Elizabeth Cheney has been booted from her leadership position in the House of Representatives. Trump is back to issuing short missives in his somewhat bizarre syntax.
And yesterday I saw my first anti Cheney vehicle sticker. [1].
What is going on? Aren't we past all this?
Well it appears not.
So, as a short primer to what's up, we offer this.
Why was Liz Cheney booted from her leadership position?
Contrary to the way some would have it, Cheney hasn't been booted from the GOP No. 3 spot because she voted to impeach Donald Trump, or for his feelings that he has no place in the GOP.
No, it was because she wouldn't shut up about her opinions.
Her opinions are probably a lot more widely held than many in the House would ever admit. They're certainly widely held in the Senate. She kept vocalizing them, that's the problem.
And her opinion is that the January 6 insurrection was just that, an attempt to subvert the 2020 election through a species of coup.
And she's correct.
Chances are that most House members who were in the House prior to 2020 agree with that. Beyond that, some will privately admit that Donald Trump has been a disaster for the GOP. He lost the White House. He's directly responsible for losing the Senate. Under his watch the Republicans lost the House. Now the most liberal Democratic Administration since LBJ, or maybe FDR, is in office and most Republican gains since the 1970s are set to be tossed out the door.
Jimmy Carter, for example, is still remembered as a Presidential disaster for such failings, although he personally is regarded as an honorable guy and Trump never really has been. The Democrats dropped Carter like a hot rock after his defeat.
It's the Trump connection with the insurrection that Cheney refuses to keep quiet about.
Most well informed Republicans in government want people to be quiet about January 6.
Why won't Cheney be quiet?
Simple enough. Cheney fears that by failing to root out Trump and Trumpism, the 2024 election is going to be a repeat of January 6. Trump and his backers will insist they won when they didn't, and a second coup will be attempted.
The worst case scenario on that is that it works and democracy will be dead in the U.S. [2].
There's a real chance of this.
The best case scenario, if that happens, is the end of the GOP, which at that point it would fully deserve. The country would be completely ungovernable for at least four or more years, and the decent into this territory can't be climbed completely back out of.
Indeed, just from a pure "what, me worry?" approach, if Trump is the 2024 nominee, it'll mean at the end of the day a Kamala Harris two term presidency. Those choosing Trump as the hill to die are on pretty much the best campaigners Harris has.
Why won't the Republicans join her?
The GOP is afraid of the Trump populists.
Trump brought a lot of populist into the party and they're "his base". Not all of them are actually in the party, it should be noted. That's why the press loves to delight in interviewing a "life long Democratic voter who supports Trump. . . "
At any rate, all eyes are focused, in the GOP, on populists. . . and nobody else. Indeed, the GOP is like a restaurant owner focused on the dining area while the long time workers are walking out the back door.
We'll get to that, but first. . .
Um, what are populists?
Populism is one of those things that everyone tends to recognize when they see it, which doesn't mean its easy to define.
Indeed, we'll give you a variety of definitions.
In an article by the BBC:
In political science, populism is the idea that society is separated into two groups at odds with one another - "the pure people" and "the corrupt elite", according to Cas Mudde, author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction.
Merriam-Webster defines it as this:
Definition of populist
(Entry 1 of 2)
1: a member of a political party claiming to represent the common peopleespecially, often capitalized : a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies2: a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
Well, is representing the views of the common people bad?
Certainly not, the problem however is fleshed out in the BBC article and a bit in the history of the U.S. Populist Party.
Populism, at its core, has the concept that "the people" are vested with a certain degree of common wisdom and are best suited to define a nation's politics and, to some extent, to define the nation itself. Contrary to what some would generally claim, populism always exists in every democracy and it is not a bad thing in and of itself. Indeed, when a strongly anti populist element openly exist in a nation's political culture, and it has in ours for some time, it's a sign that the politics of the nation is ill [3]. At any rate, populist influence isn't a bad thing in a country's politics and if it doesn't exist, that's a real problem itself.
