After a top aid to President Donald Trump targeted Libertarian and House Freedom Caucus Member Justin Amash (R-Michigan), the message has rung loud and clear through the libertarian-republican community that we’re no longer welcome in the party (The Guardian).
I do not believe that the Trump Administration (a faux-Republican, faux-Conservative, faux-Populist-even administration), should be successful at driving the narrative of Republican Party Politics.
However, I do believe that we need to take a serious look at the men and women in Virginia who helped Donald Trump and his administration into power. No, I do not mean that all of his Virginia appointees are bad. No, I do not mean that everyone that supported him is bad. What I do mean is that we need to take a serious look at those Donald Trump supporters who are trying to run conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians out of the party and ask WTF?
What are they really after?
Is it any wonder that the most established of the establishment secured a Chief of Staff position at the White House? We all warned Republicans that Donald Trump was a progressive liberal (not a Republican) and that there would be consequences.
Eric Cantor supporters all over Virginia have been having fits over the last several weeks: Whether to love Donald Trump (who they hate) for bashing conservatives and libertarians (who they hate) within the GOP or whether to continue opposing President Trump for being an anti-establishment bastard-in-chief.
Personally, I appreciate Donald Trump: The man, the candidate, the President. It was Donald Trump that taught me about anti-Constitutional populism, anti-Conservative populism, anti-American populism, and anti-Libertarian conservatism. I’ve spoken at TEA Party meetings (for years), foolishly thinking that I was speaking to “my people”. Sadly, and as it has turned out, half of the TEA Party in America were simply “anti-establishment”; people without principles, philosophy, intelligence, or the ability to reason…critically.
Who is to blame? Talk Radio.
Why?
Because talk radio made conservative, constitutional, and libertarian rhetoric public. Political predators stole that rhetoric and led millions of thoughtful ideologues astray. Now we have to make peace with the fact that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are enormous frauds preying upon ideological sycophants too busy to know what’s going on, but with enough time to listen to their bullshit.
There are folks in Virginia, like Shaun Kenney and Brian Schoeneman, who have been ridiculing conservatives for years, telling us that “our” politicians have been lying to us – and worse, that we’ve been lying to ourselves. We’ve hated them for it. They weren’t entirely wrong.
They don’t share our values, our principles, or our beliefs; but they knew we about to self-destruct and we didn’t. They aren’t the Republicans we can trust just because they blew the whistle, telling us that the Republicans we trusted weren’t trustworthy.
You know what Eric Cantor is? He’s the truth. He’s the real Republican Party. We rejected him and elected someone who actually understands us and what happened? We sent a man to the Capital who is now the only representative in Washington DC that understands and cares about the economy more than the office he holds and he’s being targeted for it – just like Justin Amash.
These people that love Donald Trump and Corey Stewart – they aren’t conservatives or constitutionalists or libertarians or intelligent. They just hate the Republican Party.
We hate the Republican Leadership and so when we see these frauds out there blasting the GOP, all we can think about is how nice it is to see a “politician” blast the establishment. Yet, who is Donald Trump attacking this week? The Establishment? Nope. He’s going after Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Dave Brat, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie.
I’m willing to bet that 95% of the folks supporting Ed Gillespie understand what’s going on. They won’t talk about it. They won’t say anything. I’m willing to bet that 95% of RPV knows what’s going on. They won’t talk about it. They won’t say anything. Why?
Because if they support this so-called “conservative movement”, all they are doing is supporting angry, ignorant, mean-spirited activists who would rather destroy the Republican Party than reform it. If they stay silent, as they have, then they continue to have a chance at making a difference. I honestly believe that John Whitbeck and John Findlay want to make a difference. These are good people. They just don’t know how the hell to deal with ignorant activists, hell bent on burning the party to the ground and handing Democrats the White House, the Senate, the House, Richmond, and every town and county Board of Supervisors in the State. In fact, I think that idea bothers them.
If your platform is that we hate government – in order to run for office and forming an ideology, than you’re the kind of person that chops off their own legs before running a Boston Marathon.
Bearing Drift isn’t the problem. We are.
Eric Cantor isn’t the problem. We are.
We haven’t been honest with one another. If we had, then we wouldn’t have surprised each other so terribly when half of us supported Cruz/Paul/Carson and the other half supported Trump.
I know dozens of decent human beings that supported Trump. I appreciate and adore a handful of them.
They killed the conservative movement in America. They killed the TEA Party. (By the way: to all of my honorable friends sacrificing their time, their money, and their energy building the TEA Party in Virginia – I’m not attacking you. I’m merely telling you that I love you, but that, if you were with us when we started, we failed to do what we set out to do).
