The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll asked GOP likely caucusgoers to consider all the contenders they didn't name as their first or second choice for president right now, and to say if they could "ever" support the person or "never" support the person.
Fifty-eight percent say they could never support Trump, the Manhattan businessman and TV personality.
Then Trump spent the summer bashing immigrants, the "Mexican" judge, etc. By August 2015, Trump led Republicans with 23 percent support, followed by Ben Carson (18 percent) and everyone else in single digits.
I have felt that a part of this story is that Bush seriously undercut the GOP's bona fides with Republican voters on its calling card issues. The party "good for the economy" gave us the Great Recession. The party "good for national security" gave us the Iraq debacle. The party "good for fiscal responsibility" gave us a return to deficit spending. The party "good for religious conservatism" was more talk than action. There was little excitement about supporting a GOP leadership (including McCain and Romney) that simply fails to deliver. In 2016, Trump exploited GOP voters' disenchantment and disappointment, mocking his opponents and their empty, dishonest promises. His sales pitch was that he was different, not lying like the party had been lying, and could deliver what GOP voters have most wanted.
It’s wild to remember that W was a wildly popular and unifying figure in the GOP in the early 2000s, and just a few years later they just simply stopped talking about him at all.
Pat Robertson's 1988 very strange run probably deserves another look at a forebearer for Trump as well. There's a scene in What It Takes where the Bush the Elder campaign folks are shocked that events in Iowa are being taken over by Robertson's loyalist cadres instead of the "normie Republicans" they remembered from Bush's run in 1980.
"Yet as that war dragged on, casualties mounted, and the purpose of the war seemed either elusive or outright fraudulent, many conservative populists came to see it as a “forever war” foisted on them by elites."
Yes! A war that working class people would have to fight. GOP elites seem surprised that the people they have wooed since Nixon would actually want something out of their bargain with the donor classes.
There's some great analysis here. That said, I think it's a mistake to try to tell the story of the rise of conservative populism, especially the racist and isolationist parts, without discussing Russia's meddling in the information environment. I also think that, in the discussion of the GOP's failed attempt to thwart Trump's nomination, Roger Stone deserves a mention.
SM: I think you're right to view Buchanan's candidacy as the first unambiguous intra-party emergence of the populist right. Having lived long enough to have been in high school when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution kicked off (which I followed in high school in IF Stone's Weekly), I'd add three more contributing factors: the "Silent Majority" trope pioneered during the Nixon administration and engineered to license and galvanize right-wing/white-wing grievance politics; the emergence and embrace by the Reaganites of the "Moral Majority" political evangelical right (also grievance-driven and very anti-science generally and anti-abortion specifically); and the anti-regulatory drive of the Reaganites - the first major-party presidential campaign that was presumptively hostile to regulation and science- and fact-based public policymaking - AKA the Regulatory State, impugned now by the right as the Deep State..
I agree with those. Especially with Nixon (and even George Wallace in ‘68). There’s elements of what we see today in that era, even if it’s not neatly aligned with a party yet.
This is the BIG LIE from the AP article linked in your Substack.
No delegates to any national party national convention are ever “bound” to the results of primary “elections”.
The Democratic candidate for president in 2024 never won even a single delegate as a result of “primary elections” (as the AP likes to identify them).
The AP lied in 2016 and you give new life to the lie by reposting it!
“Most Republican delegates are bound by the results of their states' presidential primary elections but as many as 200 are not bound by those rules.” (AP in 2016)
To suggest or intimate in any way that primaries choose our presidential candidates is “the BIG LIE”.
I assure you that the idea that convention delegates are mostly bound to a candidate, even though they technically have some freedom to vote otherwise, is not the big lie
I think often about a pair of Des Moines Register polls of Iowa Republicans from 2015.
From May 2015:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/05/30/iowa-poll-donald-trump-never-support/28231261/
The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll asked GOP likely caucusgoers to consider all the contenders they didn't name as their first or second choice for president right now, and to say if they could "ever" support the person or "never" support the person.
Fifty-eight percent say they could never support Trump, the Manhattan businessman and TV personality.
