Can The GOP Learn Anything From The Trump Fiasco?
Does the Donald Trump flame-out provide any kind of guide to other candidates? Only if they want to host a reality show.
Chris Cillizza has a column this morning at The Washington Post where he says that the GOP can learn something from the three months long circus act that was the aborted Donald Trump Presidential campaign:
Wealthy businessman Donald Trump’s Icarus-like rise and fall in the 2012 presidential race is likely to wind up as no more than a footnote in the story of this election.
But, that doesn’t mean the Trump saga — and, it was a saga — is without lessons to be learned by the Republican candidates who will run for president in 2012.
The most important lesson? Confrontation is good. Confrontation works.
“Donald Trump was an anti-establishment figure who demonstrated the importance of taking the debate right to Obama — frontally and hard, which the the eventual GOP nominee mist do daily to win,” said Scott Reed, a senior Republican strategist.
To support this contention, Cillizza points to a CNN poll where large numbers of respondents said that Trump was “not a typical politician” and “tough enough to handle a crisis.” Lets leave aside the question of how much of what the public thought about Trump was based on the fact that (1) he is a celebrity who has been in the public eye for more than 20 years and (2) he has a carefully cultivated public image that may not have anything to do with reality. What Cillizza fails to mention is that the same poll showed Barack Obama scoring higher than Trump in both those categories. There simply isn’t any indication, then, that Trump was anything special, and as David Weigel notes, the idea that the GOP should copy him is simply absurd:
No one should look at Trump’s collapse (which Cillizza calls Icarus-like, right before writing the rest of this) and surmise that Republicans should copy it. Trump didn’t succeed at all in taking the debate to Obama. His campaign was completely about Trump. His jabs at Obama were either unspecific bilge about American weakness or irrelevant (and phony) personal attacks.
The fact that Trump’s rise in the polls began to reverse itself the more people got to know about him, and once his single minded obsession with the President’s birth certificate was revealed to be the nonsense that it was, should be proof in itself that he did not provide any playbook for the GOP. And yet, Cillizza persists:
“The birther issue was stupid and contrived but it should demonstrate to legitimate candidates that you can stand out by being the candidate who engages Obama on substance like taxes, homeland security and spending,” explained Stutzman.
Put another way: Trump’s willingness to fight mattered more than the substance of what triggered the fight.
What complete nonsense, as P.M. Carpenter states:
From the beginning, Trump appreciated that he could appeal to the right-wing base only by exploiting their diseased willingness to believe anything wickedly mysterious about Barack Obama. It wasn’t Trump’s mere “willingness to fight” that stimulated them to ecstatic heights of drooling hysteria; it was the substance of idiotic non-substance that the reactionary army of whackodom was able to comprehend, and so exuberantly sign on to.
Aggressive accusations about Obama’s “China policy” or superfluous drivel on taxes? Come on. What the far right wanted, what it needed, and what it got from Trump was a boatload of stupidity. And they ate it up
Writing in response to a post by Chris Barron, Jazz Shaw summed up the Trump fiasco best I think:
Yes, there are lessons to be learned from Trump’s brief, comet-like flash across the 2012 POTUS race skyline. But I don’t think his approach to winning votes – if that was indeed ever his intention – is the moral of the story. True, he exploded on the scene like a shooting star and sucked most of the oxygen out of the political press for a time. But it’s also worth noting that shooting stars burn out and fall to earth as rusty rocks.
Trump did not come into this as a serious candidate. He came into it as Donald Trump, and he used the entire process — the media, the pundits, all of it — for his own purposes. The fact that he announced that he wasn’t running on the same day that NBC announced the fifth season of The Celebrity Apprentice should tell everyone all they need to know about what his real intentions were. The fact that a celebrity with absolutely no substance to him skyrocketed, albeit briefly, to the top of the GOP race for the 2012 nomination, should tell us all we need to know about how much of an absurd joke American politics has become.
Here’s what I learned: we aren’t called the Party of Stupid for nothing. He did have some
idiotssupporters.Also, ideology means nothing. If you throw bombs effectively (and better yet, if you also have been on a reality TV show to prove you’re a “real person!”) you are automatically deemed “conservative” by a fair percentage of ours. If you can articulate actual policy and sound too uppity like Krauthammer and Kristol and the nerds at the Heritage Foundation, and God forbid those crazy “civil” libs like Mitch Daniels or Haley Barbour, you are a RINO. Give ’em a populist with a good Smoot-Hawley message and it’s a WIN!
