.

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