“Many Democrats rolled out of the election acknowledging the urgent need for a change in directionâfor moderation, an end to cultural radicalism, a reconnect with working-class Americans. They immediately crashed into the left-wing base, threatening political death to heretics. Even if the party had the spine to push back, who exactly on the Democratic bench even remembers how to be a moderate?”
Writes Kimberley Strassel, in the Wall Street Journal ($). She beats up on the Donkey Party, and with good reason:
What looks like a rapid collapse was years in the making. The leftâs takeover of the Democratic Party began with the rise of Barack Obama and it steadily eradicated dissenting voices. Nancy Pelosiâs âmajority makersââthe Blue Dogs and moderates who won her the speakership in 2006âwere made to support unpopular legislation and paid for it in lost elections. Progressives targeted and polarized other holdouts, picked them off in primaries, or drove them to resignation. It was Saul Alinskyâs âRules for Radicals.â
The Squadâs wild proposals for the Green New Deal, open borders, Medicare for allâa program of socialism that traditional Democrats initially rejectedâis now mainstream thinking, the policy litmus test for party entry.
But…
This could be the MAGA future. The GOP is a party of many factions, and their policy disagreements frequently produce stalemates and governing heartache. Influential Trump supporters are honing their own methods for stamping out even mild disagreement with the presidentâs approach: rally online supporters to pile on, label the target a member of the âunipartyâ or the âestablishment,â threaten a primary. This exact playbook was exercised numerous times over the past few weeks of nomination votes. âRules for Radicals.â
Itâs a recipe for intellectual stagnation. Itâs a departure from the modern conservative movement, which has been defined by its innovative ideas, from school choice to civil-service reform. It sits unnaturally in a movement that has long prized individualism and entrepreneurship and condemned the leftâs collectivism. It mistakes the goal of party unity (the act of members compromising on strongly held positions for a legislative victory) with the tyranny of party conformity (think like we do, or get the boot).
And look how it worked out for Democrats.
Take the win, Mr. Pearce.
The excerpts from Ms. Strassel’s article sound like fine thoughts, things any intellectual could admire for their logical structure.
Trump et al are up against something requiring the thoughts of a street fighter.
Unity is required as this 100 day push (let’s hope it’s 12 years!) continues. Momentum is everything as the dimwits of the Left slowly pull together a strategy that has some effectiveness, even if that strategy is just raw power applied where they can. So, maybe “…stamping out even mild disagreement with the presidentâs approach: rally online supporters to pile on, label the target a member of the âunipartyâ or the âestablishment,â threaten a primary.” is needed in the short run.
But then, with an eye to the future, it’s worth worrying about how to return to a more civil governance from the Right. But let’s keep the ship afloat before worrying about kindness and generosity in the distribution of the rations!
Trump et al are up against something requiring the thoughts of a street fighter.
That’s an argument that only works so far. If you “move fast and break things” but also break things that should not be broken, and replace one “swamp” with a different type of cronyism – which could happen – then there is a problem.
Take the win, Mr. Pearce.
I am British; I am looking at this as an outsider, and thinking, okay, certain things are going in the right way (DOGE, hopefully), some not (tariffs), and wonder how things will look in a year or two’s time.
As a relative matter, in two years things will almost certainly look better than they would have looked had Harris or Biden won.
Whether the disagreement is “mild” or not, is of little relevance. What is really important is whether the disagreement is sensible or silly. (See also Monty Python’s Election Night Special.) The only sensible disagreement that i remember reading is about Ukraine: you can agree or disagree with it (and i am inclined to agree with it, provisionally and in parts); but it is not silly.
As for the “uniparty”: some people, including Glenn Reynolds, started complaining about it when Trump had not yet show any political ambitions. And I only understood what they meant when i observed the rise of the NeverTrumpers.
As for the establishment: I am not sure that the US has one, anymore. It seems to me that there is now a precarious balance of power between the Trump party and the Deep State. I think that the best, if not the only, chance for freedom to be restored in the West, is if the tension resolves in Trump’s favor.