We are doomed.
I wonder where Doug gets the insight to decide Trump, a man Doug cannot match in any area, was not a serious candidate? I don’t think he could have won the nomination, but if he had he would defeat Obama on Obama’s record alone. Just like how Obama did not not run agains McCain but rather against Bush. This time Obama has to run on his own record. No more BS hope and change. Stick a fork in him, he is done. $4 a gallon gas and 9% unemployment.. Obama ist kaput.
@Beth: Except that Trump didn’t last more than a few weeks and flamed out nearly a year before the first primary. We’ll most likely nominate someone that the far right deems a RINO. Again.
Trump was a joke. But why tar the GOP?
Kucinich declares as a Democrat but is basically a communist. Does that really reflect on the Democrat party?
Trump wasn’t talking about anything real, he had opposed the Iraq War, and supported Obamacare, now he was doing the reverse, his tariff idea was the height of foolishness,
as was hie weath tax, that’s why he went nowhere.
Drew,
I see your point–kinda. The difference is that Kucinich–as much as the moderate right loves to use him as a counterpoint to Trump, Palin, et al–is that Kucinich has never ever, ever come close to leading the field. Trump not only came close, but led the field in polls for quite a few weeks (nearly as long as his actual ‘campaign’).
So yes, both sides have their crazies. Only one side is polling the crazy as the front runner.
Drew…. actually, the trophy wife action makes kucinich basically a Republican. 🙂
I’ve heard the US Navy has a saying: “Any ship can be a minesweeper — once.”
Trump was a hell of a minesweeper.
J.
Who is this “We” you speak of James?
American politics, or Republican politics?
The Democrats have their crazies, but the crazies don’t seem to be leading the party.
Whenever the litany of whack-jobs on the right is discussed you hear in response “…well yeah, but what about Kucinich?”. Then crickets.
Al Sharpton, who ran in 2004, is about as crazy as the Dems have gotten recently.
“Only one side is polling the crazy as the front runner.”
And you believe these polls?
“Al Sharpton, who ran in 2004, is about as crazy as the Dems have gotten recently.”
Heh. You must mean disgusting, racist and criminal, not crazy.
crickets……….
So your either saying that when Kucinich receives <10% time and again (and probably <1%, but I'm too lazy to find polls from 2007), that those polls are false and he's actually a front runner…
Or multiple polls are somehow ensuring that they only talk to Trump supporters in order to–in a grand conspiracy sort of way–ensure that this guy is the front runner?
There's the third option: Trump led the Republican among likely primary voters, pure and simple. (Yes, I realize vast majority of Americans both right and left–i.e. general election voters–don't support Trump. The Republican base, however much you want to insinuate conspiracies, does.)
I had hoped that attempts by the GOP to explain the depth of Trumps resonance with their base would provide some comic relief, but this is just sad…
I think the lesson here is that politics has a plethora of strange attractors, candidates that attract the strangest supporters. Left or Right, there’re more than enough crazies with egos to fill a three-ring circus. The media likes to point to those on the Right for the most part, though, so we see them headlined more often. Ordinary, bat-shit crazies on the Left get a pass.
The best thing about Trump dropping out? With Huckabee already out, and the Newtster disqualifying himself with every word he speaks…it’s only a matter of days before every Democrats dream comes true…and Sarah Palin jumps in this race. That my friends will make life worth living. She completes me.
Can Mataconis learn anything from his Palin PDS? Here is Gallup today (as Palin vaults into second place just behind Romney)
“There is no clear front-runner in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Palin, who has given no indication of whether she will run for the nomination, has very high name identification, is near the top of Republicans’ nomination preferences, and has a higher Positive Intensity Score than any other well-known candidate. Palin thus must be considered one of the GOP leaders at this point
And Mataconis previous article “It would be silly to consider Palin as a serious candidate” apparently a substantial proportion of GOP voters don’t consider her “silly” as gallup shows in their full analysis-what Dem’s or Mataconis thinks of her is of no matter.
“Ordinary, bat-shit crazies on the Left get a pass.”