Then Trump spent the summer bashing immigrants, the "Mexican" judge, etc. By August 2015, Trump led Republicans with 23 percent support, followed by Ben Carson (18 percent) and everyone else in single digits.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2015/08/29/iowa-poll-trump-leads-carson-second/71285456/
The racism turned things around for Trump.
Hey don’t sell the sexism short
I have felt that a part of this story is that Bush seriously undercut the GOP's bona fides with Republican voters on its calling card issues. The party "good for the economy" gave us the Great Recession. The party "good for national security" gave us the Iraq debacle. The party "good for fiscal responsibility" gave us a return to deficit spending. The party "good for religious conservatism" was more talk than action. There was little excitement about supporting a GOP leadership (including McCain and Romney) that simply fails to deliver. In 2016, Trump exploited GOP voters' disenchantment and disappointment, mocking his opponents and their empty, dishonest promises. His sales pitch was that he was different, not lying like the party had been lying, and could deliver what GOP voters have most wanted.
It’s wild to remember that W was a wildly popular and unifying figure in the GOP in the early 2000s, and just a few years later they just simply stopped talking about him at all.
Pat Robertson's 1988 very strange run probably deserves another look at a forebearer for Trump as well. There's a scene in What It Takes where the Bush the Elder campaign folks are shocked that events in Iowa are being taken over by Robertson's loyalist cadres instead of the "normie Republicans" they remembered from Bush's run in 1980.
"Yet as that war dragged on, casualties mounted, and the purpose of the war seemed either elusive or outright fraudulent, many conservative populists came to see it as a “forever war” foisted on them by elites."
Yes! A war that working class people would have to fight. GOP elites seem surprised that the people they have wooed since Nixon would actually want something out of their bargain with the donor classes.
There's some great analysis here. That said, I think it's a mistake to try to tell the story of the rise of conservative populism, especially the racist and isolationist parts, without discussing Russia's meddling in the information environment. I also think that, in the discussion of the GOP's failed attempt to thwart Trump's nomination, Roger Stone deserves a mention.
SM: I think you're right to view Buchanan's candidacy as the first unambiguous intra-party emergence of the populist right. Having lived long enough to have been in high school when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution kicked off (which I followed in high school in IF Stone's Weekly), I'd add three more contributing factors: the "Silent Majority" trope pioneered during the Nixon administration and engineered to license and galvanize right-wing/white-wing grievance politics; the emergence and embrace by the Reaganites of the "Moral Majority" political evangelical right (also grievance-driven and very anti-science generally and anti-abortion specifically); and the anti-regulatory drive of the Reaganites - the first major-party presidential campaign that was presumptively hostile to regulation and science- and fact-based public policymaking - AKA the Regulatory State, impugned now by the right as the Deep State..
I agree with those. Especially with Nixon (and even George Wallace in ‘68). There’s elements of what we see today in that era, even if it’s not neatly aligned with a party yet.
I forgot about Wallace. You're right that he was also a very important figure in the emergence of the modern populist/white-grievance Right.
This is the BIG LIE from the AP article linked in your Substack.
No delegates to any national party national convention are ever “bound” to the results of primary “elections”.
The Democratic candidate for president in 2024 never won even a single delegate as a result of “primary elections” (as the AP likes to identify them).
The AP lied in 2016 and you give new life to the lie by reposting it!
“Most Republican delegates are bound by the results of their states' presidential primary elections but as many as 200 are not bound by those rules.” (AP in 2016)
To suggest or intimate in any way that primaries choose our presidential candidates is “the BIG LIE”.
I assure you that the idea that convention delegates are mostly bound to a candidate, even though they technically have some freedom to vote otherwise, is not the big lie
Really…
Seth: this was a BIG LIE in 2016 and repeating it today advocates for the continuation of the BIG LIE in 2028.
The Republican National Convention nominated its Presidential candidate in 2016 and will nominate the Republican candidate in 2028.
For you primary lovers with short memories, do you recall how the Democratic Primary fared in 2024?
Shameless advocacy for the primary fraud has nearly universal support in the FAKE NEWS.
Primaries are not “elections”!
Nor are they official “nominations”.
They are simply government sponsored opinion polls.
What is it exactly that you think I’m lying about?