"“We have become a laughingstock, the world’s whipping boy, blamed for everything, credited for nothing, given no respect. You see and feel it all around you, and so do I.”"..."Nothing is more terrifying to the elite than Trump’s embrace of a tangible American nationalism."
10/31/15. "Seeking America’s ‘lost’ greatness and finding Trump most appealing," Washington Post, Marc Fisher
 |
| 8/15/15, Iowa St. Fair |
"To find true American greatness, Steve Trivett contends, you need to go back to before the Vietnam War, “when you could still own a home and have a good job even if you didn’t have a college education.”
Even if they don’t have “Make America Great Again” campaign caps, Donald Trump’s supporters easily recite the signature slogan of the real estate developer’s insurgent presidential bid. And even if they don’t agree on exactly why the country lost its way, they do accept — give or take a few degrees of hyperbole — Trump’s contention that the United States has become, as he has put it, “an economic wasteland” that is “committing cultural suicide.”...
Interviews with Trump supporters across the country find a profusion of perspectives on how and when America lost its mojo; what bonds them is a sense of frustration so abiding that they’re willing to take a chance on a man they readily admit is anything but presidential, at least the way the term has historically been defined.
“The way he talks is just silly sometimes — he sounds like a fourth-grader,” said Holly Martin, a freelance technology writer who recently moved, in search of a lower cost of living, from the suburbs of Washington to the exurban town of Winchester, Va. But Martin, 59, attended a training session for Trump campaign volunteers recently because “he talks like a regular guy, and he actually loves this country. He’s not afraid to say that we’ve lost our good character.”
Many Trump supporters interpret their candidate’s rough rhetoric not as anger, but as determination. Without ever having seen Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” Martin has come to think that he has a rare ability to get things done. She was a Republican all her life — until her party regained the majority in Congress in 2014 and proceeded, she said, “to do nothing. They did nothing on Obamacare, nothing on cutting spending, nothing on restoring honesty. They hate us, so now I’m done with Republicans. Trump is not one of them. He doesn’t hate us. He really believes we can make America great again, and I’m not an optimistic person, but I think he can, because he’s got a built-in ability to use the media, just like Obama.”
For some supporters, especially those in the second half of life, Trump’s slogan is a tribute to a simpler time. “He could have said, ‘Make America what it was before’ and I would have voted for him,” said Jane Cimbal, 69, who lives in Winchester and signed up to collect signatures to get Trump on the Virginia ballot. “The last time we had good jobs and respect for the military and law enforcement was, oh, probably during Eisenhower.”
Cimbal doesn’t view Trump as an optimist of the Reagan stripe, but she’s okay with voting for a harsh critic. “He speaks his mind,” she said. “So many of the others are wishy-washy. Mr. Trump isn’t a provocateur to annoy people but to get them thinking.”
Cimbal, a loyal Republican, wants people to think about how to curb illegal immigration and protect Second Amendment gun ownership rights, but she’s mainly drawn to Trump because she thinks his plain talk can get things done. Her goal is to restore a time “when there wasn’t as much animosity toward each other, when everything wasn’t about race and people just got along.”
The
crowds at Trump events tend to be older and whiter than the national
population, but so is the party whose nomination he seeks, and so are
frequent voters generally. If younger supporters don’t have firsthand
experience of the Eisenhower, Kennedy or Reagan years, they nonetheless
share the older generation’s sense of loss.
Still, the more he heard Trump, the more the greatness slogan resonated. “He boasts a lot, he’s got trophy wives, he’s not exactly Mr. Clean, so I was skeptical,” said McCoy, who lives in Norwich, Conn., where he does tech support from home for a multinational company.
“Mitt Romney was more my kind of guy: practical, a nice guy. But you know, people don’t like a nice guy. They like this guy because he’s right about us losing our country. I really don’t think we should be letting kids go into whichever bathroom they want to in school. The Democrats are really reaching too far on the social issues. And there’s no retirement anymore, no pensions.”
McCoy laments the pervasive sense that it no longer pays to play by the rules. That’s where immigration enters the equation: “When my wife came here from the Philippines, she had to go through a health assessment, background checks and interviews to become a citizen. Now, these people come in from Mexico and Central America through some mule, just whoever comes.”
“I’m not a rigid tea partyer,” he continued. “I’m in favor of government paying for roads and the fire department. Social Security is a great thing. But I don’t think Trump is really much of a conservative; he’s definitely more moderate than the others.”
