One of the many things that has been exposed by the Trump campaign is that America does not have a two-party political system. It has a 1.3 party system. A good example of this is how Paul Ryan probably had one of his cronies leak that lewd tape to embarrass the party nominee. Whether or not he orchestrated it is immaterial, as he clearly had foreknowledge and was prepared to pile on as soon as it was released. In fact, it looked like he was coordinating a revolt against the nominee until it became clear it was going to backfire.
This is not the normal functioning of a political party. Hillary Clinton could be caught on video, strangling a baby, and the party would rally to her side. The media would celebrate baby strangling for a week. Just look at how hard they tried to hide her severe health problems from the public. That’s how political parties are supposed to work. The role of the party is to advance all of its candidates, even the ones they don’t like all that much. John McCain is an obnoxious nutjob, but the party fully supported his candidacy.
The truth is that about a third of elected Republicans would prefer to be Democrats. Within living memory, guys like Paul Ryan would have been moderate Democrats or possibly liberal Republicans. The distance between Clinton and Ryan on the main issues of the day is tiny. Ryan and most of the party leadership are post-national globalists, just like the Democrats. Ryan would prefer to be a bit more tightfisted on some spending items than Clinton, but he has made it known, time and again, that he will not fight over these things
There is another third or more of the party that is not interested in rocking the boat. They just like the good life and generally think the status quo is pretty good, at least for them. In another age, many would have been seat warmers in the Democrat Party, but time and circumstance put them in the GOP. A guy like John Boehner, for example, would have been in the Democrat party in the 1970’s. He’s the sort of guy union boys would like as he is unpretentious and likes talking about bread and butter issues more than philosophy.
That leaves a small fraction of the party’s elected officials in Washington that are dedicated to opposing the dominant orthodoxy and its political party. The result is a guy like Jeff Sessions getting grief from his own party, because he is standing by the party’s nominee. The weirdness of this goes unnoticed in official Washington as the majority of the Imperial Capital thinks guys like Sessions are a nuisance. There are just 40 members of the House that can be described as traditional American conservatives. That’s 16% of the caucus.
Now, Gallup has been polling on ideological self-identification for a long time. The portion of the country that self-identifies as liberal is around 20% and the portion that identifies as conservative sticks around 40%. The rest are low-tax liberals and conservatives that live in liberal states. In all probability, this group of “moderates” breaks 2-to-1 to traditional American conservatism. At least, if they are given the choice between a Reagan and an Obama, for example, they would break toward Reagan.
The math suggests that about half the country has no party representing their interests. At best they have a third of one party, which happens to be controlled by the other party. The other 5/6ths of the political class speaks loudly and aggressively for the 20% of the public that identifies as liberal. As guys like Paul Ryan have made clear, they have zero interest in listening to the pleas of their conservative members. The House leadership has made it clear that the troublesome right wingers are to remain quiet and out of the way or else.
It’s why a rather poor politician like Trump has rocketed to the brink of winning the presidency. For the first time in decades, one party has put up someone that talks about issues important to the bulk of the the country in a way that is familiar to close to half, maybe more than half, of the voters. It’s also why Trump finds himself running against the leadership of his own party, the so-called conservative media and the full army of the Progressive establishment. Trump is essentially running as an independent.
Popular government cannot work when it is not popular. By that I mean the public must think their interests are being represented in the halls of power. Otherwise, it is just another form of despotism in the eyes of that portion of the public that feels excluded. What’s happening now may be a modern American version of the Conflict of the Orders. An unrepresented portion of the public is demanding to be represented and using the tools at its disposal to force reform on the established order.
Perhaps this election is a modern American version of the Day of the Tiles. Instead of throwing roof tiles at the agents of the state, the people are using the blunt weapon that is Donald Trump. In isolation it will just feel like a wacky event that means nothing, but in the fullness of time it will be viewed as a pivotal event. It’s hard to know, but what is known is that this system has lost its legitimacy because a swelling portion of the public is no longer represented by either party. That cannot last and it will not last.
