I recommend reading these three pieces in their entirety.
I think his natural instinct will be to look for some quick symbolic victories to satisfy supporters, and then pursue mass popularity with a lot of government benefits, debt and free-lunch thinking. I don’t think the Trump presidency will be recognizable as traditionally conservative or right-wing.
this election is at the very best a mixed blessing. It is less a show of strength of any sort than a cry of resistance and outrage. It is a cry that our politics clearly needed to hear and will now be forced to take seriously. But by itself it has not charted a way forward.
I had no idea that the Democratic party was so thoroughly alienating it’s own voters. Hillary is will likely end up with almost 10 million fewer votes than Obama in 2008. She’ll end up with almost six million fewer votes than Obama in 2012. Those voters didn’t move to the GOP. People just stayed home. Given our growing population and the enormous media interest in this campaign, those numbers are simply astounding. The Democrats alienated roughly 14 percent of their 2008 voting base.
The Republicans tend to do better in off-year elections, because Democratic turnout is lower. I am tempted to say that Mrs. Clinton managed to turn this into an off-year election.
[UPDATE: David French takes back his earlier analysis, because it was based on incomplete vote totals.]
Let me speak to the significance of Mr. Trump from the perspective of the person, the party, and ideology.
As a person, his victory is astounding. Like any Republican, he had the liberal media against him. But they were less restrained and balanced than they have been in the past. On top of that, he had some mainstream conservative media (including Yuval Levin and his colleagues at National Review) against him. You can argue that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity with the establishment actually helped to firm his support, but even so you have to give him credit for pulling off such political jujitsu.
As for the party, I expect the schism within the Republican Party to heal quickly. I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s reaction to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no words that I’ve spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding.
I do not expect that the Republican establishment will unsay any words that they have spoken about Mr. Trump. But I expect all that will fade away once he is engaged in political combat with Democrats in Washington.
I also think that those progressives who are predicting that the election will have dire consequences for women, gays, and people of color are making a tactical error. They are setting a very low bar for Mr. Trump and the Republicans. When four years from now we still have civil rights laws in place, mostly-legal abortion, and widely-legal gay marriage, these putative victim communities will be wondering what all the fuss was about.
Going forward, the Republicans desperately need to catch on with one or more of the demographic groups that currently is in the bag for the Democrats. Read David French’s piece again. My takeaway is that if the Republicans stand still, then all the Democrats have to do to win the Presidency is find a candidate who does not turn off the weakly-attached voters.
On immigration, I agree with Tyler that Mr. Trump’s border control efforts may prove mostly symbolic. I do not think he needs to make much progress on the wall. He could simply ask ICE to make a regular public display of rudely and forcefully deporting people. I am cynical enough to guess that if every night on television there are scenes of suffering and humiliated deportees, this will satisfy the anti-immigrant crowd without having to build the wall. (For those of you new to this blog, I am against causing suffering and humiliation among deportees. I am not even in favor of deportation in the first place–if it were up to me, the most we would do to deter anyone wanting to take up residence here is charge some sort of one-time fee.)
Assuming Mr. Trump succeeds in creating the impression that our border controls are tight, some of his supporters might countenance giving long-time undocumented residents a path to citizenship. What is unacceptable to those who make an issue of illegal immigration is giving a path to citizenship without much tighter controls.
As for ideology, Mr. Trump is not a man of strong principles. He will not treat his victory as a conservative mandate, nor should he.
On health care policy, pundits are talking as if a Senate filibuster is inevitable if the Republicans try to repeal Obamacare. I would bet against this. For one thing, I don’t think Democratic pollsters are going to be advising their clients to fall on their swords to keep Obamacare. For another thing, I would not put it past Mr. Trump to work with Democrats on a new law. You may have forgotten that before Mr. Obama, whose idea of talking with the other side was to say “I won,” we had Presidents who were able to negotiate bipartisan bills. Do not be shocked if Mr. Trump does this. That would, however, result in health care policy that is at best a mixed bag for those of us with a preference for market-oriented solutions.
