There will always be many many more of the slovenly masses than aristocrats...especially while the later calls the shots. When the aristocrats no longer call the shots, there will hopefully be much fewer of each.
"Few men who are tall, handsome, married to their first wife who they still dot over, and surrounded by a gaggle of grandkids — all, as far as we know, still identifying with their biological sex — are enthusiastic Trumpists." Not my observation AT ALL. Trump voters of my acquaintance and age cohort are precisely this, men circa age 60, conservative Catholics, married to their first wives, typically grandfathers. Not all are tall and handsome. Most are professionally accomplished.
Your vision of Trump voters is clearly mostly driven by your own contempt for him and them, and not data driven. Dig into the survey data more. You are the professional pundit around here. You can do better.
"Putting aside any questions of political strategy, I just really like Mitt Romney."
Anecdotally Trump split my Texas family right down the middle. The ones that might be approximated as Aristocrats decided to stomach Biden for one election while the riff-raff still have Trump banners on their walls.
Yeah Richard's completely wrong there. While Mormons and Amish do the best, among moe normal Christian sects, regular church-goers are the only Christians who reach that coveted 2.1 fertility rate.
As someone who has a fairly well-detailed family tree containing both hardcore Evangelicals/Baptists as well as liberal reformist Presbyterians, the reproductive gap could not be any more stark.
A paraphrased and representative obituary from an Evangelical great-great uncle: he was a faithful husband of 60 years to his wife, is survived by 8 children, 24 grandchildren, and 9 great-grandchildren, and was a devoted member of his church and follower of Christ.
A paraphrased and representative obituary from the Evangelical's Presbyterian younger brother: he was a widely respected member of the community, who as a chief civil engineer oversaw the groundbreaking of three public libraries, served on several committees including the local arts council, was devoted to charity work and patronage for the local opera house, as well as the church, was known to enjoy driving his Porsche convertible on sunny days, prided himself in staying computer-savvy in old age, insert several more lines about his varied hobbies, was faithful husband of 55 years to his wife, and is survived by 2 children. [No grandchildren, the daughter married a college professor and they travel the world when school isn't in session; the son was gay and later gay-married a surgeon in Palm Springs]
imo it represents one of the essential needs for localism. You need Bible-thumpers to keep pushing out babies to keep the nation from going extinct, and you need the smarter babies to leave their small Southern town, move to San Francisco or Seattle, and use their intellect to become engineers, scientists, etc. Call it a division of social labor. The Democrats enjoyed immense political success during the New Deal in spite of a party that could hardly be more diverse, ultra-leftist crypto-Bolshevik New Yorkers and arch-segregationist generally-conservative Dixiecrats, because they let bygones be bygones. As long as Nietzschean Liberals deny the necessity of the goofy religious right and at least token populism to any successful pan-right wing movement, they will not amount to anything in real politics.
>This means that those who believe in freedom will have to behave morally worse than their opponents — that is, lie more, appeal more to base impulses, and violate democratic norms — to have any hope of accomplishing their political goals.<
I generally agree with this perspective. We are in a "cold civil war" in the sense that the left is willing to do whatever they can get away with, in order to get their way. Therefore, fighting back effectively requires a similar willingness to do whatever is most effective in hurting them. You've recognized in some of your other writing that when push really comes to shove in warfare, nations have to put aside such pesky concerns as civilian casualties in favor of simply crushing the enemy. I would say that a similar principle applies in the current political atmosphere of aggression. No matter how decent a guy he may be, someone that marched with BLM simply isn't the right person for the job we face.
Has embracing Trumpist ruthlessness actually done anything to advance the conservative cause? A normal Republican would have beat Hilary in 2016, and might not have lost to Biden in 2020. A normal Republican would have appointed the exact same justices Trump did. A normal Republican probably would have done something like Operation Warp Speed, and appointed a Secretary of Education that slightly rolled back Title IX. I don't need to go on, because those are the only things of note that Trump accomplished in office. Meanwhile, his election inspired wokist cancel culture to tighten the screws.
The left is in a similar situation. They spent a decade saying that police reform was so important that civility needed to be discarded. They accomplished exactly two things. Jack, and Squat. And Jack left town. Far left Democrats consistently lose leadership positions to bog-standard party centrists. The only reason the right is able to say any of its "the far left is taking over" rhetoric with a straight face is by claiming that any Democrat to the left of Zell Miller is a far leftist.
Ruthlessness doesn't work. Civility isn't just some nice luxury that people indulge in. It allows long term victories. Ruthlessness at most allows short term victories, followed quickly by long term losses and/or stagnation.
I agree Trump hasn't delivered nearly enough. I don't particularly care for him for exactly that reason--he talks big and doesn't deliver. That doesn't mean that conservatives would somehow be served by going back to being passive, compliant doormats.
>Ruthlessness doesn't work. Civility isn't just some nice luxury that people indulge in. It allows long term victories. Ruthlessness at most allows short term victories, followed quickly by long term losses and/or stagnation.<
Trump wasn't actually very ruthless though. He was--still is--confused, chaotic, and oftentimes, downright stupid. But he just wasn't nice, and the bar has been set so incredibly low that that is enough to look better than the alternatives.
I'd be curious to hear what "long term victories" you think the right has achieved by choosing "civility" over the actual accomplishment of ideological goals. Be specific.
Up until Trump, civil Republicans in the modern era tended to win big majorities in the House and Senate. If it weren't for Trump's MAGA nutjobs, Republicans would have won a much bigger majority in the House and taken back the Senate in 2022.
You could also compare the number of bills that were passed under previous Republican majorities compared to our current House majority. Incivility hasn't helped achieve conservative goals, it's just brought all business to a standstill.
