I thoroughly enjoyed this Tim Alberta article in the National Review about the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party. Essentially, he does to the Tea Party what the Tea Party did to the Republican Party:
“What they’re doing is exactly what [the Tea Party] criticized establishment Republicans for doing all these years: succumbing to so-called political realities and setting aside principles to gain power for the party,” says Tim Miller, a prominent GOP operative and leader in the Never Trump movement. “That’s what they killed Boehner and McConnell for. And maybe those criticisms were fair. But sacrificing principle for power is exactly what they’re doing now.”
Why?
To answer that question is to accept that pragmatism is being practiced by individuals who were willing to shut down the government to prove a philosophical point; to appreciate that congressmen survive by satisfying the whims of their constituents; to understand that Republicans are desperate to avoid blame for a November defeat that many view as inevitable; and to acknowledge that Trump has taken over the Republican party by annexing many of its most conservative voters, proving that their anti-government rage is not necessarily a mandate for ideological purity.
Succumbing to political realities, as seen here, used to be known as governing. Alberta and his establishment interviewees can barely hide their amusement at the way the Trump wing of the Republican Party is holding the Tea Party wing hostage.
There are too many good bits to choose from. Here’s the sobering realization that most of the Tea Party voters weren’t interested in any particular policy position so much as anti-government everything:
“A lot of us [predicted] the anti-establishment wave,” Mulvaney said. “We’d seen it in 2010 and 2012 and 2014, so we knew it was coming to a crest. We just never expected it to take the form of Donald Trump. We like that he’s anti-establishment, we like the fact that he’s kind of blowing up the internal party politics as we’ve known them. We’re just not sure if he’s a conservative.”
And their constituents aren’t sure if it matters.
And because this is the National Review, there’s this gem, which I’m not sure is ironic:
The Freedom Caucus is a diverse cast of characters, markedly different in their geographic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds.
Fun stuff.