Still, I am more optimistic than Tyler that conservatives will win some victories during the Trump Administration. After all, we do have a Republican Congress that is licking its chops. In particular:
1. I would bet that the courts get packed with a lot fewer strongly progressive judges than they would have been under Mrs. Clinton.
2. I would bet that the EPA, the Department of Education, and the Department of Labor pursue a much less expansive regulatory agenda.
3. I would bet that some of the regulatory red tape that impedes infrastructure projects will go away.
“I also think that those progressives who are predicting that the election will have dire consequences for women, gays, and people of color are making a tactical error.”
One of the things I have taken away from the Scott Adams commentary is that fear is the best persuader, and it was a specific campaign strategy to instill personal fear into non-white voters that Trump would turn the US into a nihilistic hellscape of intolerance and racism. This fear was amped up to ridiculous levels by social media, so that normally level-headed and intelligent people bought into it. Right after the election, this fear is still very real so all they see is the hellscape. It will fade as Trump acts perfectly normal for a while.
Will it?
Similar if not as bad things were said about Romney, McCain, etc. They didn’t fade with time.
There exists and entire industry devoted to creating fake outrage. Trump doesn’t have to do anything outrageous for people to think and feel he has. They only need be told.
The phenomenon is exemplified by Bill Maher:
“I know liberals made a big mistake, because we attacked your boy Bush like he was the end of the world, and he wasn’t. And Mitt Romney, we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars because I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldn’t have changed my life that much, or yours, or John McCain. They were honorable men who we disagreed with, and we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf, and that was wrong. But this is real. This is going to be way different.”
Romney-fear was ratcheted up like Trump-fear. In four years if it turns out that “This is going to be way different” was an incorrect statement, he’ll conclude that his Trump-fear was unjustified and that he is also an honorable man
“In four years if it turns out that “This is going to be way different” was an incorrect statement, he’ll conclude that his Trump-fear was unjustified and that he is also an honorable man.”
Only if he’s trying to justify the demonization of whoever is the Republican villain de jour at that time, assuming its not Trump anymore.
All rhetoric was amped up. We won”t have kristalnact, but there probably will be an increase in hate crimes and that makes those predictions as valid as Trump’s promise to build a wall and have Mexico paying for it and then say increasing border patrols instead..
“When four years from now we still have civil rights laws in place, mostly-legal abortion, and widely-legal gay marriage, these putative victim communities will be wondering what all the fuss was about.”
If you really think that if Trump runs for reelection, he is going to get a significantly higher proportion of these groups because they will realize he is not such a bad guy, I’m willing to bet a significant amount of money against that.
The wall is one thing, but don’t focus too much on that. There are a lot of “one stroke of the pen” highly significant executive acts that the (suppressed up to now) anti-illegal immigration wing of the GOP (e.g. Grassley, Sessions, Kobach) have had in mothballs just for a moment like this. DACA could disappear so easily, 750k grants of deferral will not be renewed, etc. Judging from reports, Trump’s had borrowed their staff to be his staff. These things will be on his desk day one, ready to go. I expect he’ll sign them sooner or later.
Create slow growth over concern about the deficit, with Obama’s consent, then elect someone to fix this. Everyone loves solvable problems. Welcome Keynes back to the Republican party.
I do wonder how well he will get along with the congressional Republican agenda. He may seek bipartisanship which is much easier with Democrats, especially with the power of the executive.
Charles Murray is fond of saying something along the lines of, “why do people keep asking me for solutions, I’m a libertarian, I don’t do solutions.”
I can’t think of a better summation of the libertarian party, it deserved Gary Johnson.
“Going forward, the Republicans desperately need to catch on with one or more of the demographic groups that currently is in the bag for the Democrats.”
What’s your realistic libertarian solution for doing this? Do you have any evidence it will work?
Multi-racial, multi-cultural states are a mistake. The GOP would do best to mass deport these people that are voting against it. That is the only realistic scenario where the GOP has a future.
A radically different ethnic mix will want different politiics, but there will always be vying political interests no matter what the demographics. The GOP, just like any political party will need to adapt to what the voting base supports or be replaced.