As far as I can tell, conservative goals weren't being achieved at all before Trump either. The previous generation of Republicans made some tax cuts and did not much of anything else. They couldn't even bring themselves to repeal Obamacare despite voting to do so eleventy billion times when they were in the minority. Total joke.
The problem is not that Romney marched with BLM. It is that he only does the symbolic gesture. Consider that public schools are failing with black minorities hardest hit. The chief cause of failure is "Restorative Justice" where schools are blocked from disciplining bad behavior with the result being a chaotic and failed learning environment. Someone who cares about minority achievement would point this out. But this someone will not be Romney. He just wants to show he cares. He's not going to change anything.
Sure, but I doubt that stuff is happening in Utah. If Romney were the Senator of California, I think you would see him speak out on that issue. Maybe not.
“These people don’t have ideas about whether the Republican Party should be more right-wing or not, but rather want leaders who flatter them, and make them feel heard by expressing agreement with their conspiracy theories and Manichaean worldview in which elites are consciously scheming against them, whether through demographic warfare, collusion with globalist institutions, or Big Pharma implanting them with microchips and suppressing the truth about ivermectin.”
Of course, the global elite has a lot of stupid ideas. I count rabid support for mass non-white immigration among them. Ironically, open borders folks want tons more “riff raff” but I guess they assume that, contrary to Democrats who are more activist, these low IQ hordes will just mind their business while indulging in their oppositional culture and/or crime. Whites will just have to take flight again in exchange for Netflix.
Romney is the quintessential "smartest kid in the class" who frets that he is not respected or liked as much as he should be. Why are the dumber kids more popular than me?
Well Mitt, the reason you are not liked and respected by your peers is because you are a jerk. You are so self absorbed with your own genius and beauty that you fail to see that your interactions with others are perceived as fake or trite. You are seen as a very shallow person because you yourself exaggerate superficial differences.
Case in point. After 20+ years of Romney being on the national stage (Olympics, governor, presidential candidate, Senator) what is Romney remembered for? What of substance has the man won or argued or staked his reputation on? And the answer is his personal spats with Trump and with other Republicans. How sad. And if Romney senses this reality no wonder he is bitter.
But whose fault is it that Romney is defined as the man who mud wrestled with Trump? Contrast Romney with Thomas Massie. Massie disagreed with Trump and drew the ire of Trump. But Massie stuck to the substance of the policy he disagreed about. He disagreed with Trump on Covid bailouts but his concern was the policy and defending his position.
Romney, on the other hand, sees criticism of policy as criticism of him. Romney chooses to make policy disagreement personal. It is an attack of his intellect and righteousness and his honor! And so we see in Romney - a man of great talent - who is remembered for his petsonal jabs and snide remarks, and not for having made a difference in Washington. We can't even associate Romney with a policy position that defined his political career. We can only conclude the man believes in nothing but himself as a "good man" punished to live among so many men of inferior talent.
Are Romney's interactions perceived as shallow and trite because he is shallow and trite, or because his opponents are incapable of believing that anyone could just be fundamentally decent without trying to push a hidden agenda?
I've noticed a lot of times when people say that someone can't be that good, that they must be hiding something, what they really mean is: "I'm not that good, and it makes me feel bad that other people are better than me, so I'm gonna pretend that they aren't."
I agree. A lot of people are themselves immoral, so they love the Trump schtick of “they’re all corrupt so I’m going to be the one guy who flaunts my flaws and laughs at them.”
The superficiality of Romney in politics is a consequence of Romney not understanding politics. Never forget that Romney wasn't just a governor's son. He was also a graduate of both Harvard Law and Harvard Business schools. Romney earned his place in the world with work and grades and earnestness. No need for him to play the political game.
Romney doesn't want to be a political creature. Being a politician has always been a struggle for him. His only two political successes were layups - winning the MA governors race on the coattails of the 2002 Olympics and winning a Utah Senate seat on the narrative of the "golden Mormon boy".
Romney has shown he cannot fake sincerity and that puts him at a huge disadvantage. But even worse is that Romney greatly struggles to publicly display any sincerity. Privately, Romney may be a genuine person and I actually believe that to be the case. But as a public person Romney is awkward. It is as if he does not know who he should be publicly. Why not just be yourself? Apparently Romney can't do that.
If Romney were solely about doing the decent thing he would be critical of everything that goes on in Washington. But no. Romney is selective in his criticism. His pattern is to be critical of his own party members especially those viewed as anti establishment, while being defensive of the political establishment. This earns Romney support from the establishment but at the cost of him losing political support that he already struggles to hold.
On the topic of Romney and race, I’m reminded of a Hanania comment about feeling sad that liberals need a study to explain that men and women are different. This applies to Romney et al. on race. As Jeremy Carl said in a recent podcast: “Whites are pathetic.”
"What of substance has the man won or argued or staked his reputation on?"
Living in Massachusetts, I can say "Installing a more-or-less universal medical insurance system that was the precursor to Obamacare." And we still honor Romney for that.
This piece perhaps overlooks foreign policy. The Republican Party establishment--which I do respect in many ways--got the Iraq War wrong. Maybe that can be blamed on GWB. But Romney did not inspire confidence in me in 2012 that he would not involve us in additional wars. Trump, on the other hand, clearly expressed that he would not involve us in pointless wars like the Iraq War, and he did not do so in practice.
At the time of the invasion Trump had nothing but praise for the decision. It's not until later when public opinion turned that Trump started saying he was against it. If he were president in 2004 he totally would have let the generals convince him to invade. He would have thought it made him look tough.
Romney did things like pledge to arm and coordinate rebels in Syria.
Trump was the first president that did not start a foreign war in forty years. He also talked about the Iraq War like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ThZcq1oJQ. That made a big impression on me: he was not going to get us involved in any bullshit.
