Sooooooooooooo .
. . where to start?
Today (May 4) is
the day a majority of American Mormons have been dreading—the day Donald Trump
became the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Mark it on your
calendar. It may go down in history as the day Utah began a sudden but
long-overdue shift from the GOP to the Democratic Party their parents and
grandparents called home.
Let’s talk about
why. Yes, Mormons, by and large, detest Trump, cringe at the sort of campaign
he has run, and dread the sort of president he would be. But Trump is more than
just a crass demagogic bully. He is partly a product of what the Republican
Party has become. His ascension in GOP politics is hardly a surprise to those
who have been paying attention. He has tapped very effectively into the
incoherent anger Republicans have been stoking for a good long time now. But he
is also partly the GOP establishment’s worst nightmare, because he has exposed
their duplicity.
For many years
now, the GOP has been pulling a slick bait-and-switch on its own constituents. As
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson describes it, “Traditional Republican
orthodoxy calls for small government, low taxation, tight money, deregulation,
free trade, and cost-saving reforms to entitlement programs. If I were
independently wealthy, that might seem an agreeable set of policies. Ditto if I
were one of the ‘small-business owners’ to whom GOP candidates sing hymns of
praise.
“But most
working-class Republicans are, get ready for it, working-class. They are more
Sam’s Club than country club. They don’t own the business, they earn wages or a
salary; and trickle-down economics has not been kind to them. Their incomes
have been stagnant for a good 20 years, they have seen manufacturing jobs move
overseas and job security vanish, they have less in retirement savings and home
equity than they had hoped, and they see their young-adult children struggling
to get a start in life.”1
So while Republican
politicians have been paying lip-service to these voters with banal slogans in
order to get elected, once in office they have promoted policies that overwhelmingly
favor the wealthy and harm the average citizen. But Trump has blown the lid off
this scam. By offending women, immigrants, various ethnic and religious groups,
and, ironically, politicians, he has played well the anger-and-paranoia card the
party dealt him, but at the same time he has refused to toe the line on several
key Republican orthodoxies. He opposes free trade, for instance, and not only
refuses to cut entitlements but even hints at expanding them. He also shows no
signs of wanting smaller government. He offers solutions to America’s problems
that are “hugely” expensive, and yet he also offers to cut taxes on everyone,
but mostly on the wealthy. So, by openly ignoring long-standing GOP priorities,
he has exposed the great fallacy of Republican ideology, namely, that a large
portion of the rank and file couldn’t care less about ideological purity.
Frankly, they don’t understand the issues (or they wouldn’t support Trump), but
they are indeed angry, and Trump is offering them an outlet for their anger,
even if his policy pronouncements make no sense at all.
Basically, the
Republican Party is disintegrating before our eyes. We knew something was
terribly amiss when the two most popular options for president were The Donald
and Ted Cruz, the most despised Republican Senator in years. And yet these two
candidates actually represent two major thrusts of the GOP over at least the
years of the Obama presidency. On one side is the senseless anger at government
that the party has intentionally bred through Fox News and a host of inflammatory
radio personalities. On the other is the extremist ideological purity that
would quickly reject even Saint Ronald if he were to return from the dead.
Which leaves
Mormon Republicans with a rather nasty predicament. The party’s little game has
been exposed by a demagogue who has come in and usurped the position that makes
him de facto party chief. So what do they do? Well, I would suggest they take a
step back and look at what has led to today’s shocking development.
I would argue
that for some time now the Republican Party has been living in la-la land. Even
before Trump, look at what the GOP agenda had morphed into. This is a party
that
• is devoted to
supply-side economics, a misbegotten economic fantasy that never has worked and
never will;
• denies
human-caused global warming, rejecting a consensus among the scientific
community;
• wants to
deregulate Wall Street and other corporate behemoths, believing, apparently,
that these greed-driven enterprises can be trusted to self-regulate;
• is unanimous in
trying to once again drastically reduce taxes on the wealthy;
• refuses to enact
much-needed immigration reform, preferring instead to demonize people who are
seeking a better life;
• opposes
sensible gun laws that a vast majority of Americans favor;
• wants to deny
millions of Americans the health insurance they so desperately need;
• declines to
invest sufficiently in our crumbling infrastructure;
• adamantly refuses
to hold Senate hearings on a nominated Supreme Court justice, when a full
two-thirds of Americans favor such action; and
• has presided
over one of the ugliest presidential campaigns in history, eventually
capitulating and embracing a completely unqualified and manipulative bigot.
Some sensible
Republicans are probably of the opinion that this year’s electoral madness is
an aberration and can be blamed on The Donald. But I think it is more accurate
to say, rather, that Donald Trump is one logical result of where the GOP has
been heading for some time now. Ted Cruz is another. In more muted tones, the
party for some time has not just courted but has helped create a constituency
that is angry, hateful, xenophobic, obstinate, and irrational. It is unlikely
this will change in the near future, even if Trump loses spectacularly.
The Donald has
done Mormon Republicans a favor, though. He has exposed GOP ideology for
exactly what it is—a hoax. The party has preached tax cuts and smaller
government, all the while knowing that nobody wants smaller government. Nobody.
Not really. Republicans don’t want Social Security and Medicare slashed. Most of
them will need these programs because trickle-down economics has left them
without any retirement savings. They don’t really want to cut programs for the
poor and the sick and the unemployed either. That would be, well, un-Christian.
And they certainly don’t want to cut defense spending. They want to increase
it. But when you take these items out of the federal budget, all you have left
is pocket change. You’re not going to reduce government without severely
cutting Social Security, Medicare, and defense. And tax cuts simply do not
produce an increase in revenue, no matter how much voodoo you stir in. So, deep
down inside, Republicans know that what we really need in this country is to
tax like, well, like Eisenhower did. They just can’t bring themselves to admit
they’ve been wrong for 35 years. But what is worse—embracing a bad idea for 35
years, or embracing it for 40?
Government, it
turns out, isn’t the enemy. Yes, it’s often inefficient and annoying. But it’s
the tool of the people to solve large-scale social problems and rein in
out-of-control corporate capitalism. Often it is our only tool. So let’s not
drown it in a bathtub.
The big question
before Mormon Republicans today, and six months from today, is whether they
will jump off the cliff with Trump or come to their senses and vote for
Clinton. I know, I know, Hillary isn’t exactly the most appealing candidate the
Democrats have ever fielded. But she does understand the issues, and on almost
all of them she stands on the side of reason and common sense and moderate
pragmatism.
What will be
interesting to see is whether Utah will cast its collective vote this fall for
a Democrat. Some have predicted this if Trump is the Republican nominee. But I
have my doubts. I suspect that too many Mormons are actually more Republican
than they are Mormon. They sincerely believe that you can’t be a good Mormon
and vote Democrat. So, I’m going out on a limb here, and I’m predicting that in
2016 Utah will still vote Republican. But it will be close.
The winds are
shifting, though. So pray for Hillary. I will be.
__________________
1. Eugene Robinson, “Trump Understood the Voters the GOP
Forgot,” Washington Post, May 2,
2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-understood-the-voters-the-gop-forgot/2016/05/02/22011614-1088-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html.