The last two midterm elections have yielded big Republican congressional gains, yet most conservatives who cheered those developments now jeer at Donald Trump. That’s inconsistent thinking on their part, suggests Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall.
“Trump is very little different from the average candidate Republicans elected in 2010 and 2014, in terms of radical views and extreme rhetoric,” wrote Marshall in a Saturday post. “All Trump's done is take the actual GOP issue package, turn it up to eleven and put it on a high speed collision course with RNC headquarters smack in the middle of presidential election year.” (Props to Marshall for that This Is Spinal Tap-Mad Max mixed metaphor.)
Marshall contended that Trump’s campaign is blowback for Republicans, since it shows “the downside of building party identity around a package of calculated nonsense and comically unrealizable goals.”
From Marshall’s post (bolding added):
Trump isn't the real problem…The problem is Republican voters…
…[W]hat the media is now wrongly defining as the GOP's 'Trump problem'…[is] a build up of what we might call 'hate debt' and 'nonsense debt'…
…[Recently] Trump told Chris Cuomo in a post-debate interview that the IRS might be coming after him because he's a "strong Christian"…Republicans simply aren't in any position to criticize this ludicrous claim because they have spent years telling their voters that this sort of thing happens all the time - to Christians, conservatives, everyone the liberals at the IRS hate. And this, of course, is just one example of hate and nonsense debt coming due…
…Trump's plan to deport 11 million people living in the US illegally or build the planned Trump Taj MaWall…would be more on the order of a post-War World II population transfer…[It would cost] probably hundreds of billions of dollars and perhaps even constitut[e] something approaching a war crime…
…[T]his is just the hate and nonsense debt coming due from 2013…All Trump did was say openly, clearly, more coherently what Republicans were already saying themselves…
The truth is virtually Trump's entire campaign is built on stuff just like this…[It’s] the downside of building party identity around a package of calculated nonsense and comically unrealizable goals…
…Republican elected officials have increasingly coddled, exploited and in some cases…spurred their voters' penchant for resentment, perceived persecution, apocalyptic thinking and generic nonsense.
Until now GOP elites have managed to maintain a balance...But the set up was already under extreme strain, as evidenced by the 2011 debt default drama, the 2013 Cruz shutdown and the end of the Boehner Speakership in 2015. Trump is very little different from the average candidate Republicans elected in 2010 and 2014, in terms of radical views and extreme rhetoric. All Trump's done is take the actual GOP issue package, turn it up to eleven and put it on a high speed collision course with RNC headquarters smack in the middle of presidential election year.
