While reading about Donald Trump’s latest missteps, it occurred to me that his toolbox has become empty:
In a statement early Saturday, a Trump spokesperson said, “The Truth post cited is the definition of political speech,” and that it “was in response to the RINO, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and Super PACs.” [NBC News]
For those readers who don’t follow politics too much, this isn’t a new attack. Same adjectives, even the same targets, really. Call GOP primary competitors RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), scream they’re traitors, mumble a bit about Lock her up!, and … that’s all he has.
Legendary politicians, such as Humphrey and FDR and O’Neil and Pelosi, have (or had) a real collection of responses, but here’s the key: Most of them are related to policies and issues.
The Republican Party no longer deals with real policies and issues. The closest it gets are to closed issues such as the Establishment Clause. As much as a segment of the electorate hates the Establishment Clause, that segment’s small and, generally, ignorant. I think many, even most, could be persuaded to drop it as an issue after a sober discussion.
Which is why sober discussion isn’t permitted.
But this limitation means candidates must exhibit fidelity to a small set of positions on abortion, gun control, etc, or face losing races and de facto expulsion. Competency, as previously discussed, doesn’t matter either.
So when it right down to it, Trump’s very ladder to success, which was to reinforce the narrowing of the path to victory for GOP candidates to required positions on a selection of issues, a tolerance for vulgarity, and a pushing of the general envelope of political windage, is also his chute to failure. The electorate, entranced as it might be by his frantic antics, has been tiring of it for years; thus, his failures in 2018, 2020,. and 2022. Even the Republican success in 2021 has been partially credited with Republican candidates keeping Trump at arm’s length.
Trump is exhausting his effective weapons, and repeated use of RINO, etc, renders them more and more ineffective. In a case of mistaking tactical weapons for strategic weapons, he’s rendering himself impotent.
And an imminent failure.
That does raise an important question: Will the exhaustion of the Trump tactics prompt a return to the more traditional political discourse on the Republican side? Or will they continue their skid to the right until they’re nothing more than a dilapidated set of power-mongers and fools, disregarded by the vast majority of Americans?