The root of the populist problem, when it arises, has to due with the human capacity, and inevitability, to organize. Being made up of "the people" (although it never actually represents the full "people"), in order to get voice populism has to form its own party or be incorporated into an existing one. Both have occurred in the U.S. at different times. Of note, populist political parties only tend to arise in times of real significant stress aimed at the demographic that forms them.
Indeed, generally the opposite in the case. Existing parties incorporate populist ideas to greater or lesser degrees. While the founders gave voice to a desire that no political parties, which they termed "factions" should arise in the US, that thought was naïve and of course they did, and rapidly. The first two such factions were the Federalist and the Anti Federalist, with the Anti Federalist, the predecessors of the Democratic Party (bearing next to no resemblance, however, to the current Democratic Party) incorporating ideas that we'd recognize as populist.
That example, however, is telling. The Anti Federalist as a group were lead by Thomas Jefferson, and hence are also called the "Jeffersonian Republicans" or the Democratic-Republicans. Thomas Jefferson was an agrarian philosopher and virtually worshiped the common yeoman farmer, but he was far from that himself. The same man who thought that a democracy could only exist as long as most of its citizens were yeomanry, was a slaving holding planter and lawyer. I.e., he was part of the Virginia elite. Indeed, almost all of the founders of the republic, while holding strong democratic ideals, were members of the elite.
What that demonstrates is that normally populist ideas are incorporated into parties, to greater or lesser degrees, but the parties themselves are normally headed by people who really don't fit the description of "common man" for the most part.
Having said that, that works well enough most of the time. Particularly in the United States, the leaders of political parties are closer to being common men than we might imagine, even if they are not. They aren't, and it isn't as if we've ever elected a President off the floor of a General Motors plant, but as noted, they're closure than we might suppose. Some, like Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman, have in fact been quite close and Truman was arguably truly a common man, although he wasn't a populist at all.
As noted, the problem arises in times of stress. But more than that, it arises in times of stress when the voice of the common man has been ignored. In the case of the U.S., that's pretty much been since the early 1970s.
Prior to the 1970s the U.S was living off of the fact that the US emerged from World War Two with the only intact industrial economy. Germany, the main European industrial power, had its economy destroyed by four years of bombing followed by major armies fighting in the streets, followed by being split in half. The United Kingdom had endured a solid year of destructive bombing, a major campaign against its merchant fleet, the complete conversion of its economy to war materials, and the loss of an economic system based on raw materials being imported from its extensive empire. The only industrial power in Asia was Japan and its primitive industry had been completely destroyed by U.S. bombing. We were it.
That meant that blue collar jobs, and jobs simply not requiring more than a high school degree. . . or not even requiring a high school degree, were well paying and made for good careers.
But more than that, the American economy of the 1950s and 1960s was based upon a social structure that predated the and wasn't that impacted by it due to the war. Women in the workforce had been increasing since the 1890s, contrary to common presumption, but the type of work had started off with the most menial and then improved. None the less, in the 50s and 60s married women were generally not expected to have to work, and most women married.
The social upheaval of the 1960s was a gut punch to the class we're speaking of. Not only did it take a hit, but it was lampooned in the US. It wasn't uniquely attacked here, however, and arguably it took its first solid hits in the United Kingdom, where the post war world was a massive disappointment. At the same time a massive boom in university education altered economic expectations which, for a time, could actually be realized. Adding to this, Hugh Hefner had launched an assault on conventional values starting in 1953 which were actualized in new ways with the introduction of pharmaceutical birth control in the early 1960s. The "working" demographic was beginning to feel forgotten and betrayed by the late 1960s.
In the early 1970s the nation endured the period of inflation that was devastating to the economy while at the same time the economy began to convert full scale into one that required women to work and, just to get by, required husband and wife to work. A reform in immigration laws wiped out an old system that favored European immigrants, who had a close cultural connection with the American blue collar demographic and which more or less opened the floodgates to massively increased immigration. At the same time the US stood by while much of its lower level industry went overseas, something that was seen as a good thing by American political elites who thought that this simply cleared the way to an ongoing industrial evolution in which the US would basically entirely convert to white collar work, irrespective of whether people wanted that sort of work or not.