I think generally, agreements between traditional hannania republicans and trumpists tend to fracture and breakdown along the question of, how much has institutional rot corroded America, and whether the situation can still rectified within the normal bounds of democracy or are extra democratic measures needed to prevent a ... Hard landing. Im pretty split on this question myself, and can see it the situation both ways. On one hand, Trump is Hitler and if he takes power (I mean real power, winning the election and making the nessescary personnel changes to cement it), we could be heading to unmitigated disaster. On the other hand, Trump is Franco, and after a brief
and brutal revolution, stops the communist death spiral that would have made Spain into a Stalinist gulag state. Idk
"whether the situation can still rectified within the normal bounds of democracy or are extra democratic measures needed to prevent a ... Hard landing. "
This doesn't make much sense to me. The angry portion of the American right never tried defunding education or going after civil rights law, or drawing up sensible policies to address their concerns. They just went from all supporting Bush to going "oh, well, democracy doesn't work, guess we need a dictatorship and have to buy into the Trump cult."
I think this is just post hoc rationalization. Trump won over the masses, and Republican intellectuals were like "look at what you made us do," when the voters don't care about policy at all and just liked the guy, which is why they didn't mind when he said he was pro-affirmative action, that he hoped to work with Democrats, etc.
I agree and disagree with you at the same time. I agree that the average Trump voter probably did vote for him out of a own the libs hate reflex. And maybe that's 99% of his voters. And out of that 1%, there are also the cynics who hitched their ride to the Trump wagon for self aggrandizing reasons. But there are also people out there who sees the trajectory of current America and think, unless something drastic is done, then the future detonation of the Great Experiment is all but imminent. They are people who don't nessescarily like Trump the character, but understands, in the weird logic of American television democracy, he is the only ticket out of the clown show. And on the policy front, I would soft agree with you, in that Trumps draw isn't his cabinet full of Fix America Again policy proposals, but it's his position as a complete outsider that is anathema to either aisles of the established regime. And here, you would interject, and say that in actuality, Trumps actual policy implementations were standard Republican fare. Fair point, except I think, that his first term was something that was completely unplanned, not by Trump nor his aides. There was no strategy set in place for post election, and given the resistance of the entire Washington beauracracy, the only option was to accept the pieces in play already. This time though, if he wins again, I think it will be very different. Because not only will his team have the experience of navigating the white house, but actual competent operators, who stayed on the sidelines during the first term, will now know that the margins of success are non zero. And if the reelection does happen, I think we will see some major personnel overhauls in Washington.
And like, personally, I'm an elite believer as well. So really, what the average Trump voters motivation for voting him doesn't really matter. What matters is, he's got the power now. And the question is, who is he going to bring into office with him?
Ps. Romney, to me who has not read the book, sounds like alot like Nicholas II. Model aristocrat, altho maybe not the best guy to be running the show when the shit hits the fan
Okay, this kinda got a little long, but succinctly, I think a) I agree most his voters are angry idiots, but this doesn't really matter because they give power to b) the smart voters, who again, I agree partially are just supporting Trump for selfish, deceptive reasons but disagree in that there are people who see him as a vehicle to massively overhaul America. And c) reelection Trump is gonna f**k shit up
Also, anyone who is curious in a full exposition of this idea of Trump as agent of change should watch the conversation between Curtis Yarvin and Michael Anton on yt
I'm not sure why you think the people Trump will get to run his administration this time will be better than the first. This time there will be a large number of competent conservatives that don't want to work for Trump because of Jan 6th, and he will choose to avoid a great number of competent people because he doesn't think they will be loyal enough to him personally. Do you actually think Michael Flynn will do the job better than John Kelley?
I'm also not sure where the idea comes from that America is headed to some abyss. There is literally not a single nation in the world doing better than us by almost any measure.
Because first time I don't think anyone seriously thought that he could win and they didn't think he would be able to stick around. 7 years later, he is single handedly the biggest force in the republican party, and is for all intents and purposes here to stick around. I don't think Jan 6 changes the political blowback as much as you think, at least relative to how polarizing Trump was already in the 2016 primaries. The other reason why you would want to hinge ur career in Trump, is because if he takes power again, there are going to be alot of vacant spots to be made. And the list of "proscriptions" wud include many senior level positions within the permanent establishment. So again, why not hitch a ride to the Trump cart and potentially fast track your career by 20 years?
As to the decline of america thesis ... Its more of a feeling I guess, a gestalt reading of the American climate if you will, that things aren't going too well. Ie. Getting into useless wars, increasing age of our ruling class refusing to relinquish power, all time loss of trust in key public institutions (newspapers and politicians included), malaise and discontentment converting ever more readily into revolutionary energy (BLM, Palestine protests), corruption (SBF biggest Dem donor, student debt relief bailout). And the woke thing. The thing truly is a mind virus at a fairly advanced stage of infection, and seemingly inverts all reasonable judgement in their victims. Success is evil, the weak are blessed and the strong will be brought to their knees. All key institutions have already been captured by this nihilistic creed, and demographic trends indicate a greater buy in for these beliefs in all the younger generation. And people wonder why DeSantis is focusing so hard on education... Oh and historically, we are also approaching the point of when most empires tend to fall off a cliff. So yeah. Regime change LFG!!!
Agree with this assessment. There was an article on this exact topic (I want to say it was Tablet Mag but I cannot find it) where it separated people into those who believe US institutions are irreparably corrupt and new ones rebuilt and those who believe there is rot, but the foundations are still strong so it's merely a repair job.
The same people praising Romney now (see Hanania) certainly didn't vote for him as president.
Whaddya mean, the guy was fighting a war. Abe Lincoln had a higher kill count than that if we are applying that standard. And by all intents and purposes, the Left was the aggressor in Spain. And after the civil war, he just chilled, no excessive repercussions, kept the country out of WW2, and focused on economy.
