Comment by unclebucknasty
4 years ago
>This never happened. What happened is that Democrats started to center the far-right
That's a pretty remarkable statement. Trump is the far right. Are you arguing there hasn't been a hard right shift in the GOP since Trump?
BTW, your statement that Dems falsely centered the far right is actually true in the reverse. Republicans center folks they consider "far left", like AOC and "The Gang" as representative of some sort of scary communist takeover of Democrats. This is, of course, silly on its face. They have virtually no power to drive policy in the party. And, of course, they are not communists in any case.
Add to that, Dems rejected even Bernie to nominate grandfatherly ol' Joe...the most moderate Dem around who, quaintly, still believes in bipartisanship.
Other than Bernie and The Gang, the only "far left" I've seen is so-called "Antifa", which has no membership, but magically self-assembles and appears during election cycles to scare Republican voters to the polls before mysteriously dissolving again.
Still, GOP ads feature ominous threats about the far left and communism.
I get that things tend to appear mirrored from the other side, but there are facts. On 1/6, elements of the far right, to include actual militia members, did Trump's bidding. Their ongoing affinity for one another is no coincidence. He represents their interests and they clearly know it.
>Trump is the far right
The guy was a Democrat for most of his life.
>The guy was a Democrat for most of his life.
Well, he's not now, is he?
> Trump is the far right
Trump never was the hard/far right. He just used them for his own self-aggrandisement. And more and more of them are realising this, and turning against him in response.
After the Parkland school shooting, he came out supporting a modest tightening of federal gun laws (restricting gun access for under 21s), only to abandon the idea in the face of pressure from the gun lobby. [0] His initial response to "bathroom" laws was to oppose them, only later being talked into supporting them. [1] While publicly he welcomed SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade, reports claim that in private, he is very worried that it will damage his chances in 2024 by costing him the votes of suburban women; [2] it seems unlikely he has any genuine personal moral objection to abortion. Trump has always been pro-COVID vaccine, unlike many of his supporters. [3] The list goes on. His personal instincts on many social issues are moderate/centrist; a significant chunk of his conservatism was always just a put-on to convince conservatives to vote for him.
Given Trump never really believed in many of his own right-wing talking points, it is rather unsurprising that on many issues people on the hard right perceive him as having been "all talk but no action"–they wanted him to wage war against progressives in the federal bureaucracy, instead he sat in the White House shouting at cable TV. Stacking SCOTUS with conservatives was one of the occasional exceptions to that generalisation, but something which required no real effort on his part, he just did whatever his advisers told him to do. That's why many on the American right are now flocking to DeSantis, who appears to actually believe what he says far more often than Trump does, and who shows signs of being far more effective at delivery too.
> Are you arguing there hasn't been a hard right shift in the GOP since Trump?
Has the GOP base actually moved that much? I think the main thing that has happened, is that Trump single-handedly destroyed most of the GOP establishment's ability to control their own base – they'd grown used to being the tail that wags the dog, Trump just helped the dog to remember who's really in charge.
[0] https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/05/27/trump-propos...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/02/23/p...
[2] https://www.salon.com/2022/06/25/initially-said-ending-roe-v...
[3] https://time.com/6146907/donald-trump-covid-19-vaccines-base...
>Trump never was the hard/far right. He just used them
This is a distinction without a difference. If he ran and governed to appease the far right and is beholden to them, then that's sufficient to classify him as such. And, there's a reason he chose to align with this faction in American politics. He didn't flip a coin.
Beyond that, you've trotted out a few traditional social conservative issues as evidence that Trump is not far right, but "far right" means something entirely different than simple social conservatism. For example, it includes traditional right-wing beliefs in social hiearchies, taken to an extreme of ethno-nationalism and frank "fascist-adjacent" beliefs. These beliefs express themselves in far more politically classifying ways, such as immigration policy.
>"Has the GOP base actually moved that much?"
Of course it has, and your very next lines acknowledge it.
First, the group that was unleashed wasn't the base. They were Tea-partiers and Freedom Caucus members who were highly vocal, but in the minority. Trump centered them, lurching the entire party sharply rightward.
If they were the actual base, then Trump would not have had to "destroy the establishment" to empower them.
So, that Trump destroyed the GOP establishment's ability to control these constituents is the smoking gun. The former establishment had held back these impulses among its fringe, which kept the party more moderate. Those former establishment officials who opposed Trump are now beholden to him and the "new base".
Are you suggesting there was zero impact on the party once the establishment was destroyed and formerly constrained constituents were unleashed?
What exactly does "far right" mean in this context? Where do we draw the boundary between "soft right", "hard right", "far right", etc? I'm not sure if you and I would draw those lines in the same places.
You speak of "ethno-nationalism" in association with the "far right" – do you mean to say that ethno-nationalism is "far right", or only "extreme" forms of it?
Does appeasing a group, or being beholden to them, make you a member? Neville Chamberlain famously sought to appease Hitler – while I think his appeasement of Nazism deserves severe criticism, he was no Nazi himself. von Hindenburg and von Papen made Hitler Chancellor because they thought they could manipulate him, only to find out too late that it was really Hitler who was manipulating them – but neither man was a Nazi at the point of making that foolish decision (although von Papen later became one)
You talk about Trump "centering" the "minority" of the Republican base to become the new majority of it – my impressions differ somewhat from yours, but I wonder if there is any objective way to decide whose impressions are more accurate? Is there any objective measure of what constitutes the minority or majority of the "base" at any given time? Any relevant survey data or other quantitative measures?
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You've trotted out a few traditional social conservative issues as evidence that Trump is not far right, but it's pretty obvious that "far right" means something entirely different than simple social conservatism. It includes traditional right-wing beliefs in social hiearchies, extending to ethno-nationalism and frank "fascist-adjacent" beliefs.
>"Has the GOP base actually moved that much?"
Of course they have, and your very next lines explain it. That Trump destroyed the GOP establishment's ability to control some of its constituents is the first tell. How was the establishment able to maintain control pre-Trump and what was the impact on the party once those constituents were unleashed?
Further, this wasn't the base. These were always Tea-partiers and Freedom Caucus members who were in the vocal minority. Trump centered them, lurching the entire party sharply rightward.