There’s Only One Group to Blame for How Republicans Flocked to Trump
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Ever since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, an industry of rationalization and justification has thrived. The theme is clear: Look what you made us do . The argument is simple: Democratic unfairness and media bias radicalized Republicans to such an extent that they turned to Trump in understandable outrage . Republicans had been bullied, so they turned to a bully of their own.
No aspect of that theory has been more enduring than what I’ll call the Mitt Romney martyr thesis . The Republicans nominated a good and decent man—so the argument goes—and the Democrats and the media savaged him. Republicans respected norms, Democrats did not, and now those same Democrats have the gall to savage the GOP for Trump?
I happen to agree that there has been, in fact, a Mitt Romney radicalization process. But it is quite the opposite of what this narrative suggests. It isn’t rooted in Republican anger on behalf of Romney but in Republican anger against Romney, and over time that anger has grown to be not just against Romney the man but also against the values he represents.
The Mitt Romney martyr thesis is important to understand. Like many popular (but mistaken) theories, it’s based on some grains of truth. Many of the attacks against Romney were definitely extreme, most notably when in 2012 Joe Biden told an audience that included hundreds of Black Americans that Romney’s policies would “ put you all back in chains .”
Biden wasn’t referring to literal slavery but rather the “chains” of, in his view, unfair economic rules. But the language was indefensibly inflammatory. When Biden launched that attack, I was personally infuriated. I was a Romney partisan from way back. In 2006, just as Romney planned his first run for president, I formed a group—along with my wife, Nancy, and a small band of friends—called “Evangelicals for Mitt.”
Our goal was to persuade evangelical Christians to vote for a Mormon candidate. We built our case around Romney’s competence and character. (It was sadly naive to believe that the bulk of evangelical voters truly cared about personal virtue in politicians.) We spent countless hours supporting Romney through two separate campaigns, and in 2012 Nancy and I both were Romney delegates to the Republican National Convention.
A partisan mindset is a dangerous thing. It can make you keenly aware of every unfair critique from the other side and oblivious to your own side’s misdeeds. I was indignant about attacks against Romney, for example, while brushing off years of birther conspiracies against President Barack Obama as “fringe” or “irrelevant.”
Then, of course, Republicans nominated Trump, the birther in chief, and the scales fell from my partisan eyes.
And now, in hindsight, the real Romney radicalization is far more clear. You could see the seeds planted during the 2012 Republican primary. On January 19, two days before South Carolina primary voters cast their ballot, Newt Gingrich had a moment during the GOP primary debate.
The CNN host John King asked Gingrich about claims by one of his ex-wives (Gingrich has been married three times) that he pressed her in 1999 to have an open marriage. Gingrich responded by condemning the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media,” declared that he was “appalled” that King would begin a presidential debate on the topic, and said that it was “despicable” for King to make Gingrich’s ex-wife’s claim an issue two days before a Republican primary.
The crowd interrupted Gingrich with cheers and hoots of approval. But why? Wasn’t King’s underlying question fair? After all, Gingrich had admitted to cheating on his first and second wives, and he admitted to cheating on his second wife at the same time that he was speaker of the House and leading impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his own extramarital affair.
Moreover, Gingrich was having his affair after the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America and a key Republican constituency, had passed a Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials that contained the following statement: “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”
Surely, heavily evangelical voters in a key Republican stronghold would be concerned about Gingrich’s scandals? No, they were far angrier at media outlets than they were at any Republican hypocrisy.
Gingrich went on to win the South Carolina primary in a “ landslide ” powered by evangelicals. It was the only time in primary history that South Carolina voters failed to vote for the eventual GOP nominee. But South Carolina voters weren’t out of step; rather they were ahead of their time. They forecast the Republican break with character in favor of a man who would “fight.”
To understand the emotional and psychological aftermath of Romney’s loss, one has to look at the cultural break between the GOP establishment—which commissioned an “ autopsy ” of the party in 2012 that called for greater efforts at inclusion—and a grassroots base that was convinced that it had been hoodwinked by party leaders into supporting the “safe” candidate.
They wanted a street brawler, and when (they believed) Romney campaigned with one hand tied behind his back, they were angry. Yes, there was anger at Democrats and reporters for their treatment of Romney, but the raw anger that really mattered was their anger at Romney for the way he treated Obama and the press. They were furious that he didn’t angrily confront Candy Crowley when she famously fact-checked him in the midst of the third and final presidential debate of 2012.
And so the Republican establishment and the Republican base moved apart, with one side completely convinced that Romney lost because he was perhaps, if anything, too harsh (especially when it came to immigration) and the other convinced that he lost because he was too soft.
Trump’s nomination was a triumph of that base. Well before Romney came out against Trump in the primary and well before Romney’s first impeachment vote, Trump supporters scorned him. They despised his alleged weakness.
When Trump won, the base had its proof of concept. Fighting worked, and not even Trump’s loss—along with the loss of the House and the Senate in four short years—has truly disrupted that conclusion. And why would it? Many millions still don’t believe he lost.