McCoy recognizes that his sense of lost greatness is probably different from that of others who are drawn to Trump, but he says that’s all right. When Trump talks about losing the country, “it’s about whatever you want it to be,” McCoy said. “He lets you fill in the blanks.”
That free-floating sense of decline expresses itself in many different ways among Trump supporters. Some speak of a fading sense of mobility, a loss of the expectation that each generation will surpass its parents’ standard of living. Others focus on the loss of blue-collar jobs and a sense that only those with computer backgrounds can take advantage of the new digital economy.
Although Trump has said in campaign speeches that he came up with his slogan himself, Ronald Reagan put “Let’s Make America Great Again” on buttons and posters in his 1980 campaign, and John Kennedy used “We Can Do Better” and “Get This Country Moving Again” as slogans in 1960.
But Reagan and Kennedy were widely perceived as happy warriors with a shining vision of what the country could be. Reagan and Kennedy couched their laments for America’s perceived loss of prowess amid a larger promise of change — ideological in Reagan’s case and generational in Kennedy’s. Other successful candidates carefully grounded their critiques of the country’s state in optimistic packaging. “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America,” Bill Clinton said in his first inaugural address in 1993....
In this past week’s GOP debate, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) pointedly presented a more optimistic perspective, rejecting the developer’s blunt, blustery barbs about the nation’s decline. “Our greatest days lie ahead,” Rubio said.
Undaunted, Trump began his closing statement with one of his trademark lines: “Our country doesn’t win anymore.” It’s a theme he has developed in several of his books, including a new 2016 campaign edition of “Time to Get Tough!,” where he writes: “The country I love is a total economic disaster right now. We have become a laughingstock, the world’s whipping boy, blamed for everything, credited for nothing, given no respect. You see and feel it all around you, and so do I.”...
Trump’s dire summation of the state of the nation is far from unique in the annals of presidential campaigns.
“In the ’30s in the Depression, many people felt the American way of life was finished,” said Robert Lieber, a government professor at Georgetown University who wrote a book arguing against the notion that the country is in decline....
Lieber sees Trump’s slogan as a symbol of his ability to slice through standard political rhetoric: “His discourse is deliberately provocative, but he’s refreshing to a lot of people because he talks about reality with the bark off, and people are sick to death of the language of political correctness.”
Steve Trivett, sports editor of a newspaper in central Florida, worries about his six grandchildren’s futures “in an anything-goes society where there are no ramifications for any action. People here are concerned about why nothing gets done. We’re not angry, we’re frustrated. And then Donald Trump comes along and says, ‘I am going to make America great again’ and we all go, ‘Hallelujah!’ ”
Trivett, who turns 70 this month, is still working because he says he “blew my 401(k) sending two kids to college, and I don’t regret it, but where’s the security? When America was great, our economy was strong. Our economy’s been shipped off to other countries. Can Donald Trump solve that? Hell, I don’t know. Somebody not as flamboyant or egomaniacal might be more effective, but I’m not sure anybody can bring us back. At least Trump gets things done. The last Democrat I voted for was Jimmy Carter. He was a good, honest man, and the system ate him up. So maybe we need a guy like Trump.”"
Image caption: "Donald Trump shakes hands at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 15 in Des Moines. Trump has tapped into a feeling among many Republicans that the nation has become, as he put it, “an economic wasteland.” (Charles Ommanney/The Washington Post)"
..........................
=================
Comment: Romney wasn't and isn't a "nice guy." He had no intention of winning: "“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to...run,” said Tagg (Romney's son)."...Boston Globe, 12/22/2012
==========
........
Related, Sept. 2015 article: Americans long conditioned into silence have been told for years that America is to blame, America must pay. Trump stands in broad daylight and says no more:
"Nothing is more terrifying to the elite than Trump’s embrace of a tangible American nationalism....What Trump offers is permission to conceive of an American interest as a national interest separate from the “international community”."
.............
9/7/15, "Traitor to His Class," Julius Krein, Weekly Standard
.....................
"Nothing is more terrifying to the elite than Trump’s embrace of a tangible American nationalism."
"It would seem to be the duty of every American pundit today
to explain the inexplicable and problematic rise of Donald Trump. The
critical question, however, is not the source of Trump’s popularity but
rather the reason his popularity is so shocking to our political
culture. Perhaps Trump’s candidacy threatens a larger consensus that
governs our political and social life, and perhaps his popularity
signifies a profound challenge to elite opinion.