One effect that I think is in play (that is considerably independent of other factors) is that there's a substantial fraction of the population that genuinely likes Trump's belligerent style. I suspect this overlaps considerably with the "pugnacious Scots-Irish". But it does seem to me that there's a considerable constituency that sees the world in strongly zero-sum terms and favors interpersonal aggression as the model for interaction. I once joked "The way you indicate you disagree with your representative's vote on a bill is by threatening to kill his children." But I've seen in Salon the comment "Keep it up pinheads with your troublemaking, you keep saying half the people didn't vote for Bush, well half did and it's the half that believes in guns. I say it's time we settle things with them."
Within that context, all of the other Republican candidates have the failing that they're politicians, and at heart believe in settling disputes by political means, rather than by street fighting. There's no way they are going to pry away from Trump the supporters who crave belligerence.
ETA: I suspect this accounts for the popularity of the "invade Mexico to solve the drug problem" meme. That idea is obviously demented, so politicians embrace it in order to show that they *prefer* beating people up as a way to solve problems.
The GOP has long been an odd combination of economic and foreign policy elites, along with a horde of social conservatives. Granted, I personally am a fan of business and foreign policy elites calling the shots, but I also am one at some scale.
Our constant push towards small-d democracy is rooting out the final bastions of nobility in politics. In areas with less democratic pressure you can still see excellence rise up, but elected office seems to be where it all goes to die. This isn’t because our elites are necessarily worse, but because they are forced to conform to the style and desires of the proletariat if they want to be elected.
A lot of stock put into a biography apparently about a guy sucking himself off, but putting aside whatever charm that may hold to some, "Romney is a natural aristocrat in the Jeffersonian sense" could not contradict the rest of the piece any more strongly. Jefferson, while living an aristocratic life in the sense of his opulent consumption of books, fine alcohol, and pet projects, was among the most populist of all the Founders, albeit one with infinitely more political cunning. A fundamental aspect of Jeffersonian thought was that the common prole who worked his own land *was* in fact a better and more moral human than those who worked the banks or political office. The Jackson era was the inevitable culmination of the Jefferson era's political dominance and the ever-aging Federalist administrative state, even though Jefferson had a few mild private criticisms of Jackson himself.
The problem with Nietzschean Liberals is that they want all the perks of the society that comes from being filled with a bunch of American flag-patterned-pants wearing Alex Jones listeners, without said proles themselves. The only 20th century political demographic with any interest in the exalted 19th century liberal values we enjoy today are the civil libertarians whose heyday began roughly circa the 60s, and who have been in rapid decline ever since Obama and the neocons made up.
The dream may be the NPR-sounding elitist who smoothtalks and IQ-mogs Congress into repealing Social Security and Medicaid, but in practice that never happens. Instead you get George Romney issuing the first mortgage-backed securities, expanding HUD, breaking records in new public housing for minorities, ending in what retrospectively and inevitably turned into a proto subprime lending crisis. You get fiscal conservative Mitt Romney taking the "moderate" position on public healthcare by pioneering the public mandate in Romneycare, to the delight of insurance companies. Hamilton is the much more obvious reference point; devalue the bonds of Revolutionary War veterans, convince them to sell the bottom to speculators (including many members of the government, the First Bank, and Hamilton's own family), then get the First Bank to buy them back at taxpayer's expense. Jefferson and Lincoln both understood that what makes a nation is its land and the men who work and improve it; Romney is just another parasite from the ideological lineage of Rooseveltism, generations of men powerful enough to seem smart just by asserting it.
Let's make this Real Simple, as Sen. Iselin would say.
1. "There is no politics without an enemy." Who is the enemy of our ruling class? The racist-sexist-homophobe white supremacist riff-raff of which you've heard tell.
2. Every ruling class has a Political Formula. Our rulers believe they are the Allies of the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors.
You will note that there are three lies in the formula: First, the Oppressed Peoples aren't that oppressed. Second, the White Oppressors don't have the political power to oppress; third, the Allies are the ruling class and they are in it for themselves, not allies of anyone. The Oppressed Peoples are just Mascots of the rulers.
Why would you need an enemy in politics? If the decision is whether to demolish the old courthouse and rebuild it or spend less money to simply renovate it...who exactly is the enemy? The problem with politics today is that everyone is trying to create an enemy when the question is just genuinely hard and either method would probably work.
"where he fought to put civil rights into the party platform, pointedly refused to endorse Goldwater, and denounced “extremism and lilly-white Protestantism."
Romney didn't resonate with me in 2012 and I voted Obama again. Didn't need this article to know that was a yuge mistake, but glad you took the time to write this so I could see Mitt through a more positive lens.
This review is all well and good, but you simply can’t put the race-IQ question in a box when assessing American politicians, except as a thought experiment.
Racial problems are the defining issue of our time, and Romney has, perhaps tragically if you want to be charitable to him, been brainwashed with absolutely insane ideas on that subject. So he marches with BLM. Maybe he’s well intentioned and talented, but nothing could be more disqualifying.
Why are racial problems the defining issue of our time? Seems like the stakes have never been lower. Mexicans and Asians don't even care about racism any more.
You have been fooled too easily by Romney's patrician air. When it comes to substance, the guy has flip-flopped on a lot of issues and, believe it or not, was even more hawkish than Trump on immigration at one point.
For more details and references on what I just said, check the latest Reason piece on him.
This blog surely wins the prize for most consistently striking contrast between the posts and the comments.
There will always be many many more of the slovenly masses than aristocrats...especially while the later calls the shots. When the aristocrats no longer call the shots, there will hopefully be much fewer of each.