Younger Republicans are more pragmatic and liberal. They tend to support candidates that aren’t ideologically conservative. If you’ll notice, however, they do tend to support candidates that are smart. Maybe we should too. Maybe being smart is something we all have in common. Maybe a smart candidate that understands the policies over which they’ll oversee is the kind of candidate a real conservative would support.
Do we want to build a Republican Party based on liberty and freedom, on natural law and the rule of law, on capitalism and free trade? If we do, we need to destroy the populists. Establishment, Libertarian, Conservative, Constitutionalist… We need to join together and destroy the populists. When they talk about supporting X, when X is counter-intuitive to the Constitution, then we need to ridicule them, even if they are anti-establishment. When they talk about supporting Y, even when Y goes against the Commonwealths traditions, then we need to ridicule them, even if they are anti-establishment.
It’s easy to be anti-establishment.
Who is anti-establishment? Well, the people looking to take their places. That’s the activists. They aren’t upset about policy. They are upset that they aren’t setting it.
We need a real conservative movement in Virginia – and it’s the Populists, not the Establishment, standing between us and our eventual success. We need to make peace with the fact that we’ve lost the fight, not because of our enemies, but because of our friends.
15 comments
[…] the backhanded compliments from Steven Brodie Tucker over at The Bull Elephant fall flat in the cavalcade of […]
“the kind of person that chops off their own legs before running a Boston Marathon” is probably not the best analogy since many people at the Boston Marathon actually did lose some limbs.
That aside, Donald Trump is the antithesis of the Liberty Republicans. But that is OK. The good new is that we can work with that (as mentioned in a previous post) on a transactional basis.
Further, “populism” is as antithetical as Trump. What started as a liberty movement under Obama got hijacked by Trump, but that is a good thing. That is good because Liberty (aka Rand Paul) wasn’t going to win the Presidency this time and he knew it and quickly bowed out. Had Trump not hijacked the movement, we’d be bemoaning President Clinton II, a far worse prospective. I’m not as pessimistic because Liberty at least has a seat at the table (Trump and Paul were golfing this weekend). We have a voice. Actually, we have many voices and caucuses and coalitions, which is far better than has occurred in the past. We are a force to be reckonned with, even if we aren’t steering the ship. And, honestly, that may be as good as it gets (a hard pill to swallow).
Politics trickles upwards in America (that’s how a democratic republic works). Trump was smart enough to understand this. He tapped into what already existed in the hearts and minds of Americas and rode the wave to the White House. Liberty Republicans need to win the hearts and minds of many more people before having their day in the sun.
The fundamental problem is that, while people say they hate government, what they really hate is that the government isn’t giving them more stuff. Very few people actually love liberty and freedom and are willing to embrace the risks of actually being free. Comfort and safety trump freedom.
Deport
Shaun Kenny!
So Tucker,
What is one to do is a Republican stronghold like the Districts of
Con. Goodlatte
Con. Tom Garrett
Del. Scott Garrett
Del. Byron
and Va’s longest serving Senator Newman ( committee of Commerce and labor)
and they are complicit to this
http://watchdog.org/202012/subcontractors-shadow-economy
And last week’s abduction and Murder of a Virginia born minor by MS-13 in Bedford County ,Va.
How come they won’t take care of business and there elected Districts?
The war is between those who embrace some new world order based on socialist principles and those who embrace their nation and its citizenship. As far as I can tell, all other ideological labels are a subset of one or the other. The only confusing thing in all of this is political Islam.
LONG AGO, i.e. 40 decades ago, i decided to support only candidates who had the most reasonably coherent responses to questions that I had. Not the most ideologically ‘pure’ responses – because ideology often hides a lazy mind – not the most expeditiously actionable responses – because politics in a 300 million democracy with great regional and local diversity cannot resolves things to one answer in the same time that a TV ‘law and order’ show resolves complex issues.
I have voted without fail for nearly 50 years. I have voted – in my local elections – primarily Democratic. But that is a fading possibility as I look ahead. I am preferring ‘Independents’. I have voted mostly for Democrats in Virginia statewide elections and in federal elections because I will NEVER vote for bigots or candidates whose campaigns play with bigotry as a tool. Democrats are beginning too play with bigotry. Mrs Clinton was doing that and her campaign was doing that. Mr Trump was doing that and his campaign was doing that.
We hope that Virginia Republicans can present candidates who are not bigots and whose campaigns NEVER play with bigotry.
I tend to believe that women and men and non-gender identifying persons who can effectively govern a big diverse state are good candidates for President, Senate, and House (I know that is old fashioned but that is a ‘Virginia thing’ isn’t it). I tend to believe that men and women and non-gender identifying persons who effectively serve a large and/or diverse Virginia county are good candidates for Virginia statewide office. I despise that Virginians elect too many LAWYERS office. But I have no illusion the ‘business people’ are wise, or effective, or practical …. because there are many a-holes who own or manage or run businesses (a la Mr Trump).