Is there any reason why we should have wanted a “radically different ethnic mix” in this country? Other than pushing the whole political spectrum to the Left?
Regarding the southern border, Trump’s strong statements were about the human traffickers and smugglers; doing something drastic about them could be a yuge step forward and could please most people.
Lost in all this commentary is the dirt that was dug up during the campaign (most of which I deem credible) that seems to indicate that Trump a) has trouble focusing b) hasn’t read a book in years c) doesn’t understand basic civics and as a result of a and b, probably won’t have much success learning on the job. On that basis, I think it seems very likely that, as Tyler suggests, Trump will be happy with a few bones he can throw his base and getting to continue his role as a reality tv star from the White House (as bizarre as this seems) by making TV appearances, photo ops with foreign leaders, etc., and that Mike Pence and a Chief of Staff or three will be the guys really running the show. So with that in mind, I am like you kind of cautiously optimistic that the right can claim a few probably small but legitimate victories in the next few years.
Then again, wasn’t Pence the guy who caved like a house of cards on the whole gay wedding cake progressive freakout a couple of years ago?
Yes, Pence caved on the wedding cake thing. He’s a weak reed.
The scenario you sketch is plausible, but there is another possibility. Trump might very well form an alliance with congressional Democrats and the media against his nominal party. This could get started with Republican opposition to the trillion dollar infrastructure program he is already talking about (which sounds a lot like Obama’s “stimulus”). Trump seems to get much more pleasure from bashing Republicans than Democrats, much of his base seems more angry at the GOP establishment than the Left, and Trump might well perceive this path as the one of least resistance.
It would have to be a tacit alliance. The media will never forgive Trump for saying mean things about people you’re not allowed to say mean things about.
I would not be so sure. Of course, they won’t support him for reelection, but in the interim, I would not be surprised if “strange new respect” for Trump crops up as he comes into conflict with more conventional Republicans and genuine conservatives.
And that won’t be the worst thing. The country could use some relief from politics. Trump will do some signature things then relax. If Trump can’t unify congress, it never will be, but where there is little to done, there is little to do. He sure won’t be spending time on bathroom bills.
Lot’s of sick stupid people in America. Evil con-man Nazi is in charge.
Well, I lived through 8 years of Bush before America realized what disaster he’d been. And I lived through Schwarzegger before we got Moonbeam and the Dem supermajority we needed to bypass the toxic Prop 13 and fix things.
So I guess I’ll just have to wait out this latest disaster.
I guess sociopathic would have been a better word choice than evil.
Although I agree with a number of your statements, Arnold, I disagree strongly with your claim about the “anti-immigrant crowd”. Many of us are not anti-immigrant, but anti-illegal immigrant. I think that simple enforcement of the law will stem the influx of illegals and induce massive self-deportation. If he cuts off federal funding for sanctuary cities, that would also be a massive step in the right direction.
Trump’s achievement in winning the Presidency in his first try at political office is astounding. I suspect he will surprise in office. I note that little has been heard from him since his acceptance speech early on Wednesday. What happened? He switched quickly from campaigning to planning to govern. I think he is methodical and is planning to get things done.
No, Rich, you’re anti-immigrant. I’ll prove it. Let’s just do away with all of the immigration restrictions and go back to the way it was when my great-grandparents came over. There were no illegal immigrants then because there were no laws making any of them illegal.
I bet you don’t like my proposal. It would do away with illegal immigration by making all of it legal, so if your preferences really are as you state, you should be happy with it. But I bet you’re not.
Perhaps, like most Americans, he figures there’s an optimal number of immigrants the US accept in a given year that is substantially greater than zero and substantially less than infinity, and he’d maybe like to see that number codified in law and then actually enforced?
Stop giving Jeffs a bad name with your cheap rhetorical ploys.
To Jeff,
I recall that immigration between say 1870 and 1940 was paid for by the immigrants, who wanted to join US society, and was based on work and self-support without application for welfare. Those immigrants could not vote before becoming citizens. They were screened for disease and animosity to US culture. Most came from Europe. Many returned when they couldn’t support themselves.