"Few men who are tall, handsome, married to their first wife who they still dot over, and surrounded by a gaggle of grandkids — all, as far as we know, still identifying with their biological sex — are enthusiastic Trumpists." Not my observation AT ALL. Trump voters of my acquaintance and age cohort are precisely this, men circa age 60, conservative Catholics, married to their first wives, typically grandfathers. Not all are tall and handsome. Most are professionally accomplished.
Your vision of Trump voters is clearly mostly driven by your own contempt for him and them, and not data driven. Dig into the survey data more. You are the professional pundit around here. You can do better.
"Putting aside any questions of political strategy, I just really like Mitt Romney."
It shows.
Anecdotally Trump split my Texas family right down the middle. The ones that might be approximated as Aristocrats decided to stomach Biden for one election while the riff-raff still have Trump banners on their walls.
Yeah Richard's completely wrong there. While Mormons and Amish do the best, among moe normal Christian sects, regular church-goers are the only Christians who reach that coveted 2.1 fertility rate.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secular-fertility-divide
As someone who has a fairly well-detailed family tree containing both hardcore Evangelicals/Baptists as well as liberal reformist Presbyterians, the reproductive gap could not be any more stark.
A paraphrased and representative obituary from an Evangelical great-great uncle: he was a faithful husband of 60 years to his wife, is survived by 8 children, 24 grandchildren, and 9 great-grandchildren, and was a devoted member of his church and follower of Christ.
A paraphrased and representative obituary from the Evangelical's Presbyterian younger brother: he was a widely respected member of the community, who as a chief civil engineer oversaw the groundbreaking of three public libraries, served on several committees including the local arts council, was devoted to charity work and patronage for the local opera house, as well as the church, was known to enjoy driving his Porsche convertible on sunny days, prided himself in staying computer-savvy in old age, insert several more lines about his varied hobbies, was faithful husband of 55 years to his wife, and is survived by 2 children. [No grandchildren, the daughter married a college professor and they travel the world when school isn't in session; the son was gay and later gay-married a surgeon in Palm Springs]
imo it represents one of the essential needs for localism. You need Bible-thumpers to keep pushing out babies to keep the nation from going extinct, and you need the smarter babies to leave their small Southern town, move to San Francisco or Seattle, and use their intellect to become engineers, scientists, etc. Call it a division of social labor. The Democrats enjoyed immense political success during the New Deal in spite of a party that could hardly be more diverse, ultra-leftist crypto-Bolshevik New Yorkers and arch-segregationist generally-conservative Dixiecrats, because they let bygones be bygones. As long as Nietzschean Liberals deny the necessity of the goofy religious right and at least token populism to any successful pan-right wing movement, they will not amount to anything in real politics.
>This means that those who believe in freedom will have to behave morally worse than their opponents — that is, lie more, appeal more to base impulses, and violate democratic norms — to have any hope of accomplishing their political goals.<
I generally agree with this perspective. We are in a "cold civil war" in the sense that the left is willing to do whatever they can get away with, in order to get their way. Therefore, fighting back effectively requires a similar willingness to do whatever is most effective in hurting them. You've recognized in some of your other writing that when push really comes to shove in warfare, nations have to put aside such pesky concerns as civilian casualties in favor of simply crushing the enemy. I would say that a similar principle applies in the current political atmosphere of aggression. No matter how decent a guy he may be, someone that marched with BLM simply isn't the right person for the job we face.
Has embracing Trumpist ruthlessness actually done anything to advance the conservative cause? A normal Republican would have beat Hilary in 2016, and might not have lost to Biden in 2020. A normal Republican would have appointed the exact same justices Trump did. A normal Republican probably would have done something like Operation Warp Speed, and appointed a Secretary of Education that slightly rolled back Title IX. I don't need to go on, because those are the only things of note that Trump accomplished in office. Meanwhile, his election inspired wokist cancel culture to tighten the screws.
The left is in a similar situation. They spent a decade saying that police reform was so important that civility needed to be discarded. They accomplished exactly two things. Jack, and Squat. And Jack left town. Far left Democrats consistently lose leadership positions to bog-standard party centrists. The only reason the right is able to say any of its "the far left is taking over" rhetoric with a straight face is by claiming that any Democrat to the left of Zell Miller is a far leftist.
Ruthlessness doesn't work. Civility isn't just some nice luxury that people indulge in. It allows long term victories. Ruthlessness at most allows short term victories, followed quickly by long term losses and/or stagnation.
I agree Trump hasn't delivered nearly enough. I don't particularly care for him for exactly that reason--he talks big and doesn't deliver. That doesn't mean that conservatives would somehow be served by going back to being passive, compliant doormats.
>Ruthlessness doesn't work. Civility isn't just some nice luxury that people indulge in. It allows long term victories. Ruthlessness at most allows short term victories, followed quickly by long term losses and/or stagnation.<
Trump wasn't actually very ruthless though. He was--still is--confused, chaotic, and oftentimes, downright stupid. But he just wasn't nice, and the bar has been set so incredibly low that that is enough to look better than the alternatives.
I'd be curious to hear what "long term victories" you think the right has achieved by choosing "civility" over the actual accomplishment of ideological goals. Be specific.
That their vote share among affluent suburbanites still exists.
Up until Trump, civil Republicans in the modern era tended to win big majorities in the House and Senate. If it weren't for Trump's MAGA nutjobs, Republicans would have won a much bigger majority in the House and taken back the Senate in 2022.
You could also compare the number of bills that were passed under previous Republican majorities compared to our current House majority. Incivility hasn't helped achieve conservative goals, it's just brought all business to a standstill.
As far as I can tell, conservative goals weren't being achieved at all before Trump either. The previous generation of Republicans made some tax cuts and did not much of anything else. They couldn't even bring themselves to repeal Obamacare despite voting to do so eleventy billion times when they were in the minority. Total joke.
Preach. I am sincerely not tired of winning.