And hence the stress. People who had for generations worked in factories or farms were marginalized and told to get used to it. At the same time, families that had strong social cohesion in this class found that they increasingly couldn't recognize their former country as it changed. Entire families in which divorce had never existed found that their children were in rebellion against conventional norms, and sooner or later some of them were having children with no father in the picture, something that became a burden on the generation that was still together.
In reaction to this, the same class wanted a return to the former condition, by which it did mean a return to the past. It was too late to do that, but not only was their no attempt, it was simply ignored. One ignored generation turned into two, then three.
Now here, in noting all of this, we also are slipping into the next problem. Who is that common man anyway?
In the case of the US its the demographic, as already noted, that worked in factories and fields since the onset of the nation, sort of. Americans in that class had originally been mostly white and mostly descended from immigrants from Great Britain, but that changed a good deal over time. And, revealing a distinct problem with populism, it excluded certain "others".
Regarding themselves as the founders of the country, and not without justification for that view, they viewed others outside of the group as not really part of the story to the same degree. African Americans certainly weren't included in this group, even though in terms of labor they fully shared the story. Native Americans were rather obviously outside of it. Originally, in the countries early history, Catholics and Jews were also outside of it.[4]. As time went on, this remained the same in some locations and changed in others, but it tends to remain a Protestant white Euro American point of view even though not all who espouse it are religious, Christian or white. While I've not seen a poll of it, however, chances are that the overwhelming majority of current populist are nominally Protestant whites.
Which brings us to the next problem. Populism, in times of stress evolves towards a strong them vs. us type of view, and from there go into a tribal "real people" v "the others" type of mentality if their leadership allows them to. That's what's happened in the U.S.
As noted, most of the time, populist are part of the group. But if sufficient stress is applied populist tend to feature the same evolution as other strongly demographic political parties or movements do, which is evolution towards a worshipped central leadership. Indeed, stressed populism strongly resembles fascism and communism that way, both of which have strongly populist elements, although that's rarely admitted.
In that them vs. us type of atmosphere, the concept of "real" develops in a frightening fashion. Populists tend to define themselves as the real citizens of a nation. Others are regarded as fakes. As noted, this tend to lean into fascism, and we can see that right now in Hungary where the leadership of the country strongly identifies itself with the traditional cultural values of the majority of the nation. And we can see that in the United States as well.
In 2016 populist in the United States leaned at first in heavily Democratic direction finding hope in the message of Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump's political genius was in co-opting that demographic, which largely went over to him, in no small part due the Democrats nominating Hilary Clinton, an outward and obvious member of the political elite.
As noted above, a strong element of populism is the assumption that elites are out to get them. This belief isn't without reason, as the exportation of American industry overseas in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrates. The ongoing and continual ignoring of the American immigration problem since that time provides another obvious example, as Republicans and Democrats conspired to keep immigration rates high for their own purposes. But by and large this story is mixed at best, even where it does occur.
A sense of betrayal by elites is natural, however, when the leaders in a society are very clearly not part of the overall norm. No President since Ronald Reagan could really pretend to be a member of the average American demographic and he was likely the last one whom people thought of that way. The Bush family certainly didn't have that atmosphere. Even Barack Obama, who started off in rather poor circumstances, didn't attempt that.
Donald Trump did.
Trump didn't pretend to be a common man, but he promised to do what the common man wanted. Trump is a salesman, and as a salesman he mostly sold himself. He did a good job of selling himself to a dispossessed demographic.
Trump was once a Democrat and there's no real way to know what he thinks on anything. He may believe what he says or not, or both. But what Trump is more about than anything else is Trump. He's sold his image to the populist and the identify themselves with him.
If Trump was just a gadfly politician, like populist Huey Long, that would present a problem. But Trump is more than that. He's egotistical to a malevolent level and he can't stand the thought of loss. It isn't that he's a populist, if he is. It's that Trump is anti democratic, and he's converted the populist to being anti democrats as well, based on the extreme concept that everyone who opposes them isn't a real American.
Well haven't the Republicans always been populists anyway, and there's never been a problem before?
No, not even close.
