Sometimes, I watch ''The View,'' and recently, the hosts of the show were discussing, how many Republicans don't identify with Trump.
It isn't a matter of 'identifying' with Trump, so much as Trump's voters feeling that Trump was the only Presidential candidate in 2016 that actually spoke to the issues that they were concerned about.
They specifically call Trump's supporters, ''Trumplicans'' and not traditional Republicans.
There's a growing split in the Republican party between --
1. The wealthy Wall Street elites and the self-styled "conservative" punditocracy, who somehow imagine that America's most pressing issue is reducing taxes on the rich along with smoothing the road for globalist big business with no regulation, free-trade and open-borders. This group is small in numbers but controls lots of wealth, armies of lobbyists and has great influence in the halls of Congress. They see themselves as the natural leaders and as the source of all of the Republican party's good ideas. They just assume that Republican voters will continue to vote for their candidates, but forgot to persuade the voters why the voters should do that. Their disdain for their own voters is often obvious and palpable.
2. The average Republican voter who is neither rich nor a pundit, for whom America's biggest issues are the destruction of the Middle Class, both economically and socially. The
economic aspect includes the deindustrialization of the United States, terrible trade arrangements where China drains away entire strategic industries along with millions of jobs and hundreds of billions a year in trade imbalances as the US finds itself funding China's rise. (But only the "little people" are hurt by this as middle class communities turn into slums, while the elites get filthy rich.) Republicans on the street are also alienated by the
dramatic cultural changes being relentlessly pushed on them from the left, changes that make them feel like unwelcome strangers in their own country. They are put off by incessant identity politics that totally destroys any sense of community and turns the population into a maelstrom of competing factions. And of course the illegal alien problem where being American and even the rule of law mean nothing any more.
It should be obvious that the agenda of the first group of ostensible "Republicans" runs directly contrary to that of the second more numerous group. In fact it's the first group that are at least in part responsible for some of the issues that most concern the second group. Trump's 2016 brilliance was recognizing that tension, enabling him to peel the majority of Republican voters away from their self-appointed leaders.
Do you believe that Trump's Presidency has distorted or accurately represents the ideology of the Republican party?
That depends on what one takes "the ideology of the Republican party" to be. Trump might not represent the views of the Republican 'establishment', but he does seem to represent the views of the majority of Republican voters. That's why he absolutely trounced Jeb! and little Marco, the media elite darlings, in the 2016 Republican primaries.
So... which of the two visions of Republicanism above has the keys to defining the "ideology"?
It's a fundamental political question that goes to the heart of what democracy is: Should policy be shaped by the concerns of the voters and flow from the bottom up? Should the voters possess (and sometimes exercise) the power to vote out "leaders" who don't represent their interests? (I think that's how the Founders envisioned it.) Or alternatively, should policy be shaped by various elites and flow from the top down, with voters only becoming relevant when various elite factions need their electoral support in their struggles against other elite factions? Should voters only vote for who the "better people" tell them to vote for (even when that's not in their own interest)?
Where does sovereignty ultimately lie, with the people themselves or with some self-appointed class of neo-aristocrats?
It's not just the United States. We are seeing very similar forces playing out in the European Union: Brexit in Britain, Matteo Salvini and the Lega in Italy, Marine LePen and RN in France, in Hungary, in Poland... We saw it in Brazil, we might have just seen it in Australia. Even in India, with Modi's recent reelection. In each of those places, a significant percentage of voters seem to have come to the conclusion that their countries' established elites represent only those elites' own interests and not the interest of the voters.
We live in interesting political times.