Great post, Have trimmed a few more sites from my browsing. Keeping the negativity out until i drop my ballot in the box. That ballot will have exactly one mark on it.
I will be doing the same. I’ve even succeeded in convincing my wife to pull for The Donald and ignore the down-ballot, as it doesn’t make much sense to have her going in and cancelling me out, does it? We. Will. Not. Vote. For. Mark. Effing. Kirk. Which brings up another concept that I think every American family should ponder. Clearly, especially this year, it should be easy enough to make a determination as a married couple who will be better for your family. How will a fatally Leftist Supreme Court benefit your family? Because under Hillary, it’s coming. Weirdos… Read more »
Trump, win or lose, is just the begginning of what is to come.
Or the end, Jake.
I agree with you, Jake. A Trump win would slow things down, perhaps, and a Hillary wiin would speed them up. The times are changing, regardless of the election outcome.
The Trump Plebiscite poses a conundrum for the cloud people. Traditionally, a threat is neutralized by granting power, plunder, or sexual gratification, until the threat is trained to the leash. Trump has had access to all this and more, all of his life, and seems uncontrollable. It is just now dawning on a few of them that Mr. Trump actually believes what he says, and that his campaign is not just a rich man’s vanity. The Direct Action branch of the Cloud is advocating for permission to achieve candidate termination in a plausible manner, and judging by the rage on… Read more »
Is the scheduled on Oct 16 release of “Killing Reagan” a pure coincidence? Why a movie about this specific event, why now?
I’m really puzzled by the vitriol directed at Trump. Yeah, they savaged Mittens, , McCain and Palin ( who did get closer to the Trump treatment than the other two, but in Palin’s case I got it- she was a shitkicker from the ass end of nowhere- the personification of someone who clings to her guns and Bibles.) But Trump? He’s a libertine, presumably an adulterer, and someone who very much illustrates a big chunk of our modern, debased culture, both popular, and for lack of a better term sexual. He almost certainly will not do anything to change our… Read more »
Sorry for the garbled syntax above. Must be the meds.
They excuse it. I’ve been arguing with a Catholic woman that can turn a blind eye to Hillary’s ideas on abortion. She somehow thinks Hillary is better for families. And she’s fully on board with bringing in more immigrants. Some people are willfully blind.
The Heretic. Shows what they really value.
The funny thing about all of this is there has always been an easy solution. The GOP could have told its dwarfs a year ago that immigration was a loser. Rubio and Bush were too far out on the limb to climb back, but they could have crawled back enough to give everyone else cover. Kasich used to be a pretty good on immigration and trade. That would have allowed taken the wind out of Trump’s sails early and the party could have got a nominee they wanted. Instead, they sprinted the other way and handed the nomination to Trump.… Read more »
Kasich? Talk about damaged goods! The old Kasich used to rant and rave against government and in a way he was a little like Trump. The new phony, fakey, irritable, touchy-feely Kasich is annoying. He was my congressman, and we share the same ethnic Heritage. I loved the guy in his heyday. The old case Kasich was great! The new Kasich? Not impressed.
I too remember the old John Kasich. I worked a phone bank he had set up w/ a big real estate developer in C’bus OH in 2000. He was testing the waters then for a Pres.run. I probably made 300 calls to OH registered Repubs asking who they were voting for in the primary. Almost all were for GWBush, THREE were for McCain. Election Day 2000: Bush beat Gore in OH, but big trouble elsewhere as we remember! So . . . McCain’s had a hair across his ass a mile wide against GWB all this time, and they both… Read more »
The Brilliance of our founding fathers in their framework of a citizen’s legislature and government is lost upon the many people who look at these positions as lifelong jobs. The fact of the matter is, if Jesus Christ was in a political position long enough sooner or later he would have enough people who hated him. These people need to limit themselves to a short stint in service and then get out.
Marcia Fudge? At least you don’t have Indiana’s popular mayor, Harry Balls. (Balz?)
And they were gonna name a stadium after this guy!
I think the Media and (D)irtbag party saw Trump as the most defeatable. Their attacks helped him during the primaries – ad hominem attacks against the rubes supporting him especially. They simply underestimated the urge we all feel to vote them a big FU.