Why is Donald Trump so popular? Explanations range from
mere celebrity, to his adoption of extreme positions to capture the most
ideologically intense voters, to his explosive rhetoric. These
explanations are not entirely wrong, but neither are they entirely
right.
To begin with, his positions, as Josh Barro has written in the New York Times,
are rather moderate. As Barro points out, Trump is willing to
contemplate tax increases to achieve spending cuts. He supports some
exceptions to abortion bans and has gone so far as to defend funding
Planned Parenthood. He has called for protective tariffs, a position
heretical for Republicans, who are typically free traders. Although
opposed to Obamacare, he has asserted that single-payer health care
works in other countries. Even on the issue of immigration, despite his
frequently strident rhetoric, his positions are neither unique—securing
the border with some kind of wall is a fairly standard Republican plank
by now—nor especially rigid.
With respect to his rhetoric, whether one characterizes
his delivery as candid or rude, it is hard to ascribe his popularity to
colorful invective alone. Chris Christie, who never misses an
opportunity to harangue an opponent, languishes near the bottom of the
polls....Trump’s outré style, like his celebrity, helps him
gain attention but just as certainly fails to explain his frontrunner
status.
Most candidates seek to define themselves by their
policies and platforms. What differentiates Trump is not what he says,
or how he says it, but why he says it. The unifying thread running
through his seemingly incoherent policies, what defines him as a
candidate and forms the essence of his appeal, is that he seeks to speak
for America. He speaks, that is, not for America as an abstraction but
for real, living Americans and for their interests as distinct from
those of people in other places. He does not apologize for having
interests as an American, and he does not apologize for demanding that
the American government vigorously prosecute those interests.
What Trump offers is permission to conceive of an American
interest as a national interest separate from the “international
community” and permission to wish to see that interest triumph. What
makes him popular on immigration is not how extreme his policies are,
but the emphasis he puts on the interests of Americans rather than
everyone else. His slogan is “Make America Great Again,” and he is not
ashamed of the fact that this means making it better than other places,
perhaps even at their expense.
His least practical suggestion—making Mexico pay for the
border wall—is precisely the most significant: It shows that a President
Trump would be willing to take something from someone else in order to
give it to the American people. Whether he could achieve this is of
secondary importance; the fact that he is willing to say it is
everything. Nothing is more terrifying to the business and donor
class—as well as the media and the entire elite—than Trump’s embrace of a
tangible American nationalism. The fact that Trump should by all rights
be a member of this class and is in fact a traitor to it makes him all
the more attractive to his supporters and all the more baffling to
pundits....
(p. 2) Conservative pundits have complained for years about the
base and its desire for “ideological purity.” Trump shows that what is
most in demand, however, is not ideological purity but patriotic zeal.
Only a fool would believe that the fate of the Export-Import Bank could
motivate millions of voters. It is not a minor and complicated organ of
trade promotion that motivates but whether the ruling elite is seen to
care more about actual national interests or campaign dollars and
textbook abstractions like free trade....
Trump, however, is eros and thumos incarnate, and his very
candidacy represents the suggestion that these human qualities should
have a role in our political life beyond quivering sentimentalism. Trump
alone appears to understand that politics is more than policy and
ideology. Beneath the bluster, he offers an image of Machiavellian virtù long absent from American politics.
Nothing in our politics seems worthy of being taken seriously anymore. The White House takes to Twitter with Straight Outta Compton
memes about the Iran deal....This is precisely the precondition for Trump’s popularity, and his
unapologetic mockery of more conventional forms of political theater
makes him in some ways the most serious candidate in the race."
...............
"Julius Krein is a writer in Boston."
===============
Related from 2013 by Dr. Angelo Codevilla:
2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes .
...................
"Increasingly the top people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old."...
.....................
........................
2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes .
...................
"Increasingly the top people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old."...
.....................
........................
Related from 2011 by Dr. Angelo Codevilla:
"The debate is over."...
