(This image may well get the job done better than the 1,500 words that follow.)
The Ol' Bloviator has never been loath to mouth off about any and all matters political, and he considers it quite the triumph of self-restraint that he is only now breaking silence on the cascading lunacy that is the 2016 presidential race. The O.B. has always considered American politics the finest comedic spectacle out there, and thus the almost ideal target for his normally irrepressible impulses to mock and ridicule. However, where earlier presidential contests have offered at least a modest challenge to those impulses, this one offers such an unbroken stream profound ignorance, reckless stupidity, and over-the-top meanness that no one who has even walked by a TV set or a newsstand needs any help in understanding that what we are witnessing has the earmarks of a potential tragedy masquerading as epic farce.
With sincere apologies to his
esteemed colleagues in political science, the O.B. can tell you without so much
as a glance at exit polls that, in primary elections especially, people are
more motivated not just to vote but to vote a certain way when they are angry
than when they are reasonably content. This, of course, explains why at lot of
folks outside the South voted for George Wallace in the 1968 presidential
primaries only to drop ol' George like a hot sweet potato before heading to the
polls that November. It was easy enough to interpret surging support in the
polls for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as indicative of just such a "blowing-off
-steam-before-coming-to-my-senses" reaction among primary voters of both
parties. In fact, Bernie already trails Hillary 503-70 in the scramble for the
2,383 delegates needed for the Democratic nomination. With the Super Tuesday
slog through Dixie looming large and menacing, the dedicated dreamer of the
impossible and impractical dream and the sturdy band of zealots who have fallen
under his spell may well be looking at their last dance among the sugar plums.
Not so for the Donald, however. Indeed, not
only "No," but Hell No!" The guy whose very entry into the Republican field was
lustily hooted at by every professional and amateur pundit--not to mention
several hair stylists--from Harvard to Hahira is not only still standing but
looking at excellent odds of being the last one doing so. Since he was edged
out in the quadrennial Iowa contest to see who can cram the most "Bevs" and "Berts"
into a middle-school cafeteria by the equally scary Ted Cruz, Trump, whom the Wall Street Journal can only bring
itself to refer to as "the businessman," has kicked some serious booty among
the wishfully disbelieving.
For months,
we waited expectantly for the next in an almost daily progression of Trumpisms,
each aggressively insensitive enough in its own right to make Archie Bunker seem
like the Dalai Lama, to finally take him down. Meanwhile, the imperturbable Mr.
T. proceeded merrily along down, curb-stomping his opponents verbally while besting
them first in--then largely at--the polls. Although he Republican establishment
finally seems ready to act forcefully against yon Donald's threat to their
party, it appears that they may have stuck with their Nero act a Virginia Reel
or two too long. At this too-late date, barring a groundswell of folks
desperate enough to cross the Rubio-con with Marco, or indisputable revelations
of ol' Donnie's excessive fondness for farm animals--and even this is no sure
thing-- he stands somewhere between "quite likely" and "all but certain" to show
up at the July GOP confab in Cleveland (That desperate to win back Ohio, are
we?) with enough delegates in his pocket to collect the nomination on the first
ballot. Any proportional expression of the perceived improbability of this just
a few months ago being impossible, the O.B. can only call upon one of his
Mama's favorite maxims to suggest that somewhere, surely, the band is tuning up
to play "Who'da' Thought It?"
It is
tempting simply to conclude that Republicans brought Donald Trump on themselves
through the tolerance, even deference that they have increasingly shown to a polarizing
array of reckless, loud-mouthed spewers of meanness, and vitriol in recent
years. (True to form, John Kasich, in all likelihood the most electable
aspirant still in the Republican race, has been unable to get the fatal monkey of
moderation off his back and is struggling simply to stay in the race until the
March 15 Ohio primary, where, ironically enough, he represents one of the few
feeble hopes for slowing down the Trump juggernaut.) What pleasure may be taken
in seeing the Republicans being force-fed the bitter fruits of their own
venality, however, must be tempered by the fact that their unscrupulousness has
taken the rest of us and, for that matter, the rest of the world to the
threshold of an era where rage Trumps
(Sorry!) reason not just frequently but consistently and thoroughly.
