Wednesday, December 04, 2019

Rescued Facebook Comment About Trump and the GOP

Because it seems worthwhile:

If there's one good thing coming out of the Trump presidency, it's that he's re-made the GOP's political approach in a way that's going to be hard to un-re-make.

From the Reagan era (and to some degree since Goldwater) until recently, Republicans campaigned in drag as libertarians then contentedly governed like FDR/LBJ Democrats.

Now they're campaigning like Peronists or Gaullists (minus having a leader figure who's ever shown any personal courage or other redeeming personal characteristics) and governing like FDR/LBJ Democrats while they try to figure out a way to successfully implement North Korea's Juche or Albania's Hoxhaism in the US.

That should make it hard for them to pivot back to "we're libertarians at heart, but it's just never reached our balls"* after the Trump era ends.

* That's an apocryphal David Bergland reference. A Republican once told him "I'm a libertarian at heart." Bergland's reply: "Let me know when it reaches your balls."

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