America, with all its faults and all its virtues, is once again at a crossroads. The choice resides in whether or not to sustain their covenantal democracy which aspired, “To create all men equal with the inalienable right to pursue life, liberty and happiness”. While the revolution Trump is leading is totally contrary to the ethos of the Founding Fathers, America’s history is punctuated with convulsive lurches either heralding progress or attempts to return to the yesterday’s status quo. From the word go the central issue of the Republic was who would constitute “We The People”.
Following Obama’s second election in 2012 the Republican establishment saw the writing on the wall and commissioned an “autopsy” which sought to diagnose and suggest solutions so as to remain a force in America politics. However they were thwarted by Donald J. Trump who sought to drive the Party in a new direction. The Trump movement to Keep America White has had many historical geneses. However it is self evident that the Trumpian revolution, which trashed the conservative values of the Republican Party, could never have happened without the malignant and narcissistic television personality of The Donald. It also undoubtedly heralds the death of the Republican Party of the twentieth century as formulated by Teddy Roosevelt and modified by Ronald Reagan.
IN 2012 THE GOP PREPARED TO STAVE OFF THE THREAT OF EXTINCTION WITH AN “AUTOPSY”
In 2012 the Republican National Committee, (RNC), having lost four of the last six Presidential elections and facing progressively decreasing voter numbers, commissioned what they labelled an “autopsy” to address the possible obliteration of their viability as a political party. Obviously at the back of their minds had to be the fact that minority populations were growing, the fastest by far being the Hispanics. By the year 2050 it was predicted that those with white skins would be a minority in America.
In an unbelievably frank hundred page report it was concluded that the GOP needed to reframe how they addressed minorities, the youth and women. Amongst their findings were realities such as:
“Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents and many minorities wrongly think that the Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us. If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States, they will not pay attention to the next sentence, It does not matter what we say about jobs, education or the economy; If Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close our eyes to our policies. In the last election Governor Romney just received twenty seven percent of the Hispanic vote…..”
The recommendation was, “We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates from minority communities”.
The report continued “…….there is a growing unrest within the community of Republican women frustrated by the party’s negative image among women…. the Republican Party committees need to understand that women need to be asked to run….”
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FOLLOWING ITS “AUTOPSY”
Well Donald Trump won the nomination of the Republican Party in 2016 and totally trashed the recommendations of the “autopsy”. In so doing he not only abandoned the core Conservative principles of Reagan and the social agenda of Roosevelt, he turned it into a white supremacist nationalistic enterprise. He made no bones of the fact that he despised the minorities with his focus on the Hispanics.
By a freak of nature he then won the electoral college notwithstanding the verification of the ”autopsy” report’s prophesy that the Republican Party would increasingly be in the minority - Hillary Clinton trouncing Trump by three million votes. The Hispanic vote remained at under thirty percent nowhere reaching the forty - one percent that George W. Bush garnered.
It took until the 2018 midterms for the forecast that the Republican women would register their anger at the “negative image” they believed the party had of them. The Democrats crushed the Republicans in the House of Representatives knocking out forty of their Congress people with the help of suburban Republican white women. Following the 2018 midterms of the one hundred and twenty seven women in the House of Representatives only twenty one were from the GOP. The Senate Republican representation is not much better with only eight Senators of the twenty - five. The Republican candidates for 2020 will have even fewer women represented. Most significantly the warning in the autopsy of increasing Democratic majorities was realized in the 2018 midterms in that the Democrats received eight million more votes than the Republicans.
Trump has not hidden that his view of America Great Again is to Make America White Again and one of his hopes was to keep out colored immigrants in favor of those with white skins. The problem being that the citizens of his chosen areas such as Scandinavia and Western Europe are not really interested in immigrating to the USA.
There are two principal sources of immigrants to America - there are those few with exceptional talent whom America courts and those whose credentials that are etched on the Statue of Liberty - the poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Anyone who emigrates thus usually is “exceptional” in one way or another and wave after wave has been responsible for America’s remarkable success.
Trump who recognizes that he cannot import whites in great enough numbers to prevent America from a fate worse than death promised to stop everyone of “the huddled masses yearning to be free” constituency. He argued that they all came from Mexico and “.. had lots of problems…they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…..” He then reassured that he would send back all those “illegal” Hispanics who were criminals without defining what a criminal was. It turned out that everyone of the eleven million “illegals” was a “criminal”. He would be King Canute and turn back the tides. In the wake of attempting to carry out his “Whites Only” policy Trump inflicted cruelty and abrogations of human rights while breaking laws and treading roughshod over centuries old tradition of liberal values.
TRUMP IS NOT THE FIRST TO TRY TO KEEP AMERICA WHITE
There is a belief that Trump is the “messiah” and represents the great last hope to right the American ship. Well in truth he is not the first to represent the forces of prejudice against the values which the American Founders espoused. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were immensely troubled by their inability to deal with the issues of America’s indigenous peoples and the African American slaves but they resigned themselves to the fact that any meaningful accommodation would never allow the formation of the United States of America. It was left to Abe Lincoln to resolve the injustice of slavery. Sadly the American frontiersmen resolved, by genocide, the participation of millions of the “Red Indians” as citizens of the Republic.
At the end of the day the clash was always about those who championed the supremacy of the white man versus those who wanted to include all who have constituted and contributed to the amazing success of the United States of America. Besides the moral concerns of the conflict the “white supremacists” forgot the fact that America owed its success to all its peoples and the waves of immigrants that bolstered the workforce and entrepreneurial spirit of the USA.
The struggle to afford all participants in the American phenomenon full privileges of citizenship continues to this day. The conflict has been and still is slow, painful and violent. The massive injections of the Irish, Italians and Eastern Europeans - predominantly Jews, for example, were met with resistance, prejudice and even legislation restricting their entry.
Then there was the pervasive era of Jim Crow which for practical purposes denied African American their rights till the middle of the twentieth century. Finally legislation was enacted in the 1960’s which enshrined the African American rights. But even that struggle is far from settled as the issue of “voter suppression” has become a real obstacle. However the prejudice du jour is against the brown Latinos whose numbers increase and are the only demographic who have the necessity to immigrate to America in large numbers.
THE FUTURE OF GOP AND TRUMP
The GOP is dead and may its dear soul rest in peace. The white supremacist Republican party lead by Trump has once again attempted to reverse history and notwithstanding the fact that the 2012 GOP “autopsy” has thus far proved correct there is still a fear that Trump can defy political gravity and do it again.
Trump has a steep challenge, in spite of his adoring mobs at his Nuremberg style rallies. He has, once again, to win all the Democratic leaning Mid West States that he won by a total of seventy thousand votes and not lose any other State on the way. He has a favorable economy and he is the incumbent so from that micro historical point of view he has the advantage. However from the macro perspective the American electorate has always performed the way Winston Churchill characterized their decisions in tough situations:
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing once they have tried everything else.”
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