The Mitt Romney martyr theory thus suffers from a fatal defect. It presumes that large numbers of Republicans weren’t radicalized before Romney’s rough treatment. In truth, they already hated Democrats and the media, and when Romney lost, their message to the Republican establishment in 2016 was just as clear as it was in South Carolina in 2012. No more nice guys. The “character” that mattered was a commitment to punching the left right in the mouth.
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When populism marries a street brawler Pandora will assuredly be the offspring that devours Clio in diluvian derangement denialism a.k.a. "He must not be discussed!"
Lol. How Orwellian.
Besides the whitewashing of the Democrats slurs against Romney, McCain happened too. For anyone old enough to remember the media calling Goldwater a Nazi and calling him crazy, it's been going on their entire life.
A banner picked up by 'neo'-republicans who now try to emulate everything they despised about democrats. At times, and there are many of them, one wonders which party is which ... Orwellian indeed!
Simply put....Trump got elected because enough people despised Clinton.
Biden got elected because enough people despised Trump.
I think that Romney is, within a certain context, a decent man. But he headed a private equity company that bought up vulernable companies , looted them, and then broke them up for "parts".
He is representative of income inequality as policy.
The only way I would vote for him is if he was running against Trump.
Pretty much, I would vote for damn near anyone but Trump because I know exactly what Trump wants. Fuck that outcome.
Yup! It's wrong to make America great. Being energy independent and a net exporter of energy is wrong. Securing our southern border and deporting illegal aliens is wrong. Keeping inflation low is bad. Inflation should be closing in on 9%on even higher. Making American interests come first in treaty negotiations is a bad thing. Making other countries pay their fair and negotiated share to defend them should not be tolerated.
What other things did you not like?
I do suppose you like the rising crime rates and the high gas prices and the high inflation rates and the porous border and the huge amount of deadly illegal drugs coming across the border.
Canada would like to thank the american citizen for being an energy glutton.
Except Biden didn't ask the Canadians for more oil. He went to the Venezuelans, who don't like us much, the Saudis who he already insulted and are not pleased with us and the Iranian who absolutely hate us. He also shut down the pipelines that would have brought more Canadian oil here.
I think that their business model is to buy troubled or slow-growing public companies, take them private, and then try to turn them around so they can sell it at a higher price, or to go public again with an initial public offering. They made money by picking the right companies, a business with a low stock-market valuation, yet good cash flow, and some underutilized assets. After buying a company, Bain found and hired new or sometimes kept the same managers, gave them a substantial ownership stake through stock, Bain would take a seat or two on the BoD .
Maybe you're thinking of Edward Lewis, ‘corporate raider’ in the movie Pretty Woman.
I think David French does a good job of explaining this political "no-holds barred" on the republican party's approach to politics. I am yet unsure why republicans think they have a right to fight to hold down liberties for other citizens not in their party, especially because at the end of. . .all this. . . there will still be republicans and democrats who have to come together and get this country moving as one.
Incidentally, Mr. French wrote a 'damning' book on the state of politics in our country: Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. St. Martin's Press. 2020. It is a 'blueprint' for how this country can tear itself apart-legally. If we simply don't stop this political abuse of each other.
Mitt Romney is a neoliberal that believes the global order is more important than the United States. Romney will sacrifice the people of the United States to defend and protect the global order. And the global order is all about money.
Romney was attempting to appropriate the legacy of Ronald Reagan. The Republican base has begun rejecting that Reagan worldview. Donald Trump is definitely not a Reagan Republican. Don't ignore that Donald Trump expanded the Republican base by engaging in politics that was the opposite of Reagan. Don't ignore that Trump had to beat the Republican establishment before he had any chance to win the election.
The press likes to point out that the Republican Party is now controlled by Trump. But the explanation for why that is so ignores that the Republican base is demanding that the Republican Party shift away from the Reagan worldview. A Republican candidate claiming to continue the Reagan legacy isn't as competitive in Republican primaries. The Republican base is rejecting the politics of the neoliberal global world order. Trump's expanded Republican base want candidates who believe the United States is more important than anything else in the world. Any sacrifice by the United States to maintain a neoliberal global world order is too large and must be rejected outright.
The Trump worldview is that the United States must compete; cooperation is not enough. And the Republican base is adopting Trump's worldview.
With 'enlightening' T-shirt memes ... yay!
I doubt that any have read even anything even as remotely uncomplicated as this:
Yes, Reagan's vision of global order, as espoused by George H.W. Bush (from your link), was based upon the Kissinger idea of 'peace through partnership'. But everyone ignores that the United States was supposed to be the majority partner. That became the basis for the neoliberal version of global world order where the United States would be in a position to exploit the partnership. Intergovernmental cooperation was to become a profit center that allowed the economy of the United States to dominate the world. The United States policies to develop the third world was always intended to be exploitive. The unintended consequence has been the United States becoming overly dependent upon that exploitation.
The United States no longer competes in the global order. The United States only attempts to dominate the global order. Dominating and exploiting the global order was always what Kissinger meant by partnership. Peace could only be sustained by allowing the United States to dominate and exploit. And it's no secret who has benefited most from that dominance and exploitation.
What, no finger pointing? No accusations of 'conspiracy theory'?
No nuanced defense of neoliberal globalism?