I used to post a lot here about politics. (These days, I pretty much don't post at all, yet here we are.) That mostly stopped ten years ago in 2016. I found myself increasingly without a tribe, but also having to admit that while I had opinions I did not have any particular expertise about what worked in politics. But we've just had a significant election, and so it's time for a post about politics. Consider yourself warned and do not feel obligated to read it if you find you'd think better of me (or of your day) if you didn't.
I have been a conservative my entire life, someone who was often frustrated that the elites of the GOP did not seem to follow through on the beliefs they claimed to espouse. And yet, when Trump managed to sweep his way to the nomination in 2016, despite what I saw as grave defects in his character and his policies, I became a somewhat estranged Republican. I had said that the GOP would never win with Trump and those like him on the ticket. I was wrong, and they did win in 2016. And despite intermediate defeats (most notably on in 2020 when Trump lost and behaved disgracefully afterwards) the MAGA movement continued to win nominations and often enough elections. And year by year they drove the kind of politicians I could respect, people who cared about conservative policy and also about behaving like responsible and honorable leaders, out of the party Given enough time most movements become convinced of their invincibility and become more extreme and more corrupt. We saw it on the left where past excesses led to losses to the right in 2016 and 2024. Now we've seen it on the right where a combination of terrible choices (a poorly chosen and poorly executed war and trade policies which have driven up prices, and an intentionally and needlessly destructive approach to immigration enforcement which alienated a number of the people who voted for it) have resulted in a massive defeat for the Republican Party. You would think that this would lead to some soul searching, but at least a part of the MAGA coalition is simply digging in deeper, insisting that their problem is that they haven't gone far enough. It's not their fault, they claim. It's the fault of the neo-cons and libertarians who forced the Iran War and the continued inflation on them. President Trump seems to be of this faction, having just pushed out Susie Wiles as his chief of staff and put in Stephen Miller. Enough already. Ten years in, the MAGA movement (and the administration) is run almost exclusively by those who have committed themselves entirely to Trump and his movement. Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller don't agree on everything, but one thing that absolutely ties them together is that they would not be hired by any other Republican administration. Even those from the before times who have held on and survived, like Marco Rubio, have done so by giving over significant portions of themselves to whatever positions Trump tells them are the current party line. But I think arguing policies at this time reads the moment wrong. The massive, cross-state repudiation of the current GOP seems to be more about how the GOP acts than about what it does. From the beginning, one of the key criticisms of Trump has been about his poor character. His insults, his bullying, his lechery, his inability to take a loss like a man, and his basic incompetence at doing most things other than being a reality TV star. Many on the left seemed to mis-read this as what ordinary voters liked about Trump. And unfortunately, many among Trump's movement did as well. The lesson many aspiring MAGA politicians and inflluencers seemed to take was that the bad behavior was the point. And so concluding that the American people liked their politicians to behave badly, they behaved badly too. Behaving badly was promoted as authenticity and telling it like it is. But Trump's imitators do not have the celebrity and humor that have made Trump successful with those who support him. Nor do they come by it honestly. In Trump's odd power of positive thinking, he seems to believe most of what he says, while his imitators mostly operate through contempt. When JD Vance claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs, it was pretty clear he didn't believe any such thing. It's just that he thinks most of his base voters are dumb enough (or bad enough) to believe that kind of thing. Add to that a generous helping of candidates who just incredibly lousy candidates (Dr Oz, Herschel Walker, Kari Lake, Paxton, Vivek) whom the MAGA movement seems to be convinced the rubes can be made to vote for just by telling them that Trump endorses them. And then a contempt for the overall democratic process -- from gerrymandering, which is a blatant grab for more seats without having to try to win voters' support, to junk lawsuits and prosecutions -- which again seems rooted in a contempt for the voters and the republic. At a certain point, all this just becomes an awful lot to bear. Perhaps the vast non-political middle could ignore such things if the economy was healthy and all seemed to be going well, but gas and other prices rising and unsettlingly rapid technological change on the horizon with AI, enough people seem to have become tired enough of the antics to take notice. And so the voters just handed the Democrats a massive electoral victory, even while at the same time polls show only 39% of Americans having a favorable view of the Democratic Party. Politics tends to move in cycles: The JFK/LBJ era, the Nixon era, the Reagan era, the Clinton era, the George W Bush era, the Obama era, and then the Trump era which somehow ran simultaneously with the self destructive Woke era on the left and the shambolic Biden presidency which probably does not deserve an era since it appears more like an interglacial pause within the Trump presidency. It's worth thinking about these different eras, and how none of them lasted over 12 years. It's also worth noting (as people talk about how the GOP could never win again in the foreseeable future) how quickly reversals have occurred. Nixon won 49 states in 1972, and was ejected from the presidency in unpopularity and disgrace less than two years later. In 1976 it seemed like the GOP was in for a long time in the wilderness, only for Reagan to win 44 states four years later in 1980. And on and on. Remember Bush's permanent majority? And Obama's permanent majority after that? There's no going back in life. If the Republican party puts together a winning coalition again in the coming years it will not be the same as in 2004, nor should it be. But one thing I don't believe that the GOP can afford anymore is to promote despite (or sometimes seemingly because of) incompetence, offensiveness, and corruption. There is a balance to be found between the current "trigger the libs" ethic in which being offensive is itself seen as a virtue and the "you can't say that" HR-lady ethic which dominated too much of elite culture until a couple years ago. Different times call for different parties. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, people sometimes talked about the Democrats as the soft hearted and indulgent "mom party" and the more hard nosed and financially practical GOP as the "dad party". Over the last ten years, the Republicans have too often been more of a crazy divorced uncle party. As we face the immanent demographic reconning with Social Security and Medicare, and also the need to find a productive economy in which we still build things during the rapid changes related to technology and changing global trade networks, the crazy uncle is increasingly not going to get it done. Nor does increasingly driving college educated professionals out of the base seem like a long term success strategy.
I hope that new leadership will arise and succeed in finding the right new direction. What we do not need is more of the same.