Well, maybe that’s just because of their ordinariness. I mean, Kucinich is pretty boring when you get down to it. That leftwing batshit banality pales when compared to the Bachmann-Palin-Trump Cirque du Crazy. Which is more newsworthy BPT or K-Man — strictly on the point of attracting eyeballs?
Hehehe…Bill Maher just said Bachmann appeals to the Republicans who think Palin is too intellectual. Palin too intellectual…hehehe
You want scary on the left? John Edwards. The Dems made him their veep nominee.
Sheila Jackson Lee.
(Fill in the blank) Kennedy. (At least since 1969.)
Bernie Sanders.
Barney Frank.
Chris “Friend of Angelo” Dodd.
Rod Blagojevich.
Nancy Pelosi.
John Murtha.
Charlie “I write tax laws, so I don’t have to obey them” Rangel.
Need I go on?
J.
Drew denies the existence of white racists — although he refuses to tell me the date on which they all magically disappeared. But he’s a big believer in black racists.
In other news: big problems with Jewish anti-semites.
Shorter Jay Tea: Booga! Booga! Booga!
MM: That was short and sweet and to the point. Don’t make him list another Democrat, because he will! Ooooo!
I’ll offer a lesson for the GOP. Stop worshipping anyone with money.
Stop imagining that business experience is somehow a qualification for government.
Business and government have just about nothing in common. Government is a tougher gig at the highest levels: if you don’t believe that, replay Obama’s 24 hour obliteration of Donald Trump. Obama crushed Trump while he was ordering the death of Osama Bin Laden.
JT’s list makes no sense to me…what am I missing?
Norm: Nancy Pelosi! Nancy Pelosi! I mean, come on, Nancy Pelosi!
I think you have to watch a lot of Fox or listen to a lot of Rush to “get” his list.
His list of Blacks, Gays, Jews and women?
I’ll take “Groups the Republicans have problems with” for $1000, Alex.
Yes. That Palin will be the nominee.
As Carpenter pointed out:
No one in this field can match Palin’s ability to deliver “idiotic non-substance” for the purpose of fanning resentment, fear and hate. Trump’s success proves that this is what the GOP base is looking for right now. Palin will deliver like no one else can, and she will be rewarded.
I mean Bernie is way to the left…but crazy? Far, far, from it.
Therein lies the problem with the so-called republicans today. If you don’t agree with them you’re crazy. If you agree with them you can be bat-shit looney and they think you are genius. There is not the least bit of critical thought. It’s how a conservative program like the ACA is suddenly socialism and the end of the free world. It’s how torture is suddenly not just kind of defensible in a Dirty Harry type situation but a major plank in their campaign platform. What matters to these pseudo-conservatives is not the policy or even the morality …only that it’s different from those damn lefty democrats and their Kenyan President.
The lessons the Republicans need to learn before they are capable of governing again run much deeper than anything Trump can teach them.
Much like Al Gore punk slapped Ross Perot in their debate…
His list of Blacks, Gays, Jews and women?
Sorry, ponce. Not a racist, pro gay marriage, pro Zionist, and nearly married a Jewish woman. Strike three, and one on the next batter.
Drew denies the existence of white racists — although he refuses to tell me the date on which they all magically disappeared. But he’s a big believer in black racists.
I don’t see Drew denying the existence of racists. Neither do I. What I dispute is their numbers and influence and relevance. The RAAAAACISTS you take such glee in denouncing are much like the birthers — their main (some would say only) function is to give you and yours someone they can point at and shriek at and feel superior to and demand others join you in your hysteria.
Sorry, there aren’t a lot of people who want to play your game. Especially since that, by your rules, they not only get to be the bad guys, but the losers. It’s a fool’s game, and you’re the only fool that enjoys playing it.
How’s that game as solitaire?
J.
Go on, Jay Tea. Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank are great legislators, as was Ted Kennedy. Nancy Pelosi is a brilliant leader and will soon be speaker for the second time. John Edwards, despite his personal skeeziness — which would practically guarantee him a position in leadership if he were a Republican — is the only major politician to have actually spoken out for the poor and disenfranchised.
And only a true moron would put Murtha on “the left.”
You made the list, Jay Tea.
I just described it.
wr: Murtha was a leading Democrat. And legendarily corrupt.
