A movement of independents is gathering steam. Their appeal is to disgruntled voters who are fed up with the policies of their party they don’t like. Perhaps they have always been independents, often on the mantra of vote for the person, not the party. So they scatter their votes. My personal bias toward these people is that they lean conservative and libertarian; they just don’t see why we can’t treat each person as having the same resources they have: economic, educational, mental, cultural, linguistic, etc.
Let me offer another reason to sustain a party: The GOP. There really aren’t that many Republicans in the country, nor Democrats. Maybe if more people had voted in Republican primaries, a stronger Congress would have been able to stand up to Trump. Even deeper, a stronger Republican Party might have put up a decent candidate like Jeb Bush or John Kasich.
Two ways we could have avoided Trump:
1. You may not have liked any of the Republican candidates, but they were most, if not all, preferable to Trump. Trump had the most votes because so many who _knew_ they weren’t going to win refused to drop out, spreading out the votes among them.
2. If Republicans had a run-off of the leading two, I suspect Trump would have lost the nomination.
It puzzled me b/c the GOP seemed to be so strongly disciplined. Guess not. They hung on, why?
Let me comment further on my puzzlement. Rank and file Republicans may have been dazzled by Trump’s crowds and the enthusiasm among the base (which turns out to be his base, not the GOP’s), but surely McConnell and Ryan and Graham and Grassley and so on saw Trump for what he is. Apparently what happened was the juggernaut got away from them and then it was too late to say, “Enough of this nonsense.” I imagine the leaders realized they were in for a rough ride but figured they could manage Trump. Why would they think that when he rode roughshod over the opposition?
As I posted earlier, Lyndon Johnson said he didn’t fear the punks in the street protesting the war; it was the Right, a beast. The beast has risen up and neither party nor country, religion nor norms, can tame it. Riding it for a while seemed to be going somewhere, but then the true nature asserted itself at Charlottesville and the border. Now we know these people. They will tolerate any atrocity. The psychology of that is fascinating but the issue before us is the November elections. A couple of youngsters came by my house this afternoon campaigning for Democrats. They offered to give us some yard signs and I told them they would not last long; my Obama sign was stolen overnight. But then they showed me a map of just my little neighborhood, how many Democrats and Democratic voting independents there are around here. I was shocked.
Given what so many Republican stalwarts are saying as they leave the party, we can foresee a bloodbath as the Trumpsters and his fellow-travelers hang on and the core of the party hopes to reconstruct it.
It will be interesting, esp if the Democrats control the House and Senate. I am amazed that the House is no longer the prize now; that’s a foregone conclusion. It’s the Senate that might go!!
So the young folks will contact me about phone banking or driving volunteers like them around. I’m getting excited. Just a hint as to the make-up of the Democratic Party: I spoke to the young man in Urdu and he was delighted. The four young men who talked to Jonah Goldberg about what I believe was a Libertarian position were all White. That is not going to fly if Republicans are to survive and if conservatism is to thrive.