10/20/2011, "The Lost Decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute (2001-2011)
"Rule by Experts" (subhead, scroll down)
"Decision-making by "experts" rather than by people and procedures responsible to the American people has always been American progressives' prescription for American life. During the past decade, the pretense that America was at war has given this practice a major boost. For example, official and semi-official panels of experts from government, business, and the academy generated "studies" on the energy and health-care sectors of the economy. Based on these, the government promulgated regulations and presented Congress with demands that it approve massive legislation to "stop global warming" and to "establish universal medical care." These government-business-academic experts, i.e. this ruling class, presented their plans as demands because, they shouted,
"the debate is over,"
and opponents are not qualified to oppose. Regardless of these demands' merits, such claims to authority are based strictly on the proponents' credentials. My point, however, is that these credentials are based largely on the government endowing these proponents with positions and money. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address, such expertise is a circular function of government power.
.
The event for which the decade is most likely to be remembered, namely the "great recession," was a similar phenomenon. When the financial bubble in mortgage-backed securities burst in 2008, the leaders of both parties, and pundits from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, assured Congress authoritatively that appropriating some $800 billion for the Treasury to buy up "toxic assets" would fix the problem. Three out of four Americans dissented, in part because of widespread recognition that the U.S. government's increase in expenditures from $1.86 trillion in 2001 to $2.9 trillion in 2008, due in part to the war, was unsustainable. Yet Congress bowed to "expert" opinion. But the markets tanked, the fix did not work, and the economic collapse gathered momentum. The subsequent Democratic administration increased spending even more radically, to $3.7 trillion, roughly doubling federal expenses in a decade, and pushed the national debt over $14 trillion—almost equal to America's GDP. By 2011, 40 cents out of every federal dollar spent had to be borrowed. .
As a prescription for salvation, the very same spectrum of experts that had certified the efficacy of bailing out big banks emphasized to Congress that the country needed to borrow more money and pay more taxes. Three fourths of Americans wanted neither to borrow more nor to pay more. The experts labeled them "irresponsible" and even "terrorists."
The markets tanked again, and the great recession got a second wind. The 2010 census reported that in 2009 the inflation-adjusted median family income was $49,445, down from $51,161 in 2001. Although the official unemployment rate at this writing is only 9.1%, a truer measure of America's condition is that only 45.4% of Americans of working age are employed full time—a true definition of depression."....
=============================
....................
"The debate is over."...
10/20/2011, "The Lost Decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute (2001-2011)
"Rule by Experts" (subhead, scroll down)
"Decision-making by "experts" rather than by people and procedures responsible to the American people has always been American progressives' prescription for American life. During the past decade, the pretense that America was at war has given this practice a major boost. For example, official and semi-official panels of experts from government, business, and the academy generated "studies" on the energy and health-care sectors of the economy. Based on these, the government promulgated regulations and presented Congress with demands that it approve massive legislation to "stop global warming" and to "establish universal medical care." These government-business-academic experts, i.e. this ruling class, presented their plans as demands because, they shouted,
"the debate is over,"
and opponents are not qualified to oppose. Regardless of these demands' merits, such claims to authority are based strictly on the proponents' credentials. My point, however, is that these credentials are based largely on the government endowing these proponents with positions and money. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address, such expertise is a circular function of government power.
.
The event for which the decade is most likely to be remembered, namely the "great recession," was a similar phenomenon. When the financial bubble in mortgage-backed securities burst in 2008, the leaders of both parties, and pundits from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, assured Congress authoritatively that appropriating some $800 billion for the Treasury to buy up "toxic assets" would fix the problem. Three out of four Americans dissented, in part because of widespread recognition that the U.S. government's increase in expenditures from $1.86 trillion in 2001 to $2.9 trillion in 2008, due in part to the war, was unsustainable. Yet Congress bowed to "expert" opinion. But the markets tanked, the fix did not work, and the economic collapse gathered momentum. The subsequent Democratic administration increased spending even more radically, to $3.7 trillion, roughly doubling federal expenses in a decade, and pushed the national debt over $14 trillion—almost equal to America's GDP. By 2011, 40 cents out of every federal dollar spent had to be borrowed. .
As a prescription for salvation, the very same spectrum of experts that had certified the efficacy of bailing out big banks emphasized to Congress that the country needed to borrow more money and pay more taxes. Three fourths of Americans wanted neither to borrow more nor to pay more. The experts labeled them "irresponsible" and even "terrorists."
The markets tanked again, and the great recession got a second wind. The 2010 census reported that in 2009 the inflation-adjusted median family income was $49,445, down from $51,161 in 2001. Although the official unemployment rate at this writing is only 9.1%, a truer measure of America's condition is that only 45.4% of Americans of working age are employed full time—a true definition of depression."....
=============================
....................