President Trump himself is, sadly, very pragmatic – as we can see by such things as going along with the (utterly dreadful) Chagos Islands deal – to please the British government and the international elite generally.
But some other Republicans are not pragmatic – for example J.D. Vance started off in politics as pragmatic (praised by the Economist magazine and-so-on – only a few years go), but has become less pragmatic as time has gone on and he has seen up-close just how despicable the international establishment are – and how their claims to support “democracy” and “freedom” are LIES. Whatever it is they support in Europe (east and west) and elsewhere, it is NOT democracy and it is NOT freedom.
As for the Wall Street Journal article – it appears to not be condemning President Trump for being too pragmatic, but, on the contrary, being too strict – and not allowing dissent from-the-left in the Republican Party.
Once such an article would have struck me as bizarre – but since such things as the denial of obvious election fraud in Arizona, and the article (written by an academic – no surprise there) that Karl Marx (yes Karl Marx) was not so bad really (would-not-have-wanted-what-Stalin-and-others-did – oh yes he would have) it is the sort of article I expect to be in the WSJ.
In reality President Trump’s pragmatism may prove fatal for the United States – it may be unavoidable, given the number of utter filth are “Republican” Senators and members of the House of Representatives (people who never really cut government spending – or do anything that really needs doing), but it is still grim.
Still President Trump is what he is – highly pragmatic and far too tolerant of dissent from leftist “Republicans” (and with a nasty habit of trying to get on with people who share none of the principles of the Bill of Rights – for example the British government which hates everything in the Bill of Rights – watching Sir Keir claiming that Britain has Freedom of Speech and that Freedom of Speech is “precious” to him, was sickening), and that is not going to change.
We just have to hope for the best.
As for the general point about a political party – in his defense of the concept of a political party, Edmund Burke was very clear that it had to be united around principles – otherwise it was just a “faction” out for the profit and prestige of its members, and utterly useless (indeed harmful) to the public.
The Rockingham Whigs (the party that Edmund Burke was part of) broke up because many of them, led by Mr Fox, did not fully believe in principles of private property based limited government – this was clear even BEFORE the French Revolution.
What happens if a political party becomes pragmatic – does not have clear principles and stick to them? 2010 to 2024 in the United Kingdom is what happens.
I would hope even the Wall Street Journal is AGAINST that.
In the end either United States Federal Government spending will be dramatically reduced – or it will not be dramatically reduced.
If it is – then the United States may (may) survive, if it is not – then the United States will horribly decline and the Democrats will come roaring back in 2026 and 2028 with “Hate Speech” laws (and new Justices for the Supreme Court to destroy the 1st Amendment, the 2nd Amendment and so on), “Trans Rights”, sexual mutilation, for children, fertility collapse, mass immigration, and-so-on.
In short the United States, whilst it will still exist in a geographical sense – will, in reality, no longer exist.
The odds are not good – as the last President to manage to dramatically reduce government spending from a peacetime total, was Warren Harding (that, not “corruption”, is the real reason he is hated by the establishment) more than a century ago.
Snorri: As for the establishment: I am not sure that the US has one, anymore.
Establishments are funny things. It seems that just at the point when people get the most upset about an “establishment”, usually seen as some sort of elite that creates a sort of “moat” to protect various privileges and controls on power, that such an establishment goes into retreat. But then, newer establishments, if you will, rise to prominence. At the moment, everything is in flux. The old Ivy League establishment has, in my view, been badly damaged by the collapse of academic meritocracy, its tilt into far-Left insanity, and the antisemitism on campus that led to the farcical Senate appearances of Claudine Gay and others last year.
The old establishments of Wall Street, parts of Big Business, including Hollywood, are also in retreat. Hollywood movies aren’t the big cultural events and fun experiences of, say, 20 or 30 years ago. The 2008 financial crash dealt a blow to the Wall St banks and they have never full recovered their mojo. The old government establishments are in retreat.
