“Moderation is a fatal thing,” quipped Oscar Wilde, “Nothing succeeds like excess.” This line should be echoing through the corridors of the Beltway while bewildered Republicans try to rid themselves of the vulgarian in their midst.
Describing Donald Trump as the “most successful demagogue-charlatan in the history of US politics” Donald Kagan calls him the Frankenstein creation of the GOP’s “wild obstructionism.” What else could it expect after years of behaving like an angry child: threatening government shutdowns, railing against “activist judges”, teaching voters “that government, institutions, political traditions, party leadership and even parties themselves were things to be overthrown, evaded, ignored, insulted, laughed at?” Mainstream candidates, notably Ted Cruz, established the tone and style that Trump has made his own, so they cannot complain at being displaced by a “purer version” of the revolutionary anarchists they pretended to be.
Kagan argues, persuasively, that the GOP ceded its platform during the Obama years to xenophobia and “a racially tinged derangement syndrome” — preferring to rant against the president rather than engage with his policies. Fanatical assaults on his supposed anti-Americanism, and an efflorescence of conspiracy theories, resulted in a moral bankruptcy. As it became a party of unreflecting populism, the GOP also produced candidates who avoided confrontations with a base they had pandered to, and handily took each other down while Trump, the ignoramus who was meant to be no more than a passing amusement, has stepped forward to claim his prize.
Despite these complaints, Trump’s rise been fairly predictable. Voters in primary elections are older and less diverse than the wider population and they often get to narrow the parties’ choices long before the general election. Initially this did not bode well for Trump, but he has won states like Virginia, which usually favour moderate candidates, and received strong support from educated voters in Massachusetts and Tennessee. Each new victory makes him look less like Barry Goldwater, the non-establishment candidate who upset New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to become the GOP nominee in 1964, and more like a bizarre mix of ‘maverick’ (John McCain) and heartless plutocrat (Romney). But Trump has far more mass appeal than either of those nominees and he seems to energize his base with each new gaffe against the establishment’s “political correctness.” This probably means that the GOP’s eleventh hour disavowals of his candidacy will prove too little too late.
Traditionally, candidates move towards the centre once they become the likely nominee. But Trump constantly upends expectations. His threats about building a wall and deporting millions of illegal immigrants have mostly been treated as so much hot air, but some version of these appalling ideas may well come to pass in a Trump presidency. His evasive political agenda and extemporized foreign policy embarrasses establishment Republicans, as they should, but they also suit an age which values brands more than content. The world’s largest taxi company, Uber, owns no vehicles; its largest retailer, Alibaba, owns no inventory. It seems less surprising, then, that Trump essentially has no politics. This is what makes the prospect of his victory so terrifying. For, as Martin Wolf points out in the Financial Times, “It is rash to assume constitutional constraints would survive the presidency of someone elected because he neither understands nor believes in them.” Yet that seems to be exactly what is tempting an ever-increasing portion of the Republican Party into his corner.