Related, 2010 by Dr. Angelo Codevilla:
...............
...............
"No prominent
Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of
superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as
irritable children who must learn their place."...(parag. 3)
July-August 2010, "America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution," by Angelo M. Codevilla
"Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several “stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough to approve of similar things under Republican administrations. Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind.
Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen. Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it."...
.............................
=======================
Related, Sept. 2015 article: Trump is offering to save the Republican Party with "economic nationalism." ...Though the Republican establishment is fighting hard against being saved.
................
"The Republican party has essentially exhausted the two ideological themes it has ridden on since about 1980-- free markets and social conservatism -- and needs new ones to survive."
9/30/15, "Donald Trump Is Trying to Save the Republican Party From Itself," Ian Fletcher, Huffington Post
........................
"I'm neither endorsing nor condemning Mr. Trump, but I do think he's trying to save the Republican party from itself in a very rational way. The last thing he is is a clown or dilettante. (OK, maybe a clown.)
.....................
Why? Because the Republican party has essentially exhausted the two ideological themes it has ridden on since about 1980-- free markets and social conservatism -- and needs new ones to survive.
......................
Any ideologues out there, I'm sorry: American history makes quite clear that partisan ideological themes don't last forever, in either party. They're good for a few decades, then they evolve or get dumped....
.................
First, consider the exhaustion of free-market ideology. This doesn't mean that free markets per se, which obviously have enormous validity, are dead as an idea. But it does mean that pushing even further in the direction of free markets is dead as an idea.
...........
Why? Most obviously, the 2008 financial crisis, whose effects we're still dealing with, was an effect of markets allowed to run amok, not of markets being insufficiently free. (Yes, I know you can blame it all on the government, but that's a tendentious "reality is the opposite of what you see" argument.)
..............
There's a happy medium between too much and too little regulation, and we've basically reached the limit of our ability to improve our economy by deregulating further.
..............
In public perception, this wasn't always the case. It certainly wasn't in 1980, when Ronald Reagan rode this theme to victory. And argue the timing if you like, but surely the reader recalls the romanticism about markets of the late 1990s? Remember California deregulating its electricity market in 1996? (Which handed control over to Enron, by the way, and led to blackouts in Silicon Valley.)
..............
So "Even freer markets!" has lost its credibility as an ideological theme. If you disagree, then what industries would you now propose to deregulate, and how do you think that would improve things?
................
The increased public interest in economic equality is also playing a role here. There are conservative policies that reduce inequality, but they're old-school paternalist conservative policies, not free-market conservative policies. (Some people will tell you that "conservative" simply equals "free market," but this is simply ignorant of history, though I don't have the space to elaborate here.)
.............
Social conservatism is a more complicated topic, but in a country where both public opinion and the Supreme Court support, to take the obvious example, gay marriage, it doesn't look like a net electoral winner from now on....
.................
So what's the Republican party to do? Luckily, there are other right-wing themes out there to be had, though not an infinite number of truly big ones, substantial enough and popular enough to float a national political party on.
.............
Enter nationalism. Specifically, economic nationalism, because the economy is what voters care about most. Mr. Trump's protectionism is a form of economic nationalism. So is his stance against immigration. (Again, I take no position on the merits, but anti-immigrationism is definitely a form of economic nationalism.)"
..............
................
Added from Diana West, August 2015:
8/18/15, "Trump: Giving Voice to the American "Subconscious"," Diana West
"To say the Media-Political Complex has really lost its cool over Donald Trump, also every marble, is barest understatement....
Before Trump, the American "subconscious," circa 2015, would never "originally think" a US border was possible, let alone a wall; immigration restriction was possible, let alone a halt; immigration law enforcement was possible; the deportation of illegal families was possible; restoration of American citizenship as a privilege, not a stolen good, was possible; jobs for Americans were possible; and the rest. Donald Trump, bless him, has changed the American subconscious, giving voice to Americans long conditioned into silence by this same Media-Political Complex. And there is nothing, but nothing, they can do about it now."
July-August 2010, "America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution," by Angelo M. Codevilla
"Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several “stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough to approve of similar things under Republican administrations. Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind.
Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen. Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it."...
.............................
=======================
Related, Sept. 2015 article: Trump is offering to save the Republican Party with "economic nationalism." ...Though the Republican establishment is fighting hard against being saved.
................
"The Republican party has essentially exhausted the two ideological themes it has ridden on since about 1980-- free markets and social conservatism -- and needs new ones to survive."