Str8-up Libertarians have much intellectual gravitas, true. But ‘social emotional knowledge’ matters a lot, too, as we know from valid, reliable scientific research (yes, we should like science because it is a great tool to ‘abstract’ nuggets of data that we can critique further, with the same scientific method). Str8-up Libertarians who understand social constructions of bias – and who can speak authentically about how bigotry works and how they will test all their actions to avoid bigotry – are great candidates and we hope that they would be successful.
A diverse coalition like the Republican Party is going to naturally have a fair amount of in-fighting and if we all swallow our pride a bit – that is not a bad thing. I am not prepared to throw in the towel and agree with the MSM narrative that the only plausible solution is a permanent Democratic Party governance. Especially when they now seem to have just two factions: the leftists and Joe Manchin.
Hard line conservative activists chose angry populists over moderate conservstives during the run-up to the election. The result was not only predictable, it WAS predicted.
Great epiphany. Better late than never, I suppose.
Would be a good post for Mark Perry
At Carpe Diem to do a Venn Diagram to amplify .
Todd Gitlin’s ..certainly left of center, book
“Watching Television” can be updated to include
The false narrative that Talk Radio is part and parcel of.
Someplace in the confluence of money , media and
political parties , faux populists are a useful group
…a front of sorts .
Very difficult to push back on and unwind a regulatory ,
Entitlement state…perhaps new younger millennials,
Of all political persuasions see the future in pushing back,
And unwinding that state ,not accommodating themselves to it.
Freedom and liberty , free trade , natural law have a powerful appeal.
Thanks for the post
“We” were never welcome in “their” little party. You simply were under the delusion that through nipping at their heels, you could change an entrenched mentality that has zero incentive or desire to allow change. To them, things are just peachy
SBT: Your voice is compelling, your reasoning first-rate, your experience and knowledge essential. More, please.
SBT, I had hopes that you would come around after Trump was elected and began to make progress. Some of your recent articles seemed to begrudgingly acknowledge that Trump could do a lot of good for the country. Now you’re back to claiming Trump supporters want the “destruction of the Republican party”, “hate conservatives”, and all that histrionic polarization.
There have been so many words written about who Trump really is, that it seems fruitless to belabor it all again. I’ll just tell you once again… I am a conservative, and I don’t love Trump, nor do I hate Trump; I simply support him. I support him wholeheartedly because he is actual trying to solve the most serious problems facing the country, and I want him to be successful. Pardon me if I don’t worry much that Trump isn’t reflexively conservative, or that he says some mean things about some of your friends, or that he stumbles through the swamp as he tries to make progress. I don’t care about any of that, and I certainly don’t fear those things will cause the “destruction of the Republican party”.
Voila, back to the pre Trump presidential primary “Brodie’s”. It’s a complete and total redundant one trick pony. The odd part of so many of these individuals is that if an elected official will end up giving them a significant portion of what they claimed they always really wanted and were politically agitating for all along they still can’t bring themselves to take advantage of that opportunity because opposition is so much more comfortable from a point of view of self righteousness and pointed criticism then actually delivering anything to the voting base. President Trump isn’t going to kill the modern far right conservative and/or libertarian movements they have fully managed to do that all on their own volition.
If your goal in life is to be a philosopher king then politics is not the correct venue for your ambitions. Most will simply fall to the wayside, many will raise the libertarian flag (a glorified debating society) and more then you might expect will end up over with the Democrats waving their arms in anguish and expounding the latest Dem conspiracy theory as really not all that crazy. What they won’t be doing is getting anyone elected or providing legislative solutions to the American voter. But rest assured they will be devoting plenty of time to explaining how others attempting to do so are so dreadfully awful and the horrific consequences of working with these individuals.
Frankly this is a dead branch on the Republican tree (not traditional Reagan conservatism but this modern interpretation) and has been long before Trump arrived on the scene dating back at least to the Bush years.. He isn’t going to saw it off the American voter will do that and they can’t even see that the chain saw is already being cranked up even though the new candidates they keep pushing forward keep collapsing in abject failure at the public ballot box.
I received a RNC survey sometime this week while I was down in Central America. It was asking questions that sounded more like the DNC.
For instance, it asked if I was for the 2nd Amendment to protect citizens for hunting, collecting, and personal protection. I said No, because I don’t believe that’s the purpose of the 2nd Amendment. There were a whole lot more squishy sounding questions and by the end of this ‘survey’ I had never answered No to so many things in my life.
The question now is should I mail it back or throw it in the trash with the other garbage?
Trump going after the libertarians like Amash, the most consistently conservative member of Congress, and conservatives like the House Freedom Caucus doesn’t bode well for his trajectory!