Current immigration is not comparable, especially as immigrants go on welfare immediately and are encouraged to vote early, often, and Democratic.
“…especially as immigrants go on welfare immediately and are encouraged to vote early, often, and Democratic.”
You do realize you’re making up stuff out of thin air? Immigrants have significant restrictions on welfare. And if you’re worried about them voting, *assuming they can vote at all*, would it not make more sense to encourage them early, often, *and for your side*?
Yeah, because recent immigrants from regions with limited salable skills and experience in the rule of law are so well prepared to cleave to libertarian or republican concepts.
Many of these rules regarding immigrants are waived, or ignored.
My wife went to ESL school here, and she had endless Russian classmates who’d explain how to get EBT, how to avoid having too many assets, etc.
This is part of the problem: laws are passed and then ignored by the bureaucracy which can’t be bothered to enforce them.
This is more than about immigrants. EBT is only for X number of days, but they just ask you, they don’t ever check anything.
So you have law that is easily flouted, and the abusers share this knowledge in their circles.
See Disability. My last landlord was “disabled” but he re-roofed the rental home personally.
“Many of us are not anti-immigrant, but anti-illegal immigrant.”
This makes about as much sense as saying, “Many of us are not against smoking pot, but against smoking pot illegally”
If you’re against illegal immigration there’s a really easy, low cost way to eliminate it. Make it legal.
More like any other legal activity with restrictions. I’m not against drinking, but I’m against illegal drinking such as drinking and driving.
Just about every other nation has immigration restrictions.
“Many of us are not anti-immigrant, but anti-illegal immigrant.”
This isn’t right. The better statement: Many of us are not anti-immigrant whether legal or illegal but anti-immigration or pro-restricted immigration as the phenomenon as practiced by western nations can have bad effects. Leading immigration restrictionist group, NumbersUSA, very clearly says they don’t believe in criticizing immigrants themselves.
In general, I don’t think immigrants, even illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly bad people. But I also don’t think that they have full claim to membership of other societies and other societies don’t have some obligation to grant membership to everyone.
As an analogy: I am not anti job applicant or college applicant or people trying to gain membership to some group, but I also think jobs/colleges/groups/cultures have the right to exclude others.
I had no idea that the Democratic party was so thoroughly alienating it’s own voters. Hillary is will likely end up with almost 10 million fewer votes than Obama in 2008. She’ll end up with almost six million fewer votes than Obama in 2012.
Still seems wrong to me. The Democratic Party didn’t alienate anybody; the fact is Obama inspired a bunch of people who are generally politically unaffiliated and disengaged to go to the polls to vote for the first black major party nominee. Those people weren’t going to show up again to vote for HRC for any number of reasons.
In terms of Trump:
1) I completely disagree with immigration as that is one thing that won Trump the primary and election. And you are cynical about every night on television there are scenes of suffering and humiliated deportees but that is not going to play well with minorities. Trump actually did marginally better than Romney with minority voters but the news media of taking 65 year Grandma in a Palmer Raid re-enactment is going to send the left to the moon.
2) The big concern is foreign policy and I still believe he rip up the Iran deal and look to bomb them during his term. (They are leaking John Bolton name for SOS!)
3) I don’t know about Roe v Wade. The right really wants this time.
4) In terms of media, the MSM new print is a problem for Trump…But Cable News loves him. (Have you seen CNN ratings?) That is what won him the election expect this dividing issue.
Hardly anyone wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. Some people think that abortion should be left up to the states, but most of the pro-life voters aren’t objecting on the grounds of federalism. Rather, they think abortion itself is wrong.
However, these pro-life voters are much less numerous than is commonly believed. The proof is that some 90 percent of Down Syndrome babies are aborted. That tells me that 90 percent of the voters do not want abortion completely outlawed. They just think it’s icky and don’t want it shoved in their face.
