The nasty, brutish, short life of GOP unity

Well that was fast.

Perhaps it was just my sensitivity (oversensitivity?) to "media narrative" herding. Immediately after Trump's Indiana primary victory and Cruz's Great Skedaddle, it seemed as though political journalists — especially in the cable-news arm — had broadly landed on the theme of inevitable Republican unity. One by one, once- anti-Trump Republican pols were falling in line, looking down sourly and brushing the rubble with their $500 Italian-leather shoes, murmuring that they had seen the light — and its name was, after all, Donald Trump.

But the narrative — if indeed it was a narrative, rather than my paranoia — didn't last. Because it couldn't last, because reality was kicking it all to hell. Those
whom George Will has called "Republican quislings" continued, here and there, to sign up. Yet wholesale Trump rejectionism soon resumed — from past Republican presidents and past Republican nominees to the House Republican speaker.

If a smug, all-knowing, proleptic "unity" narrative there was, it collapsed overnight. The revised theme is now everywhere in the media, as summarized by the NY Times: "Mr. Trump [faces] a shunning from party leaders that is unprecedented in modern politics."

That most efficient of summaries has not, however, deterred many a political commentator from warning that Mr. Trump — that most efficient of demagogues — could surprise us in November. He's "connecting!" they say; he's speaking to the monstrously aggrieved who now constitute a "mass movement." That's true, although Bernie is in the same "mass movement" boat, which, when juxtaposed with the titanic American electorate, is but a dinghy.

These premonitory, hair-on-fire commentators (see, for instance, Andrew Sullivan's NY Magazine essay) rarely grapple with the unastounding fact of the far greater mass of unpersuadable anti-Trumpism: that The Donald's negatives are astronomic; that (electoral majority) women despise him, that minorities detest him, that the young abhor him, that the educated loathe him, that moderates scorn him — and now, evidence that the Republican Party's breach is irreparable.

Why irreparable? The Times assesses Paul Ryan's position — for one, but representative in attitude nonetheless — as likely unchangeable: He "sees the value in protecting Republican House members up for re-election in swing districts where Mr. Trump may well be a drag on the rest of the ticket." By virtue of his job's highest responsibility, the speaker is simply writing off the White House. Ryan "will probably just keep doing what he is doing: raising money for Republicans, talking — both amorphously and perhaps later more substantively — about policy ideas, and looking, with hope and some desperation, for that change in tone from the presumptive nominee."

Which will never come. Because Trump is Trump — which further means that Trump is screwed.

 

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Comments

[AnneJ]

Well.. Breaking up IS hard to do...

[ME]

Would love to see a commentary on this PM

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/hilary-clinton-bush-donors-222872

[David & Son of Duff]

"Trump is screwed". Now where have I heard that before? Oh yes, Mr. Greenwald reminds me:

https://theintercept.com/2016/05/04/beyond-schadenfreude-the-spectacular-pundit-failure-on-trump-is-worth-remembering/

[Bob]

So now we can forget the election and start guessing which MENA country Hillary will invade first.

[The Dark Avenge]

This addresses the question of why the 'experts' were wrong? From Talking Points Memo:

"When flight instrumentation first became viable, aviation educators began teaching pilots instruments-only flight. The gist is simple: only pay attention to your instruments. Many veteran pilots insisted that in a crisis situation the key was to go by intuition or 'feel'. But numerous experiments and tragic experience showed that this was not true. With poor visibility, a pilot's perception of speed, direction, whether he or she was right-side up or upside down was consistently wrong. Still today, a good bit of pilot training turns on the difficult process of learning to disregard what your senses tell you must be happening and following the instrument panel that tells you what actually is happening.

For just the same reasons, no one has any business being surprised that Trump is now the Republican nominee. Don't get me wrong. Polls can obviously be wrong. They sometimes miss a race, sometimes dramatically. But when consistent and sustained polling data conflicts with your logic, there's quite likely something wrong with your logic.Trump is the perfect example.

Starting in early July of last year, only weeks after entering the race, Trump moved into a nationwide lead and never looked back. For nine months, Trump lead the polls and never once lost that lead. Indeed, from early August until today his lead steadily grew from roughly 25% to 50% support today. You have to go back to George W. Bush in 2000 to see domination on anything like that scale - and Bush had a lock on establishment backing from the outset. Looked at from this perspective it's remarkable that anyone could have looked at this race at any time in recent months and not concluded that Trump was the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination.

There were various arguments why Trump wouldn't win. His popularity would fade. He could only dominated a divided, overcrowded field. He had a natural ceiling at 25%, then 30%, then 40%. He'd finally saying something too outrageous. None of these arguments made much sense but they carried most punditry for months.

Now in the first glow of Trump's nomination, we're hearing all sorts of arguments about how the political magic he pulled in the GOP primaries he'll now bring to bear against Hillary Clinton. He's agile. He's free to change positions whenever he pleases. He just hasn't started in on Hillary yet. The normal rules don't apply to him.

Again, let's look at what the polls suggest.

This isn't Trump's debut with the national electorate. There's been a consistent story over the last ten months: Trump's persona, campaign and policy positions have slowly built up support among Republicans while alienating virtually everyone else. His negatives are extraordinarily high among numerous segments of the electorate - most notably, Hispanics, African-Americans, millennials and women. And he consistently, indeed virtually always, loses head to head match-ups with Hillary Clinton. Indeed, even in Clinton's very weakened state, Clinton has not only maintained her lead over Trump but has slowly but steadily increased that lead from August until today.

We should expect - and we are already seeing - both Clinton's and Trump's net favorability ratings go up over the coming weeks, as party members coalesce around their standard-bearers as drive up approval rates within their won parties. But as it will happen for both there's little reason to believe it will affect their relative standing. Let me reemphasize the point. Polls aren't always right. And you need to know how to interpret them. Ted Cruz was polling fairly well against Hillary Clinton until he started to get a lot of press attention, at which point he started to collapse because everyone hates Ted Cruz once they get to know him.

With Trump and Clinton we're dealing with two candidates who have been the focus of intense media attention for a year. In different ways, they've been in the media spotlight for decades. The polls are telling us a pretty clear story. Trump is very popular with base Republican voters, particularly older and whiter and male ones. Everything he's done to gain that popularity has made him extremely unpopular with almost everyone else. Changing that will be very hard. Polls, if you actually pay attention to them, have predicted this cycle quite successfully. No reason to believe that will change in the general."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-is-no-mystery-there-ve-been-no-surprises