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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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politics
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It's the people behind him we have to worry about. Like the Fedlist society.
This.
Trump served his purpose. He showed that the answer to the question of "I'll do what I want, what are you going to do about it?" is often "Nothing". He exposed the fact that the Constitution offers little to no real way of enforcing the rules stated in it. He exposed every weakness that our entire system of government has, and he has coralled enough extremists on the right to force others to go along with his plans or face either political or physical retribution. He spent the past 8 years drawing a roadmap in orange crayon that even he could follow.
The MAGA movement has grown bigger than he is. Eventually, other GOP leaders and even the voting base will realize that the movement can and will go on with or without Trump. They will realize they don't specifically need him, and they'll be looking for his successor. And that's when you have to worry. DeSantis has the personality of aged cheese, and Ramaswamy looks to be all sizzle but no steak. But eventually, somebody is going to emerge. Somebody is going to have all of Trump's ideas, all of his charisma, and none of the baggage.
And that person will be infinitely more dangerous than Trump could ever dream of being. Trump may not have a grand plan because he has the mental capacity of a cashew. But the next person will. And that's when we're in trouble. If someone had enough ability and intelligence to enact even 10% of the MAGA movement's ideas, Trump's presidency will look like utopia by comparison. You know how DeSantis keeps saying he wants to make America like Florida? That. That's what we'd get from whoever Trump's successor ends up being.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Our future as a nation depends on how far "moderate" right-leaning voters will let their coalition drift before it's so repulsive even to them that they'd rather abandon their immediate political future and hand unfettered control over to the left for a generation (or more). Lots of us assumed the "Never Trump" contingent would be able to make headway in spearheading a faction in that direction and corralling the GOP back toward the center, but it's clear now that they're so irrationally terrified of the left that they're more likely to either a) hold their noses and follow the right-wing coalition into oblivion, or b) form untethered political alliances in hopes of re-defining a viable counter to the left. We now know that the ostensibly disillusioned right will never join us, and so we're going to have to watch this experiment unfold however it will. Unfortunately, the more ferociously we fight back, the more it's apparent we're playing into their darkest fantasies the way the Reichstag Fire played into Hitler's. Whoever it is that's waiting in the wings and devising their next grand overture, they're surely chomping at the bit for the opportunity to start detaining leftists as enemies of the state as soon as they have some semblance of a flimsy legal excuse to do so. And the fundamentally corrupted Supreme Court is unlikely to do anything to stop them until it's too late and the wheels are already in motion.
All they need is support of the police state. The Constitution, unfortunately, cannot bear arms.
The only thing I have to add to this is this: the "ostensibly disillusioned right" is significantly larger than a lot of people thought it was. And the sheer number of them means that no, they aren't just a fringe group. They are large enough to make the rest of the party fall in line whether they want to or not, because they know that moderates cannot mathematically win without them. They're not even the majority in their own party, but they're still large enough to be able to say "If we don't get our way, nobody else is getting their way either. Including you."
Based on Trump's approval ratings and the obsequious hands that flew up at various speeds when Brett Baier asked if the GOP nominees would support Trump even if he's convicted in a court of law, I've yet to see convincing evidence that the balance leans heavier toward those who are utterly repulsed by the state of their party than it does toward those who are only mildly inconvenienced but still calmly comfortable knowing they won't be first in line for the firing squad. I would certainly love to be proven wrong, but I'm just not sure we're there yet, and I don't really know what it would take to get us there. Just seems like they're a lot better at saying they disapprove than showing they do.
They're not large enough to have any mandates at the federal level, currently. That math changes dramatically if they win, and pull off their proposals.
The 2024 election will either elevate them to true power or break the back of this movement, as we saw with the Tea Party. If they don't secure some actual, not-easily-undone wins in the near future, the party will devour itself from within.
Maybe the most defining characteristics of this bloc is that they need to win or they hold the losers as responsible - this has been true for every appointment, every lower-tier repz their view of the opposition, and basically everyone on Earth except Trump himself.
2016 was the start of what ended up being a defining war for the heart of America and 2024 will be modern America's Waterloo, one way or the other.
They have enough control in enough states to effectively "take their ball and go home" if they don't like the way things turn out next year. It doesn't take an overall majority, just a few local pluralities.
Indeed, Trump is just the rodeo clown to distract the public from the cowboys trying to hogtie them.
Douglas Adams called it in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:
Douglas Adams was the much needed satirical wrecking ball of "organized society". I miss him so much.