He’s not a Republican phenomenon. He’s part of a troubling global movement toward populism and nationalism.
Donald Trump speaks to guests gathered for a rally on July 25, 2015 in Oskaloosa, Iowa.To understand the rise of Donald Trump, you’d do well not to fixate on the fact that he’s running under the Republican banner. During Thursday night’s Fox News debate, Trump made it clear that failing to secure the GOP nomination wouldn’t stop him from exploring an independent candidacy. And honestly, he’d be crazy not to. Trump is very far from a Republican regular. He represents an entirely different phenomenon, one that bears little resemblance to garden-variety American conservatism. That’s why Republicans shouldn’t fool themselves into believing that one lackluster debate performance will send him packing.
Go to almost any European democracy and you will find that the parties of the center-right and center-left that have dominated the political scene since the Second World War are losing ground to new political movements. What these movements have in common is that they manage to blend populism and nationalism into a potent anti-establishment brew. One of the first political figures to perfect this brand of politics was the very Trumpian Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media tycoon who rose to power as part of a coalition of right-of-center parties in the mid-1990s, and who has been in and out of power ever since, dodging corruption charges and worse all the while. More recently, the miserable state of Europe’s economies has fueled the rise of dozens of other parties. Britain’s Labour Party has been devastated by the rise not only of the leftist Scottish National Party, but also by UKIP, a movement of the right that has been growing at Labour’s expense by campaigning against mass immigration, and by largely abandoning what had been its more libertarian line on the welfare state. UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, has a penchant for bombast that endears him his working-class base, which might sound familiar to you.
The Danish People’s Party went from the far-right fringe to become Denmark’s second-largest party by combining anti-immigration sentiment with a commitment to protecting social programs that serve native Danes. In neighboring Sweden, the Sweden Democrats are trying to pull off a similar feat, which is challenging in light of the party’s neofascist roots. France’s National Front has been a major player for decades, yet under its current leader, Marine Le Pen, is on the verge of a major electoral breakthrough, despite near-constant infighting. The most successful populist movements in southern Europe—Podemos in Spain, the Five Star Movement in Italy, and Syriza in Greece—are generally on the left rather than the right, yet they’re just as aggressively anti-establishment as their right-wing counterparts.
So what does any of this have to do with Trump? As a political outsider, Trump has the freedom to say or do almost anything. While every other Republican on stage Thursday night made an effort to demonstrate their conservative bona fides, justifying this or that heresy by invoking the Bill of Rights or the memory of the sainted Ronald Reagan, Trump had no compunction about breaking with ideological orthodoxy. When asked about his past support for a Canadian-style single-payer health system, Trump didn’t back down. Instead of repudiating his past position, or apologizing for it, he said that “as far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland.
It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.” Why didn’t Trump reverse himself? It could be that he recognizes that there are many GOP voters who are just as passionate about defending Medicare as they are about protecting America’s borders, and that the prospect of Medicare-for-all might not faze them. Or it could be that he realizes that the forces that have pushed him to the top of the GOP primary fight are far bigger than just the Republican Party, and he need not toe the line to keep his candidacy alive.
Cruz is the Second Coming of Reagan…only better (are we allowed to use the term “Second Coming” on this site?). Cruz will be the most pro-Israel president ever. By far.
babushka Said:
You’re raising the Cruz ????
Like David Gergen, Sabato invariably regurgitates the Washington common wisdom: “The government shutdown will destroy the Republicans”; “Arab Spring is a spontaneous uprising of democratic forces in the Islamic world”; “Obama will prove to be much more moderate than his critics suggest”.
Insofar as Cruz is concerned, the higher he rises the better.
rsklaroff Said:
Have your fingers crossed for Cruz ????
As explained previously, and as Sabato detailed in his Crystal Ball, Trump is a summer fling; Cruz will continue to rise.
Trump should not be trusted, but he should be taken very seriously. This is not a flight of fancy:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/08/13/donald-trump-storms-iowa-with-most-aggressive-ground-game/
ArnoldHarris Said:
Hillary is destroying herself ! I like Bernie as a person, don’t care for his politics.
Trump would quit if polls dropped…endorsing Cruz.
I strongly doubt that Trump will fold his hand and drop out of the 2016 presidential sweepstakes. Here’s why:
1) He can’t be squeezed out by anybody else’s big money. He is a billionaire responsible to nobody about how much he spends and what he spends it on.
2) He knows the the Republican Party establishment wants to get rid of him, which is because they cannot control him. That means he will fight them to spite them, and if he has electoral pull that I think he is developing, but they choose to back one of the lesser candidates from the herd of 17, he will pull a Ross Perot and break them.
3) He and Bernie Sanders, operating independently but simultaneously, are the closest the USA has come to breaking the two-party monopoly in US presidential elections. I think both men know this, and neither of them are timid men; they will not cave in to any pressures from the party hacks.
Can Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton? His odds are shifting in his favor with each new revelation of her unlawful handling of some of this country’s most closely-guarded secrets in military intelligence, plus the fact that most likely voters regard her and untrustworthy and dishonest, as well as incompetent.
Can Donald Trump beat the other 16 members of the Republican herd? There is little or no evidence any of them are trending toward beating Trump in the presidential polling.
All told, the 2016 presidential election is in he process of shaking up the political establishments of this country.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Trump will drop after he presents policy; of the listed conservatives, Santorum will probably fail shortly and Carson soon thereafter…with Jindal continuing to be starved for cash. Thus…Cruz remains The Man.
@ Bear Klein: If Trump wins the nomination I will buy you that hat Trump wears “Make America Great Again”
You buy me a hat from Macabbi Haifa FC (first green one) https://www.google.com/search?q=Haifa+FC+soccer+hat&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=Haifa+FC+soccer+hat&tbm=shop&spd=12419106041547163708
Rubio led the charge for amnesty, which the Heritage Foundation claims will cost $6 trillion and turn virtually every red state blue. The conservative candidates are Cruz, Carson, Jindal, and Santorum.
Rubio is a master con artist, a baby-faced assassin. He was the front man for the Reid-Schumer amnesty scam that would have destroyed the GOP to benefit Big Business. His financial benefactors are billionaire amnesty advocates. Rubio would be a disaster as president. The conservative choices are Cruz, Santorum, Jindal, and Carson. The other thirteen GOP candidates are either advocates of an expanded welfare state or – in the case of Paul – a libertarian who is philosophically indifferent towards Israel.
rsklaroff Said:
How ?????
Rubio tries to emulate JFK but even lacks what he claims to be foreign policy experience.
@ Bear Klein:
Yamit82 is still in that cave in the Chinate Mts of Texas guarded by a herd of rattlesnakes [ he bites them].
@ yamit82:
I will put my thinking cap on for a good bet. I re-read your post and you did not name call but certainly were attempting to insult me. Nice try. Yachad Yachad were are you now?