Unfortunately, joining ol' Pilate
at the washbowl is not an option in this case, nor is a self-righteous recusal
to the moral high ground, because few of us can escape some measure of responsibility
for the currently appalling state of American politics. For example, how many
self-professed God-fearing Christians apparently didn't fear Him enough to step
up and cry "Enough!" when his name was mocked and exploited by self-serving
posturers like Jerry Falwell, Sr., and, more recently, Jr., whose endorsement
of Donald Trump as a man who "lives a life of loving and helping others as
Jesus taught in the great commandment" truly sickened even so hardened a cynic
as the O.B. in its brazen hypocrisy. We Bible-Belters who have been hit more
than one hypothetical such as "How would Jesus be received if he visited your
community tomorrow?" certainly have good reason to retaliate by asking how He
might fare with today's power-brokering preacher/politicos if he came back
determined to run for office with the Sermon on the Mount as his platform. How
much does "blessed are the poor in spirit" or "the meek" or "the merciful" or "the
peacemakers" resemble anything that ever came out of the mouth of Falwell's man
Trump, or the self-styled uber-evangelical, Ted Cruz, for that matter?
Finally,
there is also more than a whiff of culpability among many in the Democratic
camp currently watching the Republican Rocky Horror Show with the smug,
self-satisfied amusement afforded only by the miseries of an adversary. Each confident but failed prophesy that
Trump's latest shot at the canon of political correctness would ultimately cost
him his big toe should simply underscore the depth of the Democratic left's
disconnect with prevailing popular attitudes. The casual presumption that
everyone with at least a modicum of intelligence should share their views on
transgender issues, any and all attempts to curb illegal immigration, buildings
named for racists, sexists, imperialists, and pretty much everything else that might
offend anyone but conservatives has finally grown so stultifying that many
liberals in the media and (gasp!) academia have cried out for relief.
There is no doubt that Donald Trump
benefits inordinately and even proudly from the support of the people whom he
affectionately (for now, at least) calls "the poorly educated," as well as the
folks who, as Lewis Grizzard put it, "think the moonshot's fake and wrestlin's
real." (Note here surveys suggesting that nearly one in five Trump supporters
remains unpersuaded that the Emancipation Proclamation was such a hot idea, and
in South Carolina, nearly one in four still wish the South had come out of the
Recent Unpleasantness on top.) For all that, however, Trump's troops are
actually drawn from a reasonably broad demographic, and polls consistently show
him stronger among self-identified moderates than Tea Partiers or rock-ribbed
conservative regulars. Some of this may be written off to Mr. T's lack of
ideological consistency--his extremism is more of a selective, or even knee-jerk
sort. But the point here is not simply that he is pushing a lot of the right
anger buttons across a broad spectrum of Republicans, including those still
registered as Democrats, but also that there are so many "hot" buttons that work
in his favor.
It hardly seems necessary even to
suggest that Bernie's ranks are heavily populated not only by those who are
salivating for a piece of his pie-in-the-sky but by those who simply cannot
stomach Hillary. Yet, even the sharpest of Mr. Sanders's jabs at his opponent
seems like the thrust of a butter knife compared to the chainsaw approach Trump has thus
far wielded so effectively against his rivals. Whatever happens from here on
out, the fact that D.T.'s ostentatious contempt for his fellow Republicans has
played so well for this long with so many of the rank-and-file cannot portend
well for the GOP. To a lesser but still notable extent, the protracted
dalliance with Bernie suggests that a lot of Dems don't particularly care for
their party establishment either. The larger, more portentous question looming
over this election, however, is not simply which party's' levers get the most
pulls in November but how many voters will pull either one with their other
hands clamped over their noses and, beyond that, how much longer will they
tolerate such a necessity.