Yes, yes, now I see it. Instead of a mummy, this time they thought to use what they saw as a clown- so Hillary could claim a “historic landslide for the first woman President.”
The political class does not see any “better deal” out there than the one they have now, so they will defend what they have, to the end. As a bonus, they understand that giving money to the future Grifter in Chief has huge paybacks, and refusal to give earns you the equivalent of Chuck Schumer’s “dagger to the throat”. They have a great deal and an easy-to-understand situation with her, so they will not take the chance on Trump. People who find themselves in the midst of a huge personal payoff always take the path that least jeopardizes that payoff.… Read more »
I was watching some old sitcoms (late-80s stuff) and the fact is that we live in a completely different world. The 1980s might as well be the 1950s for how much we’ve changed. And the same applies to politics. The solution you mention here is what would happen if we had serious people or even just experienced people in charge. Instead we have NeverTrump on one side and the Clinton Foundation on the other.
The guy I liked was Scott Walker. My understanding is that Reince Preibus told him to downplay immigration, as it was a loser issue. I think the word went out to all of them to avoid immigration. At this point I hope the Republican Party goes up in a bonfire. What could be really interesting, though, is next time around if some reasonably intelligent pol we’ve never heard of looks at Trump and thinks, “He’ll, I could do that easy…”
Tim
The historical references are sobering. Potus meets with his National Security Team today to discuss Iraq and Syria,tomorrow Kerry meets with Lavrov in Lausanne. So far,our crack team in the White House has produced the colossal hot mess that is the Middle East today. No,this will not end well for us. Russians are superb chess players.
The Russian world view is basically that they will do whatever is good for mother Russia and the opinion of the “international community” matters not at all. As far as Russia is concerned, the international community can go F itself. And multiply that concern by minus 99 x 100E100 and that’s how serious they take the pathological liar Obama and Hillary, and the moronic, incredibly stupid and dumb Kerry (a tie with Hillary as the WORST Sec. of State in US history) So, in Syria, the Russians just bomb the crap out of their enemy and if it kills civilians,… Read more »
“Another time, they sent all the family members of some dead terrorists to more distant relatives.
The immediate family arrived in vans- and packaged in 3 inch boxes.” -John Loftus
I believe this happened in Lebanon in the 80’s. Funny how no Russians were targeted again. In international affairs, it is better to be feared then loved.
The GOPe reaction is now about what I expected back in the primaries. I was expecting them to outright cheat to steal the nomination from him, which cruz tried with the delegates to some degree. The other way I saw this going down was if he did get the nomination, they would smash the machinery on the way out, which is what they began doing last week. If hillary does take this, it might be a really good idea to move as far away from DC, NYC and major military bases as you can. Bitch is very desirous of walking… Read more »
Got an idea for a new search site. “How close am I to a military facility?”
You don’t need a crystal ball, to see that the US is at the cusp of becoming a one-party state that has with malice aforethought cut itself adrift of the Constitution and the rule of law – that party serves the interests of a dysfunctional permanent government, its ever-growing underclass of feral dependents, and the very wealthy. The rest of the population is effectively disenfranchised and confronted by a government that is not just unresponsive to their interests, but actively and vigorously hostile to them. A fairly substantial portion of that disenfranchised population is well-armed and rightfully angry. This is… Read more »
Two things: 1) I would suggest that the proportion of the United States population that is unrepresented in Washington is far, far higher than half. Probably 85% or so. The thing is, most don’t understand their actual interests. Either they’ve been indoctrinated and have no understanding of economics, or they don’t understand how the cultural Marxists — i.e., the entire ruling class — are lined up against them, since they don’t understand that statistically all Americans live their lives as conservatives. 2) It would have been better to say that Hillary could be caught on tape kicking a puppy, and… Read more »
After most people have spent ~12 years getting their knowledge in a government institution staffed by union members, it is marvel that any conservative can ever win – a marvel entirely due to the fact that people smarten up as they get older and further away from that indoctrination. “People are conservative about other people’s benefits, and liberal when it comes to their own benefits.” – me. This explains why so many consider themselves conservative while voting for pork-grubbing (D)irtbags, and the political class is so despised yet constantly re-elected. Only a wide scale emptying of the public trough can… Read more »
“John McCain is an obnoxious nutjob, but the party fully supported his candidacy.”
