There's a real movement going on in mainstream media these days to make "Trumpism" a thing, instead of admitting that White supremacy and nationalism that Trump endorses are a core constituency within the Republican Party and have been since The Civil Rights Act of 1964.
That George Will not only separates the current Republican Party from Trumpism, but names movements like "George Wallace-ism" as somehow not of the same voters in love with White supremacy, is just adorable.
Chris Matthews and George Will are horrified that Marion Le Pen and Brexit a-hole Nigel Farage were invited to CPAC. Then Chris Matthews (to his credit) shows side-by-side clips of those two with Donald Trump's speech to the same organization. The similarities are striking. It's nationalism based on whiteness. The "whiteness" thing is what George Will dances around without saying.
GEORGE WILL: A conservative can be a nationalist in that he says I not only love my country, patriotism, I believe there are superior aspects of the United States. I'm a nationalist in that sense. It's not the same thing as saying I'm nationalist because I'm born here. I'm of a particular tribe, and I believe that the tribe is superior.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, where is this going? And is there Trumpism in our future? Will this be down to more Trumps in the nomination process, more people like him selling basically pretty gross nationalism?
WILL: I don't know. Perot-ism if there is such a thing did not survive. George Wallace-ism did not survive his departure. I suspect that when this man with his peculiar persona -- and a hold it has on a certain minority of the American population -- departs, it will depart too. I have a feeling that people are going to say 'well, that was interesting, but also exhausting and faintly embarrassing.' And I think you're going see some anti-Trump personas come along, people calm and quiet and restful.
Aren't you precious, George. You're going to see people say "well, that was interesting?" That would be people who have nothing to fear from a shredded safety net and no safeguards for clean drinking water and no need for access to birth control and never a worry for whether their child will get shot in school, amirite? Your Georgetown cocktail party circuit will do just fine and can sip chardonnay over how exhausting it was keeping up with the embarrassment, then it's back to deregulation for everybody. Cheers!
But Chris Matthews knows George Will's Republican Party is a club, and continues with that line of questioning:
MATTHEWS: When not in the room of the Republican leaders and people who are what we consider regular Bush Republicans or Reagan Republicans, is he in the room? Do they consider him part of them? Or are they glad he is not in the room that moment?
WILL: They don't consider him one of them, but they know that he has a large hold on the base.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
WILL: And since most of them have only to fear if you're in the House, the only thing they fear is a primary dominated by the intense part of their base.
MATTHEWS: So is the Republican Party a Trump-occupied territory right now?
WILL: Definitely.
Somebody at Chris Matthew's office better call President Sean Hannity and ask what the plan is, because it isn't an easily-passed "Trumpism" that George F. Will gets to decide is not useful. Newsflash: The Republican Party is full of racist, dumbed-down voters who have no interest in voting for George Will's choice-of-the-elitists ever again. And the "standards" of those MAGA types are so low that as long as he's a white supremacist patriarch who'll make them feel large and in charge, they'll vote for a thrice-married idiot vulgarian Putin-puppet traitor and consider themselves the most patriotic people in US history.
For more, see Don't You Dare Call it Trumpism from 2016, and Driftglass's post from earlier today.
Trumpism is just a lifeboat for Republicans to pretend Trump doesn't reflect what their party actually is, wholeheartedly. But Trump is who they voted for and they'll vote for that kind of jerk as many times as Fox News tells them to, because they are re-programmable that way, the end.