Since the 1912 Presidential Election, the GOP has been the conservative party. It wasn't always that, indeed it was a liberal party originally. But it's been definitively conservative, if not always the same kind of conservative, since 1912. [5]. In some ways, the party was heading towards a combination of liberalism, or as it was then called "progressivism" and populism at that time. [6]. The 1912 debacle ended that and its been conservative ever since.
Not surprisingly, like everything else in this area, a debate can be had on what "conservative" means. The Oxford dictionary defines it as follows:
con·ser·va·tism/kənˈsərvədizəm/noun
I think number two is probably largely correct, but an added element of it is that underlying political conservatism is a general "outward" nature which contrast it with modern progressivism. I.e., political conservatives are generally skeptical that we know that much about anything in concrete terms, believe that human nature doesn't change, and that larger things are really metaphysical in nature and not subject to our whims. For that reason, conservatives are cautious about disrupting anything traditional as the feeling is that it is probably based on something solid and what it is replaced with has no guaranty of being better. Additionally, conservatives are much more likely to believe that the universe is governed by laws set by something other than us, and we ought to pay attention and attempt to comport to them.
Conservatives and populist definitely overlap on some things and for that reason, it's easy to confuse the two. For example, most conservatives value tradition, and populist definitely do. Conservatives value religion, and populist claim to. But even in these things there's distinct differences.
Populist tend to value tradition as they view it as nearly endowed with the force or religion, which is interesting as they are often likely, in the American case, to be more in the nature of nominal Christians than than practicing ones. Indeed, conservatives are often highly likely to be practicing members of their faiths but to also hold that elements of their faiths have no directly political application to everything. This is not to say that they don't apply their religious views to their politics, as that would be untrue.
To given as example of this, I've heard in recent years some people speak of the founding documents of the American republic in religious terms, taking the strongly implied view that God has ordained a certain view of the nation and its founding documents. Nearly no conservative holds that view.
This therefore gives similar, but not identical, views of the nation's history and culture. Both conservatives and populist are likely to view the nation's history in a traditional, and patriotic, sense, but conservatives are not beyond questioning and qualifying elements of it. Populists, on the other hand, are enormously resistant to any change in popular history and tend to regard that as an attack upon the nation. Again, giving an example, conservatives questioned the 1619 project as politically motivated, but didn't get too excited about that and have always held the view that the nation isn't prefect, as nothing is. Populist have been horrified by the 1619 project and sponsored their own, through the Trump Administration, counter argument in the 1776 Project which had its own political arguments.
Re culture, mentioned above, most conservatives tend to regard the country has having a "Judeo Christian" culture, which they take quite seriously. "Judeo Christian" itself reflects, to a degree, the evolution in their thought however as it encompasses all of the Christian religions and the Jewish faith, a pretty broad definition. Populist, however, tend to take the view that the nation is a Christian nation, by which they mean a Protestant American type of Christianity. Deep conservatives tend to take religious doctrine extremely seriously, and as a general rule, they're most members of a faith they take seriously and adhere to, although there are exceptions. Populists, interestingly enough, tend to espouse a religious believe but are often very unobservant, and sometimes regard religious tenants much the same way they do political ones, i.e., as subject to the will of the people.[7].
Overall, conservatives tend to hold the view that we're pretty flawed and not going to get everything anywhere near close to correct, so we ought to be very careful about trying to. Populist tend to believe that if the nation took root in the traditions of the country, as they imagine them, things would be darned near prefect. Indeed, in that sense, they share a common trait with progressives, who believe that the world can be made darned near perfect and its all up to us. As noted, the current populist waive started in the Democratic Party, not the Republican one.
And all that is why this is a big problem.
Conservatives in the GOP have always strongly believed in democracy, as they would. That's the nation's tradition, and they're not about to disrupt it. Populist in the current era, however, believe that they're facing an overarching threat from an "other".
When Donald Trump warned that the "they" were going to "take your country", conservatives and populists heard two different things. To conservatives, the warnings about assaults on traditional culture, which definitely have been going on, stand to thrust the nation into the whacky unknown, and therefore they need to be politically opposed. To populist, that's a battle cry that "the other", the enemy, is assaulting the real country, as they define it, and needs to be opposed by any and every means.