9/30/15, "Donald Trump Is Trying to Save the Republican Party From Itself," Ian Fletcher, Huffington Post
........................
"I'm neither endorsing nor condemning Mr. Trump, but I do think he's trying to save the Republican party from itself in a very rational way. The last thing he is is a clown or dilettante. (OK, maybe a clown.)
.....................
Why? Because the Republican party has essentially exhausted the two ideological themes it has ridden on since about 1980-- free markets and social conservatism -- and needs new ones to survive.
......................
Any ideologues out there, I'm sorry: American history makes quite clear that partisan ideological themes don't last forever, in either party. They're good for a few decades, then they evolve or get dumped....
.................
First, consider the exhaustion of free-market ideology. This doesn't mean that free markets per se, which obviously have enormous validity, are dead as an idea. But it does mean that pushing even further in the direction of free markets is dead as an idea.
...........
Why? Most obviously, the 2008 financial crisis, whose effects we're still dealing with, was an effect of markets allowed to run amok, not of markets being insufficiently free. (Yes, I know you can blame it all on the government, but that's a tendentious "reality is the opposite of what you see" argument.)
..............
There's a happy medium between too much and too little regulation, and we've basically reached the limit of our ability to improve our economy by deregulating further.
..............
In public perception, this wasn't always the case. It certainly wasn't in 1980, when Ronald Reagan rode this theme to victory. And argue the timing if you like, but surely the reader recalls the romanticism about markets of the late 1990s? Remember California deregulating its electricity market in 1996? (Which handed control over to Enron, by the way, and led to blackouts in Silicon Valley.)
..............
So "Even freer markets!" has lost its credibility as an ideological theme. If you disagree, then what industries would you now propose to deregulate, and how do you think that would improve things?
................
The increased public interest in economic equality is also playing a role here. There are conservative policies that reduce inequality, but they're old-school paternalist conservative policies, not free-market conservative policies. (Some people will tell you that "conservative" simply equals "free market," but this is simply ignorant of history, though I don't have the space to elaborate here.)
.............
Social conservatism is a more complicated topic, but in a country where both public opinion and the Supreme Court support, to take the obvious example, gay marriage, it doesn't look like a net electoral winner from now on....
.................
So what's the Republican party to do? Luckily, there are other right-wing themes out there to be had, though not an infinite number of truly big ones, substantial enough and popular enough to float a national political party on.
.............
Enter nationalism. Specifically, economic nationalism, because the economy is what voters care about most. Mr. Trump's protectionism is a form of economic nationalism. So is his stance against immigration. (Again, I take no position on the merits, but anti-immigrationism is definitely a form of economic nationalism.)"
..............
................
Added from Diana West, August 2015:
8/18/15, "Trump: Giving Voice to the American "Subconscious"," Diana West
"To say the Media-Political Complex has really lost its cool over Donald Trump, also every marble, is barest understatement....
Before Trump, the American "subconscious," circa 2015, would never "originally think" a US border was possible, let alone a wall; immigration restriction was possible, let alone a halt; immigration law enforcement was possible; the deportation of illegal families was possible; restoration of American citizenship as a privilege, not a stolen good, was possible; jobs for Americans were possible; and the rest. Donald Trump, bless him, has changed the American subconscious, giving voice to Americans long conditioned into silence by this same Media-Political Complex. And there is nothing, but nothing, they can do about it now."
America's
ruling class lost the "War on Terror." During the decade that began on
September 11, 2001, the U.S. government's combat operations have
resulted in some 6,000 Americans killed and 30,000 crippled, caused
hundreds of thousands of foreign casualties, and spent—depending on
various estimates of direct and indirect costs—somewhere between 2 and 3
trillion dollars. But nothing our rulers did post-9/11 eliminated the
threat from terrorists or made the world significantly less dangerous.
Rather, ever-bigger government imposed unprecedented restrictions on the
American people and became the arbiter of prosperity for its cronies,
as well as the manager of permanent austerity for the rest. Although in
2001 many referred to the United States as "the world's only
superpower," ten years later the near-universal perception of America is
that of a nation declining, perhaps irreversibly. This decade convinced
a majority of Americans that the future would be worse than the past
and that there is nothing to be done about it. This is the "new normal."
How did this happen? - See more at:
http://www.claremont.org/index.php?act=crbArticle&id=319#.VeIfe5dLy
....................
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