Barney Frank protected his paramour at Fannie Mae while it went down the tubes. Insited Fannie and Freddie were sound right up until they went under.
Bernie Sanders: proud Socialist.
Pelosi: grotesquely inept and corrupt. Notice that almost one quarter of the latest round of ObamaCare waivers ended up in her district?
Ted Kennedy: American Falstaff. Killed an innocent girl. Cooperated with the Soviets to fight Reagan’s foreign policy.
Joseph Kennedy: One of the dumbest people ever elected to Congress, now buddy-buddy with Hugo Chavez.
Patrick Kennedy: serial drug addict who chose to “work out his issues” while holding public office.
Edwards: Narcissist that had the media covered for until the Enquirer broke it. It took the Enquirer to actually commit journalism and reveal the truth, instead of protecting their buddy. For example, the New York Times purely making up an alleged affair between McCain and a lobbyist.
And those are proud Democrats all. (Sanders excepted, but he caucuses with the Democrats and keeps getting elected by the Democrats.)
You don’t wanna own ’em? Tough.
J.
No, ponce, you made up the list. ‘Cuz I don’t fixate on identity politics. I don’t subdivide Americans into race and sex and ethnicities. That’s your schtick.
J.
M.R.
Sounds like Tony Soprano!!!
You can deny you prejudices all you want, Jay Tea.
None of those groups will ever give a majority of their votes to the Republicans.
The end of the Trump candidacy came when Obama bitch slapped him in front of a live televised audience at the correspondents ball.
By the end of the President’s speech the candidate was dead. You could see it on the faces of every correspondent in the room It was over for Trump.
If it hadn’t been for that night I think we’d still have Trump as the Republican front runner.
Jay:
I’m sure if Drew needs you to defend him he’ll let you know. Your opinion is of no interest to me.
Has anyone got a “If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch” tshirt for Trump?
You can deny you prejudices all you want, Jay Tea.
None of those groups will ever give a majority of their votes to the Republicans.
Non sequitur, Ponce.
And thanks for bringing up the Correspondents’ Dinner, ken. Traditionally, it’s a place where the president shows he can take a joke as everyone takes shots at him — including himself. Instead, this year Obama and his media lapdogs all teamed up to take shots at Trump, who had been invited to attend but not allowed to respond to all the attacks. It was a typical Obama chickensh!t move (see: State of the Union and Supreme Court; Paul Ryan and Maryland speech; Hoekstra and Michigan speech). Has any other non-Obama WHCD ever coordinated with the president to go after a third party before?
And I still don’t see how the Trump comet could be considered a fiasco. Trump got what he wanted — a brief flash of publicity, and scored some points off Obama. He got Obama to finally pretty much kill the “birther” crap. Voters got to be reminded in exquisite detail how the media will cheerfully cooperate with Obama to destroy his rivals, even doing his dirty work for him. And prospective Republican nominees got not only a few weeks of cover, but a reminder of just what they’ve got to face — a unified Obama/mainstream media front.
Doesn’t sound like a fiasco to me…
J.
“And I still don’t see how the Trump comet could be considered a fiasco.”
Hah! Yeah Trump was a comet, alright. Shoemaker–Levy is the proper celestial analogue I’d say. But you go Jay. I get a chuckle out of your sow’s-ear fictions. (BTW, I’m surprised that you haven’t worked Trump’s Travails into your Obama-wants-to-get-impeached TOE somehow — or have you finally become embarrassed over that piece of mirth-inducing nonsense? )
Somebody call the wambulance.
Re. the GOP learning, really interesting articles today on Romneycare shakeout.
BTW, jwest as a Trump defender is funny. Nothing like hitching yourself to an anchor.
Oh yeah, one more thing for Jay Tea.
If Trump had any inclination “to respond” he was surrounded by an army of reporters who would have been happy to shove a zillion microphones in his face the moment the event ended (or even before the event ended, if he had stepped into the hallway).
So the idea that poor defenseless Donald had no means “to respond” is nonsense, just like most things you say.
=======================
john personna:
Those articles are quite interesting. Thank you. The key point is that Obamacare is essentially a GOP program. Here are some parts I like. From the Economist:
How ironic. Romney is a chronic flip-flopper, but by refusing to do so on this issue, he is inadvertently calling attention to the fact that the GOP has done a giant flip-flop on this issue.
