In this Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015, photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks at a signed pledge during a news conference in Trump Tower in New York.
(AP photo)
Ben Domenech explains that this time, there is no Faraday Cage:
The Tea Party rabble [as seen by the GOP establishment], organized into its second-stage groups, actually functioned as a Faraday Cage for Republican leadership. They allowed for a lot of lightning and static, but nothing that would actually seek the outright destruction of their coalition—because, at the end of the day, they were still Republicans who would pull the lever for Mitt Romney. They were ideologically consistent, and therefore could be negotiated with. A trade here and there, a show vote for this or that, and they would fall in line.
Trump’s backers are something different entirely. They are post-Tea Party and post-Obama and post-two Supreme Court rulings that convinced them the game was more rigged than they ever believed. Trump represents a vibrant and fed-up mass of people who see the Republican Party as standing for nothing, so they have turned to someone who can beat the party by standing for anything.
So here we are: A basically non-ideological populist nativist nationalist reality TV star with zero political experience, running the most aggressively and comprehensively anti-establishment and anti-elite campaign in generations, is the undisputed leader of the GOP presidential primary.
The best we can hope for is that Trump proves to be Peter Arnett’s unnamed US Army major to the fabled Vietnamese town of Bến Tre — that he destroyed the party in order to save it.
At this time however that hardly seems a likely outcome.
But do read the whole thing.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member