And that would include challenging the legitimacy of an election, as populist would view any effort against them, in the end, as illegitimate in this current atmosphere. As populist tend to only organize under extreme stress, and as Trump tapped into that and caused himself to be identified with the populist, he's achieved identification with their concerns on a personalized and individualized basis. That's dangerous in and of itself, but when its combined with a personality whose principal point his himself, it's particularly dangers and undemocratic.
Yikes! So why aren't all the Republicans behind Cheney?
Well, there's a lot of reason for that.
To start with, probably more of the Republican's in Congress are behind Cheney, without saying anything, than we know, but more of them are in the Senate than the House. Mitch McConnell basically stated that Trump should be tried for sedition.
The House changes over a great deal more, and much more quickly, than the Senate does, which partially explains the disparity there. By this, what we mean is that there are Congressmen who came up in the Trump era and rode his coattails. Some of them are genuine Trumpites, and others don't dare upset voters who are in the Trump camp.
And a lot of Republicans just flatly don't' see the danger, or disagree that it is there, and are more worried about retaining the populist voters. This is subject to a double miscalculation, but it's still there.
People thinking that way have only their own experience to go on, and that of the Republican Party. The GOP has not experienced a populist influx since 1900-1914 and its outside of its institutional memory. For a lot of those people, an American political party can't act against democracy as it just hasn't happened to them or their party before. Indeed, the last American political party to have a strong, and anti democratic, populist wing was the Democratic Party. The Democrats had a strongly racist, and hence anti democratic, wing that lasted into the early 1980s. The Democrats handled that by effectively marginalizing it at the national level, but it also yielded to it in the South. It did fail to do so, however, in 1860, and that of course lead to the Civil War. Anyhow, in spite of the example just provided to us, those Republicans just can't believe that Trump will strike out against democracy again.
And some, probably fairly cynically, are wagering that old age will catch up with Trump prior to 2024. I'd guess them right, but there's no way to know.
That's likely what people like Mitch McConnell are wagering. Time marches on and the ravages of that march are more telling on a person the older they get. Four years in your twenties goes by slowly and you're likely to be in just as good of shape at the end of the four as the beginning. Four years in old age goes by like a flash and you stand a good chance of being worse off in the end than the beginning. Trump gives no signs of taking care of himself and his age and condition could catch up with him at any point. People like McConnell are gambling that it will, and the problem will simply pass, leaving the Trump voters, but not Trump.
The problem with that is, of course, several fold. It leaves you saying nothing, with silence being consent in 2022. But Trump isn't going to be silent. And he may in fact still be around in 2024 and run for office, in which case he'll be the nominee as it'll be a bit too late to contest him.
It also assumes that rank and file Republicans will be around as well.
And that's a big miscalculation.
The GOP is so focused on Trump voters staying in the party that it doesn't seem to notice that traditional Republicans, including conservatives, are leaving. The Republicans feel that Trump brought them big net gains, but the evidence is against it. Trump lost the popular vote for the oval office twice, which isn't a measure of success, and the Republicans lost both the House and the Senate under his watch. That would seem to be an indication of failure, not success.
And the January insurrection is driving people out of the GOP. Even at the local level, where supposedly the state is all behind Trump, there's been one newly elected Republican who has claimed that that the party is now dead.
Indeed, by 2024 the GOP may be so populist that it simply becomes a populist party, which will doom it to irrelevance and cause it to disappear. Conservatives are already discussing openly bolting the party now.
Indeed Republicans with an eye towards history may wish to recall that the Democrats lost their populist wing when Reagan openly courted it, as that branch was isolated to the South. That loss turned out to be a gain as the Democrats were freed of a racist wing and history. Its regaining strength in the South, but not with the baggage it once had. The GOP has the opportunity to accelerate that process right now, if only it'll avail itself of the opportunity.
But it shows no signs of doing that.
And ironically, populist have proven to be a particularly fickle demographic. Populist attempted to form their own party but it only existed from 1892 to 1909, with its voters going over to both parties. The Republican Party flirted with populism in the 1900 to 1912 time frame only to abandon it, with its populists going to the Democrats or into more radical movements. Southern Democratic populists stuck with the Democratic Party for a long time, having really nowhere else to go, but turned against it three times after World War Two, attempting to form two new short lived parties before simply abandoning the party entirely for the GOP with Ronald Reagan. This all makes sense in that the base of any populist movement is made up of regular people who, after all, are busy trying to just get by.
