Angelo Codevilla: The GOP Being Firmly In the Camp of the Bipartisan Ruling Class Consensus Against the Public, Trump Will Have to Form 3rd Party to Run in 2020 if He Wishes to Fight the Ruling Class

The first half of this essay demonstrates that Trump might not want to fight the Ruling Class at all, given that he has permitted agents of the Ruling Class to become his masters, "advising" him (really instructing) which policies he must and must not pursue.

However, the revolt against the Ruling Class is the only compelling justification for a Trump presidency at all, so who knows, maybe in a couple of years he'll pivot back to actually opposing the "rigged system."

The GOP, wishing to go back to Failure Theater and servicing their corporate/globalist masters, is united with the progressive establishment to re-affirm establishment/Ruling Class supremacy, no matter which party's flag it might march under this go-round.

Either the GOP will deport Trump (and those who are anti-Ruling Class, like me), or they will self-deport, but either way, no one opposed to the Ruling Class, its disgusting sense of entitlement, its nigh-religious mania about the righteousness of its unexamined dogmas, can or will remain united with the Ruling Class wing of the GOP. A divorce is coming, regardless of which side initiates proceedings.

As I have argued at length elsewhere, the cultural division between privileged, government-connected elites and the rest of the country has turned twenty-first century politics in America into a cold civil war between hostile socio-political identities.

During the 2016 primaries the U.S electorate’s obvious, consistent, attempt to affirm its identity in contrast with those of the ruling class set aside concerns about particular policies. It produced Donald Trump as the Republican candidate because his campaign was all about identifying himself with those Americans who had felt most keenly the abuse coming from above. Socialist Bernie Sanders almost became the Democratic candidate (but for his party machinery’s interference) by showing that he was even more in tune than Clinton with his constituency’s arrogation of moral supremacy over the rest of the country. In sum, the 2016 elections were won and lost on the ground of this new kind of identity politics.

The ruling class and its Democratic Party had been practicing identity politics with increasing intensity for more than a generation. The elections’ outcome convinced them that they needed to engage in it just about exclusively, and in a warlike manner. Possessed of the modern administrative state’s manifold levers of power, they expect to win that war. That is unlikely, if only because its components’ notions of their respective identities’ demands are ever expanding. Hence they preclude imposing any extended peace among themselves, never mind with the rest of America. This impossibility of socio-political peace is the reason why the revolution in which we are living is just getting started.

By contrast, however, the post 2016 Republican Party is perhaps even more wary than ever of embodying the socio-political identities of the people who have been voting Republican. Hence, with the Republican Party disqualifying itself from the battle that is actually taking place, there is no political vehicle that exists by which Americans may challenge the ruling class.

There is much demand for such a vehicle. How may the political marketplace supply it?

What now?

President Donald Trump is the obvious, first-order answer. Anyone possessed of the enormous institutional and political powers of the modern U.S. presidency is better placed to make victims than to be one...

Let us be clear: the 2016 electorate chose Trump and they saw Trump as the vehicle by which to challenge the ruling class. During the first half of 2017, the Republican Party finished discrediting itself as a possible vehicle for that job. Since this is so, were Donald Trump seriously to bid for the presidency in 2020, it would have to be by leading a new party focused on the identities of anti-ruling class Americans. Carrying the Republican label would be an impossible burden.

Were an energetic, unambiguous, unapologetic Trump to affirm the majority of Americans’ political identity, not all Republicans would follow. Nor does he need them all. By bringing new elements into his following and, yes, by dropping some Republicans from it, Trump would effectively build a new party, with intact credibility. The departure of major corporations from his business council—big business is deeply unpopular on Main Street America—is an example of how to gain by shedding baggage. At any rate, it was never possible that the entire Republican Party would represent America against the ruling class.

Let us be clear: the 2016 electorate chose Trump and they saw Trump as the vehicle by which to challenge the ruling class. During the first half of 2017, the Republican Party finished discrediting itself as a possible vehicle for that job. Since this is so, were Donald Trump seriously to bid for the presidency in 2020, it would have to be by leading a new party focused on the identities of anti-ruling class Americans. Carrying the Republican label would be an impossible burden.
But by the same token, each action taken by anyone who is creating a new movement must speak for itself more loudly and clearly than the words used to explain that action. Democracy does not tolerate pairing big words with small accomplishments. Today, Trump’s role in fulfilling the political marketplace’s demand is up to him even more than it was in 2016. But now as then, America’s open political marketplace invites all. The anti ruling class constituency is bigger than ever. If Trump does not lead it, someone else will.

And it may well be that someone is indeed better poised to lead it.

Codevilla's piece goes on to examine the four major blocs which will decide the 2020 election, with two blocs wedded to the establishment wings of the parties, and two blocs open to an appeal to dethrone the Ruling Class, from whatever party the call may come.

posted by Ace at 07:53 PM

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