The problem is not that Romney marched with BLM. It is that he only does the symbolic gesture. Consider that public schools are failing with black minorities hardest hit. The chief cause of failure is "Restorative Justice" where schools are blocked from disciplining bad behavior with the result being a chaotic and failed learning environment. Someone who cares about minority achievement would point this out. But this someone will not be Romney. He just wants to show he cares. He's not going to change anything.
Sure, but I doubt that stuff is happening in Utah. If Romney were the Senator of California, I think you would see him speak out on that issue. Maybe not.
“These people don’t have ideas about whether the Republican Party should be more right-wing or not, but rather want leaders who flatter them, and make them feel heard by expressing agreement with their conspiracy theories and Manichaean worldview in which elites are consciously scheming against them, whether through demographic warfare, collusion with globalist institutions, or Big Pharma implanting them with microchips and suppressing the truth about ivermectin.”
Of course, the global elite has a lot of stupid ideas. I count rabid support for mass non-white immigration among them. Ironically, open borders folks want tons more “riff raff” but I guess they assume that, contrary to Democrats who are more activist, these low IQ hordes will just mind their business while indulging in their oppositional culture and/or crime. Whites will just have to take flight again in exchange for Netflix.
Romney is the quintessential "smartest kid in the class" who frets that he is not respected or liked as much as he should be. Why are the dumber kids more popular than me?
Well Mitt, the reason you are not liked and respected by your peers is because you are a jerk. You are so self absorbed with your own genius and beauty that you fail to see that your interactions with others are perceived as fake or trite. You are seen as a very shallow person because you yourself exaggerate superficial differences.
Case in point. After 20+ years of Romney being on the national stage (Olympics, governor, presidential candidate, Senator) what is Romney remembered for? What of substance has the man won or argued or staked his reputation on? And the answer is his personal spats with Trump and with other Republicans. How sad. And if Romney senses this reality no wonder he is bitter.
But whose fault is it that Romney is defined as the man who mud wrestled with Trump? Contrast Romney with Thomas Massie. Massie disagreed with Trump and drew the ire of Trump. But Massie stuck to the substance of the policy he disagreed about. He disagreed with Trump on Covid bailouts but his concern was the policy and defending his position.
Romney, on the other hand, sees criticism of policy as criticism of him. Romney chooses to make policy disagreement personal. It is an attack of his intellect and righteousness and his honor! And so we see in Romney - a man of great talent - who is remembered for his petsonal jabs and snide remarks, and not for having made a difference in Washington. We can't even associate Romney with a policy position that defined his political career. We can only conclude the man believes in nothing but himself as a "good man" punished to live among so many men of inferior talent.
Are Romney's interactions perceived as shallow and trite because he is shallow and trite, or because his opponents are incapable of believing that anyone could just be fundamentally decent without trying to push a hidden agenda?
I've noticed a lot of times when people say that someone can't be that good, that they must be hiding something, what they really mean is: "I'm not that good, and it makes me feel bad that other people are better than me, so I'm gonna pretend that they aren't."
I agree. A lot of people are themselves immoral, so they love the Trump schtick of “they’re all corrupt so I’m going to be the one guy who flaunts my flaws and laughs at them.”
Trump's authenticity? This is the guy who holds up an upside down bible for a photo shoot but can't quote a single line from it, not one.
"This is the guy who holds up an upside down bible for a photo shoot but can't quote a single line from it"?
That IS New York's version of low-brow -- the fully authentic, bridge-and-tunnel version, from Queens. Think "Archie Bunker."
The superficiality of Romney in politics is a consequence of Romney not understanding politics. Never forget that Romney wasn't just a governor's son. He was also a graduate of both Harvard Law and Harvard Business schools. Romney earned his place in the world with work and grades and earnestness. No need for him to play the political game.
Romney doesn't want to be a political creature. Being a politician has always been a struggle for him. His only two political successes were layups - winning the MA governors race on the coattails of the 2002 Olympics and winning a Utah Senate seat on the narrative of the "golden Mormon boy".
Romney has shown he cannot fake sincerity and that puts him at a huge disadvantage. But even worse is that Romney greatly struggles to publicly display any sincerity. Privately, Romney may be a genuine person and I actually believe that to be the case. But as a public person Romney is awkward. It is as if he does not know who he should be publicly. Why not just be yourself? Apparently Romney can't do that.
If Romney were solely about doing the decent thing he would be critical of everything that goes on in Washington. But no. Romney is selective in his criticism. His pattern is to be critical of his own party members especially those viewed as anti establishment, while being defensive of the political establishment. This earns Romney support from the establishment but at the cost of him losing political support that he already struggles to hold.
On the topic of Romney and race, I’m reminded of a Hanania comment about feeling sad that liberals need a study to explain that men and women are different. This applies to Romney et al. on race. As Jeremy Carl said in a recent podcast: “Whites are pathetic.”
"What of substance has the man won or argued or staked his reputation on?"
Living in Massachusetts, I can say "Installing a more-or-less universal medical insurance system that was the precursor to Obamacare." And we still honor Romney for that.
This piece perhaps overlooks foreign policy. The Republican Party establishment--which I do respect in many ways--got the Iraq War wrong. Maybe that can be blamed on GWB. But Romney did not inspire confidence in me in 2012 that he would not involve us in additional wars. Trump, on the other hand, clearly expressed that he would not involve us in pointless wars like the Iraq War, and he did not do so in practice.
At the time of the invasion Trump had nothing but praise for the decision. It's not until later when public opinion turned that Trump started saying he was against it. If he were president in 2004 he totally would have let the generals convince him to invade. He would have thought it made him look tough.
Romney did things like pledge to arm and coordinate rebels in Syria.
Trump was the first president that did not start a foreign war in forty years. He also talked about the Iraq War like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ThZcq1oJQ. That made a big impression on me: he was not going to get us involved in any bullshit.