But it would be a mistake to think there will not be new clubs, networks and groups that become more significant, and start to build their own hierarchies and ability to confer a sense of status. Man is a status-seeking animal. Virtue-signalling is how some try to attain status today, but I see that changing.
All societies, as far as I can see, have had establishments of some kind, from the relatively open to the sinister.
This may all be for the good. As the Democrat radicals hound the moderates out, and the Republican radicals do the same to their moderates, maybe the outcome is the reconstitution of a sane Democrat-Republican centre party.
The hounding of the Republicans who won’t fall into line with Trump won’t have the same long-term issues for the Republicans because their next presidential candidate won’t be Trump. Or anyone even like Trump.
The Democrat problem is not that they have taken to increasing purity of the left, but that they continue to run candidates with no moral position. Their candidates then cannot force through contrary policies by force of will and the moral position of President. They cannot hold back the crazies.
If the Democrats had run Bernie Sanders, who is not uniparty, then the boot might well be on the other foot.
Abortion is also being taken out of play at federal level for Republicans. That means the Republicans can run moderates in the more Democrat areas, but the reverse is not true. They no longer have to tear themselves apart about it.
It all comes down to who the Republicans select to run next time. Vance and Gabbard being contenders would suggest that the eventual winner will at least be someone not grey and uniparty.
First of all — someone forget a close em tag and so we are all leaning a bit to the right on this page. Was that deliberate? đ
I think that the changes to the civil service, if he can stay the course and make it happen, will be one of the greatest, least visible of his accomplishments. I saw this tweet today. This small change, were it implemented and enforced would have a quite dramatic effect on what the world thinks:
https://x.com/lsanger/status/1894929960860549120
Imagine a CIA-less wikipedia.
is it just me or are all the comments look like they are in italics now?
Johnathan: what you call ‘the establishment’, i call ‘the ruling class’. With this change, i agree with pretty much everything you wrote.
Why do i insist on this change? Because, in context, ‘the establishment’ was meant as equivalent to ‘the uniparty’. What i see now in the US is not a uniparty: it is a deeply divided ruling class.
Too divided, in fact: at least one side is willing to use all means, fair or foul, to regain unchecked power.
But as long as both sides play fair, and are not too silly, then divisions within the ruling class are good, in my opinion.
Hooray! no more italics!
“This exact playbook was exercised numerous times over the past few weeks of nomination votes. âRules for Radicals.â”
And it worked.
Doing what conservatives have been doing from William Buckley up through Thatcher/Reagan and through the Tea Party has been a pretty abysmal failure.
The New Right is intelligently adopting the tactics and strategy of the Left and finally getting some results. RFK at HHS, Tulsi at DNI, and Kash Patel at FBI is movement in the right direction.
I would expect the likes of Kimberley Strassel to bemoan our success because she is not a supporter of America First or the broader New Right in any meaningful sense. She is a Thatcherite/Reaganite and as such she is more interested in being accepted at elite cocktail parties and fashionable socials than obtaining results for the American People.
“It mistakes the goal of party unity (the act of members compromising on strongly held positions for a legislative victory) with the tyranny of party conformity (think like we do, or get the boot).”
This is more evidence that Kimberley Strassel is openly carrying water for the uniparty and, by extension, the globalists and deep state.
Notice how Kimberley Strassel had no objection to “the tyranny of party conformity” when that was used to get congressmen to support the Patriot Act and 2003 Iraq War – policies she strongly supported. Where was Kimberley Strassel’s objection to “the tyranny of party conformity” during the crimes of COVID?
She only calls it “the tyranny of party conformity” when she doesn’t like the policy results. I don’t mind a policy disagreement but lets not continue to gaslight WSJ readers into thinking her objection is about process and not results. That kind of gaslighting worked years ago but not anymore.
Is it any wonder why so few people take mainstream media like WSJ seriously? I haven’t read that rag in years