He is but he works for the (((elite))) like his Admiral dad, who as one of the responsibles in covering the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
By not supporting our guy when we’ve had to support theirs, they have opened a dangerous precedent. There is going to be mass abandonment of the GOP if not an outright third party being formed. I am still debating whether to vote all Democrat for every other office but president, or leave them blank. What they have done to Trump leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I am a 35 year almost straight-ticket Republican voter.
I am going to leave them blank so the vote totals are low. Just withholding your vote will ensure the gope dies.
If you are going to smoke the joint, inhale, and be done with it. I am. Immersion therapy.
Leaving any box blank means the ballot is thrown out, in most jurisdictions.
A little known fact. You must select in each.
In many districts, a ballot worker might fill it in for you.
That’s where some last minute uncounted ballots come from.
I really have to wonder when all you will realize that your. Vote. Does. Not. Matter. You’ve been voting for the Republicans for 35 years, and you’ve been burned every single time. You’ve been burned for so long that you don’t even notice the burn. You might even doubt that you’ve been burned. Which issue have you not been burned on? Trade? Nope. See NAFTA, TPP, etc. Debt? Nope. See the Federal Reserve. Healthcare? Nope. See Obamacare, though Obamacare is just the capstone to 80-something years of healthcare metastiz-ation since the New Deal. Immigration? Nope. There are now 100 million… Read more »
King George, I share your frustration. For me,the 1st Black Swan event this year was Scalia’s death. It was so very convenient for those in power. Yesterday’s dump of Podesta’s emails had an interesting reference to “wet works” slang for assassination,just days before Scalia died in highly questionable circumstances. The man was the Rock of Gibralter protecting the Constitution,all of it,including the 2nd Amendment,the 1 most hated by leftists. For the past 7+ years we’ve experienced a -soft- takeover of what little constitutional government remained. Hillary is a hateful,spiteful woman of zero accomplishments who will be bent on exacting revenge… Read more »
“Solution”? Who says we’re expecting a solution? We’re just killing time until the Untergang.
But we could be losing faster! Vote for us!
I will write in someone against the politicians that won’t support Trump.
Vote for your local GOP officials. No sense in throwing out the baby with the bath water. Vote against the federal GOP guys if you must.
No.
The level of MSM malfeasance in this election is beyond comprehension. At this point I think the only thing that can put Trump in the White House is if Anonymous releases a crystal-clear video of Bill Clinton having sex with the allegedly 13-year old girl on Orgy Island along with incontrovertible proof that the girl was under the age of consent *and* either Anonymous or Wikileaks releases incontrovertible proof that Hillary knew all relevant facts and actively conspired to cover it up. This is the only scandal big enough and salacious enough to force the MSM’s hand. Here in Colorado… Read more »
Sir: I am also in Colo……..and agree with you about the Coffman clan antics. Morgan Carrol, the commie, is the daughter of a former state rep, who sired Morgan from a second marriage. I went to school with her older half sister Barbara who wore the shortest skirts and the brightest panties of any sweet thang in school…… jeez, we all loved being in the same class as Barbara. Almost makes me allow a pass for the Carrol family based on past entertainment value received back in the day………
If you have the time, this is a liberal trying to explain Donald Trump to other liberals, and I think he gets some things right:
How Half of America Lost Its’ Effing Mind
One mostly doesn’t see the Left try to understand the people they were conditioned to hate when they attended university.
That’s a really good article. As this weird election goes on, I find myself agreeing more and more on broad points (if not in detail) with honest liberals: guys like Michael Tracey, or the anti-war remnant over at The Nation, or some of the Bernie prole, or the writer of this Cracked article. Heck, I’d even be content to live under some of their policies, as long as we were living in a relatively homogeneous society with secure borders. It’s another sign that we’re undergoing a major political realignment.