Remember the biggest core and most important constituency since 1980 of the Republican Party is the Moral Majority Christian movement. Additionally, back in April and May, the Christian moved to support Trump was absolutely important to his win even though they really distrust his lifestyle. And there is nothing they want more than ending abortion which is the same thing as Health Care is to liberals.
Trump really needs the Republican Party support and they will go to war for him in 2020 if he can end legal abortion.
Disagree. Trump took off after he talked about the wall. Iran wasn’t even on the table.
Look at the competitors. There were other candidates with as good or better foreign policy chops but none of the other 16 candidates talked about immigration. And when a couple did late in the game they weren’t credible.
Build the Paywall!
“I don’t think the Trump presidency will be recognizable as traditionally conservative or right-wing.”
That’s great news. As Charles Murray pointed out in an appeal to convince Republicans to vote for Hillary, there has been little difference between Republican and Democrat presidents in spending growth and regulatory expansion in the last 60 years, excepting Reagan. There was a small pullback under Clinton that may be attributable to the Gingrich congress.
So Trump hopefully won’t be a traditional Democrat or Republican president. But we do need to keep an eye on the Republican Senate/House as most of those are traditional conservatives.
http://www.aei.org/publication/a-reality-check-about-republican-presidents/
“putative victim communities will be wondering what all the fuss was about.”
It depends from community to community, but as for Muslim Americans, the “fuss” is entirely justified. We just elected a guy who has pledged to ban Muslims from entering the United States. If you lived in a country where the newly elected head of state had planned to ban people of your religion from entering the country and 65% of people in his political party agreed would you feel safe?
If I was a Muslim, I would feel perfectly safe because no one has any way of knowing if I am Muslim or not
Okay, I guess someone could start bombing mosques or something. That does seem like a bigger step than a temporary ban on immigrants from radical Islamic countries, though
Didn’t he already walk back on that claim and say he just wanted to vet Muslim immigrants’ for extremist views?
First and foremost, I think almost nothing should be taken for granted with the guy. He’s largely just a walking random variable. Someone above mentioned he was considering John Bolton for secretary of state; if true that’s proof of Trump’s fickleness. A guy who criticized Israel more than any candidate in recent history and called the Iraq War a mistake considering Bolton?
For the left, Trump’s sheer ambiguity (he doesn’t just wobble, he veers between opposite ends of the political spectrum) allows him to be everything they hate. For many on the right, he’s all their hopes and dreams. He’s a political Rorschach test basically. Trump could do a wide range of things, good and bad and both, and ex post facto no reasonable person could say they had a right to be surprised.
If you care about foreign Muslim immigration privileges, you are right to fear Trump for reducing those.
A Trump presidency will lower the group status of Muslims, especially next to someone like Obama, and that’s reasonable to oppose/support.
But I don’t see Muslim citizens losing basic safeties or basic rights in any major way. That will prove absurd.
What do I think Trump biggest problem will be?
He won by consolidating the economic Luddites and they are expecting results.
“before Mr. Obama, whose idea of talking with the other side was to say “I won,” we had Presidents who were able to negotiate bipartisan bills”
Yeesh. You’re still writing that in 2016? We’ve known for four years that Republicans were committed to a strategy of obstruction before Obama even took office. http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/
I give you the Senate:
“Vice President Biden told [Michael Grunwald] that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, ‘Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ ” he recalled. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was, ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’ ” Biden said. The Vice President said he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along those lines.”
And the House, at end of January, 2009:
“Cantor’s whip staff had been planning a “walk-back” strategy in which they would start leaking that 50 Republicans might vote yes, then that they were down to 30 problem children, then that they might lose 20 or so… That way, even if a dozen Republicans ultimately defected, it would look as if Obama failed to meet expectations… Cantor adopted a different strategy. “We’re not going to lose any Republicans,” he declared. His staff was stunned… Cantor’s aides asked if he was sure he wanted to go that far out on a limb… Cantor said yes, he meant zero. He was afraid that if the Democrats managed to pick off two or three Republicans, they’d be able to slap a “bipartisan” label on the bill. “We can get there,” he said. “If we don’t get there, we can try like hell to get there.”