The Danger In Putting Too Wide A Gulf Between Donald Trump and Previous Republicans

Previously published at Carolina Progressive

So I just read an article by Willa Paskin over at Slate about the minor furor over Jimmy Fallon’s soft-ball interview of Donald Trump, complete with Fallon rustling Trump’s hair. The main push that Paskin makes is that Fallon has fallen victim to the hyper-partisan nature of this particular election cycle. As has been repeated ad infinitum over the last year, or at least the last few months since Trump cinched the Republican nomination, this isn’t the same old election we’ve had in the past. The stakes are higher and the moral implications of the choices we make at the ballot box are much starker. Or so says the conventional wisdom on the matter.

The party line among liberals, Democrats, and some Republicans is that Trump is not your grandpa’s Republican/conservative, and in fact, may not be a true Republican/conservative at all. His overt xenophobia, racism, classism, sexism and all-around bigotry put him into an entirely different class by himself. If he does have any political peers, so this line of thought goes, they are the likes of Hitler, Mao and Stalin. Not shabby work for a man who at this point is all talk and no action.

To an extent, there is something to be said for treating Trump a little differently. We all know that old chestnut about history being repeated by those who do not learn from it. And certainly, there are valid parallels to be made between Trump’s faux-populist white nationalist pandering and some of history’s worst dictators. All of this is a very good reason to vote against Trump as every decent person should.

But what bothers me in particular about partitioning off Trump by himself from Republicans and conservatives in general is that I believe it allows for a certain amount of historical revisionism. Not to mention that I believe it lets Republicans (both politicians and voters) and conservatives off the hook for their role in bringing Trump to the national stage. I don’t just mean over the last year, though there is much to be made of his primary opponents failing to go after him hard on his repugnant views. The man came out of the gate of his presidential bid calling immigrants rapists and criminals and has barely let up since. But beyond even this most recent failing, the fact remains that for the better part of the last century, Republicans have used the same tactics that Trump has used to consolidate their own power.

Of course, with a few exceptions (Hi, Steve King) here and there, they’ve managed to package their own xenophobia, racism, sexism and general bigotry in a way that allowed for plausible deniability. There’s even a name for it: dog-whistle politics. The idea that politicians use coded language to appeal to bigotry while leaving themselves room to deny it. Disliking immigrants gets reframed as being concerned about national security or domestic employment. Misogynistic attitudes about women and sexuality get a make-over to be about the life of the unborn or, more recently, women’s health. The turd of racial animus gets polished until it looks like a discussion about crime rates or welfare reform and balancing the budget. It’s enough to make a person wonder if the main reason that many Republicans don’t like Trump has less to do with his actual views and more with the fact that he states them so nakedly, having stripped away any veneer of acceptable camouflage. Of course, the fact remains that even some of the ideas most associated with Trump are not unique to him within the Republican party. His beloved wall has been a Republican bugaboo long before he ever forrayed into politics.To me, it’s the difference between having somebody rob you at gunpoint and take your wallet or having a con-artist trick you into handing over your life savings in a Ponzi scheme*. At the root the issue, they are both forms of theft. The gunpoint robbery might be more immediately traumatic in many ways, but on the other hand, the slick talking con-artist is walking away with far more of your money. The main difference is that with the con-artist, you don’t clue in to the fact you’ve been taken until well after the fact.

And that is the real danger of isolating Trump from his Republican forebearers. It allows them, once again, to engage in political obfuscation over their own complicity in not only Trump’s rise but in fostering among the American populace the attitudes that have led to his political ascendancy. If Republicans hadn’t been using these types of dog-whistle issues for the last forty plus years, would we even be at this point today? If they hadn’t made partnerships and relied upon the far right contingent of their party for so long, would they have found themselves betrayed by them this election year? What is really so different about Trump than the typical Republican politician aside from his making the sub-text of modern conservative policy into text? Those are valid questions and should be asked of every Republican politician or conservative pundit that currently wants to scrape Trump off their shoes like so much dog shit.

Some are arguing, and apparently this is the line the Clinton campaign is taking, that there is little immediate harm in branding Trump as an anomaly to traditional Republicanism and conservatism. There doesn’t appear to be much evidence that it’s causing more trouble for down-ballot Democrats than they would otherwise have in a typical election. Of course, at 8 weeks until the election, there is still time to see. But the point I want to make is that the tunnel-vision approach to this election is the wrong one to take. Yes, it’s important to defeat Donald Trump but that’s not the same as saying any and every tactic that could be used to squeeze an extra tenth of a percentage point of the total popular vote for Clinton is a good one or should be utilized. This is all the more poignant because, even as the race has tightened more than some would like, the odds are still pretty damned favorable for a Clinton win. Sure, with Trump as the nominee, she might be able to get a few disaffected Republicans to vote for her if she strokes their egos a little and tells them they aren’t the same as the bad man with the bad hair, but this is likely to be a once-in-a-political-generation trick, rather than the foundation for a lasting alliance. If Clinton wins the day November 8th, then mark my words, her foul-weather Republican supporters will go back to cursing her name and planning on a fifth Benghazi House investigation on November 9th.

Democratic politics is a duality where you have to simultaneously think about both the immediate future consequences of your vote as well as what it means further down the line. I’m deathly afraid that if we allow Republicans to set the narrative that they are fundamentally different than Trump and his brand of politics, then we are clearing the way for them to do a superficial reboot of their party. Those that offered even the most tepid of criticisms against Trump (or for that matter, those who courageously just remained mum about him one way or the other) will use this as a shield when they inevitably roll out their own policies that are just as devastating to the vulnerable and play on the bigotries of voters as much as Trump ever did. What will happen is that rather than move forward in any meaningful way, we’ll repeat the dynamics of the last 30 years of political history. Republicans will use dog-whistle politics to play on the worst nature of their constituents to gain power, will stymie any and all progressive policies, while also failing to deliver the ‘red meat’ craved by their base. Eventually the base will rise up to nominate another white nationalist in the tradition of Trump. Democrats and liberals will be so scared shitless of this development that they’ll feel compelled to vote for whoever opposes them if only to maintain the status quo and prevent stuff from getting worse. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Instead, we should not be making nice with Republicans. We should be digging up every sound bite, every quote and every policy that they’ve done that is indistinguishable from Trump’s own stances and should make them choke on it. Rather than allowing Republicans to disavow Trump and wash their hands of both him and his toxic politics, we should be pinning him to their chest like a scarlet ‘T’. And if we cause some pain and draw a little (metaphorical) blood in doing so, all the better. Afterall, they deserve it…

* For the metaphorically challenged, Trump is the gunpoint robber and traditional Republicans are the con-artist.