From Ben Adler:
Thanks for those links.
So the GOP must destroy Romney because he lacks retroactive ideological purity. One more reason to predict that Palin will be the nominee.
@James Joyner:
I din’t understand your continued association with the Republicans. You aren’t religious, you have an education, I see no evidence of racism or white resentment on your part and you don’t have a socialist obsesssion.
You also seem willing to actually take empirical evidence into consideration and, sometimes, even rethink your positions on an issue.
You are virtually alone in your party, and, in fact, are often called a sellout and a secret liberal by the mad minions of the GOP who infest your website. I’d love to learn exactly how a party which has become dominated by its lowest common denominator is still the best option for you.
Jay t — don’t wanna own them? I am proud to belong to the same party as those I mentioned above. (And I only wish there were other members of the party who were as true to our principles as the one in the list who isn’t actually a D, Sanders.) The fact that you don’t like them really doesn’t move me. And yes, Murtha was a Democrat, but you claimed your list was people “of the left,” and Murtha was never that.
Ben,
James has correctly identified a career path that others have followed in the past.
There are an abundance of brain addled leftists willing to present themselves as the useful idiots they are, but a profitable niche is still to be found by people who purportedly represent the right, but who echo the talking points of liberals.
By surrounding himself with authors unashamed to spout democrat doctrine as if it were truth, James positions himself as the “reasonable republican” whose party is constantly “moving away from him”. Now, having invested the effort, he sits by the phone waiting for Chris Mathews or Ed Shultz to call for a guest spot.
“Republicans” like James are always in great demand for liberal dinner parties and left wing talk shows.
sam, you still don’t get it. My “Obama wants to be impeached” piece was trying to find some way of tying together all the stupid and self-destructive and pointless things Obama has done in office that makes it look like he has a master plan, a unifying theory, a goal and ideology behind them. The alternative is to believe that yes, he IS that naive, he IS that inept, he IS that incompetent, he IS that stupid as to do all these things without a master plan.
It was a fun exercise in subtle satire… too subtle, it seems, for you.
J.
>“Republicans” like James are always in great demand for liberal dinner parties and left wing talk shows.
Yes, being the token conservative on left-wing talk shows is a far more lucrative career path than that chosen by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the right-wing monkocracy.
Klyopod,
You’re correct pointing out that real conservatives are always vastly more successful, however the bar is set awfully high for entry into that market.
It’s much easier to be an Andrew Sullivan or David Brooks. The pay isn’t anywhere near as good, but just about anyone can do it.
Kylo, that’s the A-list. Not everyone can be A-list. C and D levels gotta find their own niches. What else is a David Brooks, a David Frum, a Meghan McCain to do? They can’t command the money, following, fame, or success the folks you mentioned get.
J.
“It was a fun exercise in subtle satire… too subtle, it seems, for you.”
Don’t run that “it’s satire” bullshit by us. You were perfectly serious about it over at Wizbung and here. It’s a stupid theory and you own it.
Keep polishing that turd, Jay.
No, ponce, you made up the list
Oh, and lying your ass off.
sam, you still don’t get it.
Yeah, sam. Every stupid and/or crazy thing Jay writes has a perfectly awesome explanation, if you know the sekrit wingnut code.
Many years back, I worked as a script reader. The industry had just run the whole slasher genre into the ground for the first time, and no one wanted to make slasher films anymore. So for months I kept getting scripts that were obviously written as straight slashers when the market was strong… only now they were being marketed — with no changes — as satires of the genre.
Needless to say, I wan’t surprised at Jay Tea’s explanation at all.
Don’t be mean to jay guys. Right now his go to line for 2012 is “Obama was mean to Trump”.
Nothing you can say will expose him to be any more pathetic than his own words show him to be…
You have to admit, it’s a tad more compelling than his last line: Vote Palin, because Katie Couric was mean to her.
well, then, sam, YOU try to tie together all the things I cited in that “Does Obama want to be impeached?” thread into one consistent theme and philosophy and set of principles. I tossed it out as an alternative to “they really are that arrogant, stupid, and inept.”
You wanna argue that they really are that arrogant, stupid, and inept, I won’t argue with you.
J.