I think generally, agreements between traditional hannania republicans and trumpists tend to fracture and breakdown along the question of, how much has institutional rot corroded America, and whether the situation can still rectified within the normal bounds of democracy or are extra democratic measures needed to prevent a ... Hard landing. Im pretty split on this question myself, and can see it the situation both ways. On one hand, Trump is Hitler and if he takes power (I mean real power, winning the election and making the nessescary personnel changes to cement it), we could be heading to unmitigated disaster. On the other hand, Trump is Franco, and after a brief
and brutal revolution, stops the communist death spiral that would have made Spain into a Stalinist gulag state. Idk
"whether the situation can still rectified within the normal bounds of democracy or are extra democratic measures needed to prevent a ... Hard landing. "
This doesn't make much sense to me. The angry portion of the American right never tried defunding education or going after civil rights law, or drawing up sensible policies to address their concerns. They just went from all supporting Bush to going "oh, well, democracy doesn't work, guess we need a dictatorship and have to buy into the Trump cult."
I think this is just post hoc rationalization. Trump won over the masses, and Republican intellectuals were like "look at what you made us do," when the voters don't care about policy at all and just liked the guy, which is why they didn't mind when he said he was pro-affirmative action, that he hoped to work with Democrats, etc.
I agree and disagree with you at the same time. I agree that the average Trump voter probably did vote for him out of a own the libs hate reflex. And maybe that's 99% of his voters. And out of that 1%, there are also the cynics who hitched their ride to the Trump wagon for self aggrandizing reasons. But there are also people out there who sees the trajectory of current America and think, unless something drastic is done, then the future detonation of the Great Experiment is all but imminent. They are people who don't nessescarily like Trump the character, but understands, in the weird logic of American television democracy, he is the only ticket out of the clown show. And on the policy front, I would soft agree with you, in that Trumps draw isn't his cabinet full of Fix America Again policy proposals, but it's his position as a complete outsider that is anathema to either aisles of the established regime. And here, you would interject, and say that in actuality, Trumps actual policy implementations were standard Republican fare. Fair point, except I think, that his first term was something that was completely unplanned, not by Trump nor his aides. There was no strategy set in place for post election, and given the resistance of the entire Washington beauracracy, the only option was to accept the pieces in play already. This time though, if he wins again, I think it will be very different. Because not only will his team have the experience of navigating the white house, but actual competent operators, who stayed on the sidelines during the first term, will now know that the margins of success are non zero. And if the reelection does happen, I think we will see some major personnel overhauls in Washington.
And like, personally, I'm an elite believer as well. So really, what the average Trump voters motivation for voting him doesn't really matter. What matters is, he's got the power now. And the question is, who is he going to bring into office with him?
Ps. Romney, to me who has not read the book, sounds like alot like Nicholas II. Model aristocrat, altho maybe not the best guy to be running the show when the shit hits the fan
Okay, this kinda got a little long, but succinctly, I think a) I agree most his voters are angry idiots, but this doesn't really matter because they give power to b) the smart voters, who again, I agree partially are just supporting Trump for selfish, deceptive reasons but disagree in that there are people who see him as a vehicle to massively overhaul America. And c) reelection Trump is gonna f**k shit up
Also, anyone who is curious in a full exposition of this idea of Trump as agent of change should watch the conversation between Curtis Yarvin and Michael Anton on yt
I'm not sure why you think the people Trump will get to run his administration this time will be better than the first. This time there will be a large number of competent conservatives that don't want to work for Trump because of Jan 6th, and he will choose to avoid a great number of competent people because he doesn't think they will be loyal enough to him personally. Do you actually think Michael Flynn will do the job better than John Kelley?
I'm also not sure where the idea comes from that America is headed to some abyss. There is literally not a single nation in the world doing better than us by almost any measure.
Because first time I don't think anyone seriously thought that he could win and they didn't think he would be able to stick around. 7 years later, he is single handedly the biggest force in the republican party, and is for all intents and purposes here to stick around. I don't think Jan 6 changes the political blowback as much as you think, at least relative to how polarizing Trump was already in the 2016 primaries. The other reason why you would want to hinge ur career in Trump, is because if he takes power again, there are going to be alot of vacant spots to be made. And the list of "proscriptions" wud include many senior level positions within the permanent establishment. So again, why not hitch a ride to the Trump cart and potentially fast track your career by 20 years?
As to the decline of america thesis ... Its more of a feeling I guess, a gestalt reading of the American climate if you will, that things aren't going too well. Ie. Getting into useless wars, increasing age of our ruling class refusing to relinquish power, all time loss of trust in key public institutions (newspapers and politicians included), malaise and discontentment converting ever more readily into revolutionary energy (BLM, Palestine protests), corruption (SBF biggest Dem donor, student debt relief bailout). And the woke thing. The thing truly is a mind virus at a fairly advanced stage of infection, and seemingly inverts all reasonable judgement in their victims. Success is evil, the weak are blessed and the strong will be brought to their knees. All key institutions have already been captured by this nihilistic creed, and demographic trends indicate a greater buy in for these beliefs in all the younger generation. And people wonder why DeSantis is focusing so hard on education... Oh and historically, we are also approaching the point of when most empires tend to fall off a cliff. So yeah. Regime change LFG!!!
Nailed it
Agree with this assessment. There was an article on this exact topic (I want to say it was Tablet Mag but I cannot find it) where it separated people into those who believe US institutions are irreparably corrupt and new ones rebuilt and those who believe there is rot, but the foundations are still strong so it's merely a repair job.
The same people praising Romney now (see Hanania) certainly didn't vote for him as president.
Franco -- or Pinochet (whose brutality, like Franco's, wasn't really all that brief)?
Your kind of guy?
