Malcolm Moos, an Eisenhower-era moderate Republican strategist, wrote The End of the Republican Establishment in 1965, after Lyndon Johnson’s thrashing of Barry Goldwater. Moos’s thesis was that the typical GOP voter – small business people, upper middle-class Protestants, and operators of large corporations – would be unable to relate to the party’s newest members, segregationists from across the South, and atavists and nationalists everywhere. Quite obviously, Moos was wrong; they got along just fine.
The Republican Party’s presumptive nomination of Donald Trump has caused a bit of that same soul-searching today. Can the party survive The Donald? I don’t see why not. First of all, they’re getting plenty of help from the Democratic Party. Second, and without putting too fine a point on it, there’s plenty of evidence that the “values” and beliefs that characterize what Trump says and what Trump does simply and more directly enunciates the values and beliefs of the modern GOP establishment and its supporters. Trump is just a pig who got out of the party’s pen without the party’s lipstick.
A case in point is how the Republican Party has worn the Religious Right like a cheap suit, ready to be tossed on the floor the minute a fatuous trust fund baby and small change deadbeat wins a series of primaries. So far, the RR’s response has been some nervous chatter about voting for a “lesser evil,” but I’ve failed to find a single Biblical reference supporting such Jesus approved infamy. If there is such a reference – chapter and verse – I will be sincerely glad to learn of it.
It is possible that party leaders think they can control Trump, that he’ll show up when the camera is on and leave the day-to-day management of government – like it’s just another hotel – to them. That way, they’ll be free to carry on with the supply-side hustle they’re really, truly, and deeply committed to. Supply-side economics, FYI, originated with the Islamic philosopher Ibn Khaldun and has been responsible for making the Middle East the economic paradise it has been for the last 800 years.
With the GOP’s guidance, you see, every man will become the Sheikh of Araby.