Erick Erickson has an interesting observation to explain former President Trump’s popularity with the base:
“If you elect us, we will repeal Obamacare,” Republicans claimed in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016. Each victory brought a goalpost shift. Ultimately, the GOP never got rid of Obamacare. The same happened with Planned Parenthood. Despite Republican control, reconciliation processes that bypass the filibuster, and Republican presidents, Planned Parenthood funding remained.
Republicans are used to the kabuki theater their politicians engage in. The stylized performance, boastfulness on the campaign stage, and campaign ads and mail pieces inevitably lead to impressive speeches and theater in Congress before the inevitable and foreordained failure to keep promises. The epilogue is excuse making and blame.
Republican voters fell for it repeatedly and ultimately both caught on and empowered one man to burn it all down. Donald Trump, in 2016, got elected and did force through some changes to Obamacare and then, by executive order, finally took on Planned Parenthood. The enduring loyalty the Republican base has for Donald Trump can best be understood as Trump kept his core promise — to fight back and gut the Republican established [sic] that both denied its own existence and perfected ritualistic kabuki theater always designed to impress and always designed to fail.
I do remember speculation from twenty years ago that the Republicans were stringing single-issue voters along with constant promises concerning their issues of concern, chiefly abortion. It’s worth noting that Erickson is silent on another issue that animated the conservative base: gun control. The current lax laws, regulations, and Constitutional interpretations certainly would contaminate his thesis if he were to permit his reader to think about them.
And, if he did, then he’d be back to admitting that his fellow travelers have lost their way, having fallen in love – sort of – with a chronic practicioner of mendacity. This he’s come perilously close to doing several times, and I don’t read much of his material.
But his observation is an interesting factor in this soap opera we call American Politics.
I’m a little more skeptical of his prediction, though:
Democrats are engaged in the kabuki theater of foreordained defeat right now. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden are promising to bring HR1, the Democrats’ progressive largesse of a voting reform package, for a vote. The filibuster is in the way so they are pledging to scrap that too. …
Ask yourself one question — do Democrats want federal taxpayer dollars funding the campaign of QAnon sympathetic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene? HR1 would require federal dollars subsidize political campaigns. Do you really think Democrats who vilify Greene at every opportunity want to fund her campaign? HR1, written largely by progressive activists, is a grab back of many unworkable and publicly unpopular proposals. But progressive activists love them all.
Look, I’m not privy to Democratic plans, and while I’m an interested observer of Senate politics, I really am a bit clueless when it comes to questions that are mystifying even professional observers, such as the almost forced naivete of Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) when it comes to the results of the current phone-it-in-filibuster, much less the abolition of the traditional majority wins rules of the Senate, as designed by the Founding Fathers.
And I’ve noticed that Democratic propaganda can get a little hysterical as well.
But in evaluating Erickson’s claim, I know a few things:
- Erickson tends to get a lot of predictions wrong;
- He forgets that Greene’s district is, by last measurement, deep red, and probably still is despite the January 6 insurrection and Greene’s absurd antics since her election, so giving her money is a no-op in great scheme of national politics;
- The particular provision he frantically points at could easily be a negotiations sacrifice;
- He’s once again forgetfully – maybe – morally equating the Democratic political machine with the Republican machine, omitting the observable fact that the latter is lead by Mr. Mendacity and has such dubious fourth-raters as Gaetz, Greene, Boebert, Gohmert, Gosar, Hunter, Collins, Bachmann, McConnell, Ryan, and many others as either current members of Congress, or felonious alumni. While the Democrats doubtless have a few malcontents in Congress as well, they’re neither as numerous, it appears, more discrete – or they change parties when they must, like this chap.
So I’m a little doubtful that the Democrats are leading their base on. It could be true. But I think the Democratic base is not nearly as well trained to swallow rank nonsense as the Republicans.
And this made me hoot with laughter:
Democrats will inevitably have hell to pay from their base as Republicans did. The difference between them and Republicans is Trump was actually far closer to mainstream America than the far left. That gives the GOP one more advantage moving forward even if the press and Democrats cannot admit it.
It’s one of those irrelevant remarks that is both false and insulting to the American electorate. The Great Liar has little relation to the voter in the trenches.