But we’re not living in a relatively homogeneous society, Murray, and that’s the rub. We can fix the border problem easily — build a war and patrol it — but what do we do with all the non-Western, non-assimilatable people in our midst?
Join the discussion If we cannot bring ourselves to allow them to starve to death, then we’ll just have to let them eat us alive.
True, but what you always see when they do try to understand is their explanation is mostly self-flattery. “The Trump voters are rural losers!” “Trump voters are unsophisticated goobers from hooterville so they can’t understand why us super smart big city folks…”
I was attending a lawn party in my town. Some of attendees were educators from local HS, as well as from Princeton U. Not top profs, but people with working ties to it. At some point discussion veered toward politics (which I wanted to avoid at all costs). One of women literally went like this “Why don’t they just listen to us? We’re educated & know things better?” Not verbatim, but her sentiment exactly. I didn’t try to argue because that would’ve a total waste of time.
We’ve gone from “how to reach them?” to “how to live with them?”
They are here, not going away, and also demand representation.
Lefty sabotage like the ‘Twitter campaign to repeal the Nineteenth’ is more utopian unreality.
That is an article worth reading. The descriptive part, more than the prescriptive. I believe the future goes to those who incorporate human nature into their proposals for public policy (differing IQs, gender differences, tribalism, community, faith, self-reliance) rather than trying to deny all of it and still make it work. So the Rural Right has some cruelty baked in to its culture, but so does the Upper Class Suburban Left. The cruelty of the Rural Right appears to be largely out of the need to defend one’s family and neighborhood against the economic and social ripping apart that is… Read more »
Well done- we are denied OUR drawbridge, and that’s the problem.
My sister is one of those Urban Educated Progressives (similar to Upper Class Suburban Left) who is more concerned with ‘gay’ marriage and on demand abortion than life or death issues staring us Americans in the face. She is blind to reality. I travel to rural areas often. Trump-Pence signs are ubiquitous.
Where I live in South America, I’m part of the rural right, but old school squire style: high-hedged, fenced family compound; private school for the grandchildren, expected of us by the “redneck” locals; defender of those same “rednecks” against the ridicule of the new agey hippiesque young folks supported by checks from their bourgeois parents in the major cities (our version of HRC voters)… I’m with you: I sympathize far more with the Dirt People than with the Clouds, though the Dirts see me as a crazy Cloud and the Clouds see me as crazy period, but too old and… Read more »
It is a fine article. And there is something seriously wrong with our electoral system. I can’t believe it was set up to allow cities to dictate to the countryside. I’m sure the change happened after either a Supreme Court decision or maybe a Constitutional amendment.
Nosferatu, FYI, the two Supreme Court decisions were Baker v. Carr, and Reynolds v. Sims, both from the 1960s.
That explains it. But it seems that it could be read
The other way now. Rural areas are under represented.
There’s another thing about the party divide: the Republican part of what you call the 1.3 party system honestly believes what they are trying to sell. Outside of the women and gender studies departments in the American university system, no person really believes that Hillary Clinton or any of the bigwigs on the Democratic side really believe anything they push. For them its a means to power and can switch in an instant. But with the Republican faction in question, they actually believe what they are pushing which is why Trump is such a problem for them. The snobbier might… Read more »
I agree with the breakdown of the R-brand, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. The productive portion, those like Jeff Sessions and Trey Gowdey, are allowed to act as attack dogs defending the constitution and the rule-of-law, but the others, mostly the RINOs, take center stage as media hounds. I am voting in Nevada and as Notsothoreau says, the electoral system is broken! I was reviewing the Questions as they are called in Nevada, the Measures/Propositions, and what I find continually frustrating is how these things are put to the public. 1. It usually takes a lot of work to figure out what… Read more »
As always, life imitates SCTV. Back in the day, they did an election night episode, with the usual number of Propositions to be voted on. This was one of them:
If proposition 38 wins, you’re gonna have to return all your bottles to the store.