Whaddya mean, the guy was fighting a war. Abe Lincoln had a higher kill count than that if we are applying that standard. And by all intents and purposes, the Left was the aggressor in Spain. And after the civil war, he just chilled, no excessive repercussions, kept the country out of WW2, and focused on economy.
One effect that I think is in play (that is considerably independent of other factors) is that there's a substantial fraction of the population that genuinely likes Trump's belligerent style. I suspect this overlaps considerably with the "pugnacious Scots-Irish". But it does seem to me that there's a considerable constituency that sees the world in strongly zero-sum terms and favors interpersonal aggression as the model for interaction. I once joked "The way you indicate you disagree with your representative's vote on a bill is by threatening to kill his children." But I've seen in Salon the comment "Keep it up pinheads with your troublemaking, you keep saying half the people didn't vote for Bush, well half did and it's the half that believes in guns. I say it's time we settle things with them."
Within that context, all of the other Republican candidates have the failing that they're politicians, and at heart believe in settling disputes by political means, rather than by street fighting. There's no way they are going to pry away from Trump the supporters who crave belligerence.
ETA: I suspect this accounts for the popularity of the "invade Mexico to solve the drug problem" meme. That idea is obviously demented, so politicians embrace it in order to show that they *prefer* beating people up as a way to solve problems.
The GOP has long been an odd combination of economic and foreign policy elites, along with a horde of social conservatives. Granted, I personally am a fan of business and foreign policy elites calling the shots, but I also am one at some scale.
Our constant push towards small-d democracy is rooting out the final bastions of nobility in politics. In areas with less democratic pressure you can still see excellence rise up, but elected office seems to be where it all goes to die. This isn’t because our elites are necessarily worse, but because they are forced to conform to the style and desires of the proletariat if they want to be elected.
I still can't get over the fact that he marched with BLM.
A lot of stock put into a biography apparently about a guy sucking himself off, but putting aside whatever charm that may hold to some, "Romney is a natural aristocrat in the Jeffersonian sense" could not contradict the rest of the piece any more strongly. Jefferson, while living an aristocratic life in the sense of his opulent consumption of books, fine alcohol, and pet projects, was among the most populist of all the Founders, albeit one with infinitely more political cunning. A fundamental aspect of Jeffersonian thought was that the common prole who worked his own land *was* in fact a better and more moral human than those who worked the banks or political office. The Jackson era was the inevitable culmination of the Jefferson era's political dominance and the ever-aging Federalist administrative state, even though Jefferson had a few mild private criticisms of Jackson himself.
The problem with Nietzschean Liberals is that they want all the perks of the society that comes from being filled with a bunch of American flag-patterned-pants wearing Alex Jones listeners, without said proles themselves. The only 20th century political demographic with any interest in the exalted 19th century liberal values we enjoy today are the civil libertarians whose heyday began roughly circa the 60s, and who have been in rapid decline ever since Obama and the neocons made up.
The dream may be the NPR-sounding elitist who smoothtalks and IQ-mogs Congress into repealing Social Security and Medicaid, but in practice that never happens. Instead you get George Romney issuing the first mortgage-backed securities, expanding HUD, breaking records in new public housing for minorities, ending in what retrospectively and inevitably turned into a proto subprime lending crisis. You get fiscal conservative Mitt Romney taking the "moderate" position on public healthcare by pioneering the public mandate in Romneycare, to the delight of insurance companies. Hamilton is the much more obvious reference point; devalue the bonds of Revolutionary War veterans, convince them to sell the bottom to speculators (including many members of the government, the First Bank, and Hamilton's own family), then get the First Bank to buy them back at taxpayer's expense. Jefferson and Lincoln both understood that what makes a nation is its land and the men who work and improve it; Romney is just another parasite from the ideological lineage of Rooseveltism, generations of men powerful enough to seem smart just by asserting it.
Let's make this Real Simple, as Sen. Iselin would say.
1. "There is no politics without an enemy." Who is the enemy of our ruling class? The racist-sexist-homophobe white supremacist riff-raff of which you've heard tell.
2. Every ruling class has a Political Formula. Our rulers believe they are the Allies of the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors.
You will note that there are three lies in the formula: First, the Oppressed Peoples aren't that oppressed. Second, the White Oppressors don't have the political power to oppress; third, the Allies are the ruling class and they are in it for themselves, not allies of anyone. The Oppressed Peoples are just Mascots of the rulers.
Why would you need an enemy in politics? If the decision is whether to demolish the old courthouse and rebuild it or spend less money to simply renovate it...who exactly is the enemy? The problem with politics today is that everyone is trying to create an enemy when the question is just genuinely hard and either method would probably work.
"where he fought to put civil rights into the party platform, pointedly refused to endorse Goldwater, and denounced “extremism and lilly-white Protestantism."
WTF Mormonism, you had one job:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormonism
Romney didn't resonate with me in 2012 and I voted Obama again. Didn't need this article to know that was a yuge mistake, but glad you took the time to write this so I could see Mitt through a more positive lens.
This review is all well and good, but you simply can’t put the race-IQ question in a box when assessing American politicians, except as a thought experiment.
Racial problems are the defining issue of our time, and Romney has, perhaps tragically if you want to be charitable to him, been brainwashed with absolutely insane ideas on that subject. So he marches with BLM. Maybe he’s well intentioned and talented, but nothing could be more disqualifying.
Why are racial problems the defining issue of our time? Seems like the stakes have never been lower. Mexicans and Asians don't even care about racism any more.
It’s the defining ideology of the Democratic Party
You have been fooled too easily by Romney's patrician air. When it comes to substance, the guy has flip-flopped on a lot of issues and, believe it or not, was even more hawkish than Trump on immigration at one point.
For more details and references on what I just said, check the latest Reason piece on him.