And as a core element of populism under stress is a sense of betrayal, the GOP runs the risk that Trump may prove the ultimate betrayer. The current Democratic Administration is giving populism plenty of fuel as much of what it is espousing is outright contrary to populist sentiments. By the same token, of course, this is true of conservatism as well. But if Trump ends up being exposed in a critical way, the famously volatile nature of American fame could change overnight.
Indeed, even in politics, the lessons of this are pretty clear. It's often noted that the Vietnam War was fought by common Americans, and this is very true for those who entered the service prior to the last Vietnam War era draft. It's also noted that the same demographic went into the war believing that the US simply couldn't be on the wrong side of a war. When the war became questionable, many felt irreversibly betrayed. By the same token, if its shown that Trump lied in some significant way, and there's plenty of investigatory efforts regarding Trump right now, the same demographic may change its views on him and the GOP overnight.
If the GOP doesn't confront a Trump focused populism, it may, at the most, retain the Trump voters, and will retain Trump, but that may be it. In 2024, if Trump remains capable of running, Trump will claim the election was stolen but the margins are likely to be high for a Harris campaign that leaves no real doubt. The regular Republicans will have left the party and either have formed a new one or be in search of a new place to form a conservative opposition party. The populists will have dwindled too, having lost interest over time for the most part, if times are good, or having grown upset with defeat, if times are bad.
Footnotes
1. I can't recall what it was exactly, although it claimed Cheney was a "swamp rat". My guess is that the same person was a big Cheney backer this time a year ago.
I do recall the other sticker, which was an outline of a lemon and the words "all juice, no seeds", meaning that the vehicle occupant was advertising both his vasectomy and promiscuity. The extent to which this society has really descended to the depths is pretty well summarized in some ways by that.
2. Okay, I want to squelch right here that "we're not a democracy, we're a republic" line that people routinely spout out on this topic seemingly not knowing that this is about the most ill informed thing on this topic you can say. Yes, we're a democracy. We're also a republic. You can be both. Shoot, you can be a democracy and a monarchy for that matter.
If you have been spouting this, stop immediately, go back to 6th grade, and repeat civics.
Yes, we're not a direct democracy. No country on earth is. And we're not a parliamentary democracy. So freaking what? That doesn't mean we're not a democracy. If the people vote in free and fair elections for their government, it's democracy. If they vote for a representative in parliament, it's a parliamentary democracy. If they vote in a system that incorporates regional representation, it's a federal democracy.
Saying we're "a republic, not a democracy", makes just about as much sense as telling somebody "we're riding in a sedan, not a car".
No, it's a car.
3. The antithesis of populism is elitism, which isn't a good things. The Democratic Party for some time has had strongly elitist elements, which is part of the problem we're now facing. Populism, in its worst phases, becomes a them v us type of movement. The Democrats, for their part, are creating a real "them". It feeds into itself.
4. As late as World War Two the government issued a post reminding Americans that Catholics and Jews were real Americans.
5. Of some interest, the last time the People's Party, an American populist political party, ran a Presidential candidate was 1908.
6. Progressivism in 1912 isn't really the same thing it is today, although its related.
7. Which gets back to the sticker noted above. Conservatives wouldn't advertise promiscuity on a sticker, as they wouldn't approve of it. Apostolic Christians, moreover, wouldn't advertise surgical birth control, and beyond that as many conservatives have a high regard for natural systems, even those without a religious orientation would be disinclined to go in this direction.
Lots of street level populists however don't see this conflict at all, and while they bemoan the decline of society, plenty are willing to participate on in it. The liberalization, or some would say libertineization of sex in the U.S. is a "liberal" or progressive matter, and therefore even some of the same group of people, in this instance, who would be bothered by progressive advocates for LGBTQ causes, if they are populists and not conservatives, have no basic problem with non traditional sexual behavior on their own part and don't see that as contrary to a Christian faith that they loosely espouse.
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