Isn’t life complicated enough, and with the price of gas these days, does it really make sense?
But worse than this, throw-away bottles will be banned… If they outlaw disposable bottles….
Only outlaws will have them…
Vote no on proposition 38… or yes
depending on how it’s worded…..
I’d vote for mayor Tommy Shanks
When will Johnny LaRue get his crane shot?!
Under a Trump Administration, Johnny will get a crane shot. Make Johnny LaRue Great Again!
IMHO, Trump is indeed an independent in the Ross Perot mold, but was clever enough to insert himself into the pathetic gaggle of Neocon lapdog losers that make up the Republican Party. The Party itself is now a dead man walking thanks to its cowardly betrayal of Trump, but who knows, maybe if he wins the Silent Majority will take heart and begin demanding Republican candidates in the Trump mold. If HRC wins, there will be only one mainstream political party and a large number of non-aligned dissidents waiting for either Godot or the man in the white horse. The… Read more »
“The latest issue of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis has a revealing article on the lack of economic mobility in both the US and Britain. It is an insightful read that every western citizen should be exposed to. The issues that author Frank Buckley discuss at length need a serious candidate to champion. That serious candidate is certainly not some occasionally insolvent, personally troubled, morally dubious, intensely unfocused, reality television star.” It is when he is the only one to step up. Let’s be straight here. On the flip side, the paymasters could have floated and supported a candidate, such as the… Read more »
My car was in the shop this week and I was surprised to find myself waiting with a bunch of Deplorables. Once it became apparent that everyone was Irredeemable, they were happy, even eager, to speak freely. Egad, no one was toothless, illiterate, dribbling spit or oafish; they were, in fact, rather typical suburbanites. . I don’t normally say for whom I am voting. Rather, I say I am an Economy Voter. Trumpkins assume I will vote for Trump, and Hillary supporters assume I will vote for Trump. Why do you suppose that is? It is fascinating that the Hillary… Read more »
Many years ago I wrote an essay on the theological/cultural gap between Protestant clergy and those who listened to their sermons, the pew-warmers. Among the liberal Protestants, mostly those in the Old-line denominations (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist …) the clergy was far more liberal than their flock, but among the evangelicals/fundamentalists/charismatics/Pentecostals the clergy was far more conservative then their flock. Suffice it to say that the evangelical side of the Protestant church has been growing as Old-line Protestant churches have shrunk. Perhaps this pertains only to churches — I don’t know. But I do know that there is a direct correlation… Read more »
Moving the Overton Window to the left in politics, and whatever it is called to the left in religion, doesn’t change the underlying truth of the situation. The pull to the right is stronger, because the starting point from the here and now is out of whack to the left.
Very astute. Mom quit going when she was 90.
They had closed the big front door, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, and passed out lesson plans as if the adults were in Sunday school.
Holy cow. Another glimmer of insight by Peggy Noonan. However, she doesn’t give enough emphasis to the mediocrity of the clerisy. They seem only exceptional in their deceitfulness and sneakiness ala Gruber and Rhodes. BTW, I would have put BANAL and PAROCHIAL in all caps. “When I read that I imagined a conversation with my grandmother, an immigrant who was a bathroom attendant at the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn. Me: “Grandma, being Catholic is now a step up. It means you’re an aristocrat! A stupid one, but still.” Grandma, blinking: “America truly is a country of miracles.”… Read more »
My Rep is a member of the Freedom Caucus (Scott Garrett). On an almost daily basis I receive a mailer describing him as a horrible bigot.
[…] More at SOURCE […]
Trump is a scumbag and a fraud. Saying Ryan “probably” leaked info embarrassing Trump is sad and desperate. Yeah, blame the guy who is still endorsing Trump, while accusers continue to come out of the woodwork. Its Ryan’s fault Trump behaved like a Bill Clinton Jr. for his entire life. Look, im no fan of the GOP but to act like Trump is a victim of anything but his own classless douchebaggery, is pathetic. The cult of Trump has caused hypocrisy and ignoring of basic facts like, Trump is going to trial for raping a 13 year old in December….a… Read more »