When Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove and their ilk appealed to white Americans based on “family values” and other such clean-sounding exclusionary terms, they cultivated a voting bloc on issues they didn’t sincerely care about but found useful. The GOP power brokers were merely playing with the dreams of the blindly faithful to help themselves consolidate power. 

But the dreams were not dashed, just deferred. The Trump candidacy and its copious anger and name-calling, which dispenses with the coded language of bigotry for the real deal, is aimed as much at Republicans who let these folks down as the Democrats whom they believe have upended their prosperity. The GOP’s bedrock, from the Bush family to Fox News, is at long last meeting the piledriver of its own design. The Tea Party was the first wave of the ungodly energy unloosed. Trump is the next phase, the anarchic spirit visited upon the most important national political campaign. The controls have been commandeered, the mutiny complete.

From the Economist:

On one domestic issue, to be fair, he has staked out a clear, bold position. Alas, it is an odious one. He wants to build a wall on the Mexican border and somehow make Mexico pay for it. He would deport all 11m immigrants currently thought to be in America illegally. Apart from the misery this would cause, it would also cost $285 billion, by one estimate—roughly $900 in new taxes for every man, woman and child left in Mr Trump’s America. This is necessary, he argues, because Mexican illegal immigrants are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Not only would he round them all up; he would also round up and expel their children who were born on American soil and are therefore American citizens. That this would be illegal does not bother him.

His approach to foreign affairs is equally crude. He would crush Islamic State and send American troops to “take the oil”. He would “Make America great again”, both militarily and economically, by being a better negotiator than all the “dummies” who represent the country today. Leave aside, for a moment, the vanity of a man who thinks that geopolitics is no harder than selling property. Ignore his constant reminders that he wrote The Art of the Deal, which he falsely claims is “the number-one-selling business book of all time.” Instead, pay attention to the paranoia of his worldview. “[E]very single country that does business with us” is ripping America off, he says. “The money [China] took out of the United States is the greatest theft in the history of our country.” He is referring to the fact that Americans sometimes buy Chinese products. He blames currency manipulation by Beijing, and would slap tariffs on many imported goods. He would also, in some unspecified way, rethink how America protects allies such as South Korea and Japan, because “if we step back they will protect themselves very well. Remember when Japan used to beat China routinely in wars?”

Towering populism

Mr Trump’s secret sauce has two spices. First, he has a genius for self-promotion, unmoored from reality (“I play to people’s fantasies. I call it truthful hyperbole,” he once said). Second, he says things that no politician would, so people think he is not a politician. Sticklers for politeness might object when he calls someone a “fat pig” or suggests that a challenging female interviewer has “blood coming out of her wherever”. His supporters, however, think his boorishness is a sign of authenticity—of a leader who can channel the rage of those who feel betrayed by the elite or left behind by social change. It turns out that there are tens of millions of such people in America.•