For years, many self-professed conservatives mocked and derided Barack Obama’s two successful presidential campaigns as substanceless self-affirmations that exposed the vapidity of many in the voting public. It should be clear now that a few of those conservatives really only wanted an Obama of their own.
The genius of Obama’s image-makers was to craft a candidate with malleable policy positions just vague enough to allow the voter to project onto him their individual hopes and aspirations. Obama was whatever you wanted him to be whenever you wanted him to be it. Donald Trump is the right’s Obama, insofar as his policy preferences are ill-defined, pliable, and reflective of whatever the audience immediately before him wants them to be. Not everyone eats this act up, but those who do have access to booming microphones that create the impression they represent more than a modest plurality of the Republican primary electorate. Nevertheless, that even this small number of self-identified conservatives has become swept up in the right’s “hope and change” moment is dispiriting.
Those conservatives that continue to support Trump’s presidential bid are now doing so in spite of an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that indicates he was an orthodox liberal until only recently. Those voters who consider themselves down-the-line conservatives and cannot stomach a moment’s heresy from the 2016 field’s more accomplished Republican candidates seem perfectly comfortable embracing a figure who was once to the left of Hillary Clinton on virtually every weighty policy matter. That Trump remains impervious to this criticism suggests that his fluid policy preferences are of no interest to the 20 or 30 percent of the Republican primary voters that back him. What’s more, those who contend that Trump stands boldly athwart political correctness cannot support this contention: He has embraced PC rhetoric and emulated liberal scolds on issues related to race, gender, and identity as well as any of The New Republic’s scribes. All that matters is his enormous personality and the cult around it.
A recent dispatch from a New Hampshire campaign stop via Bloomberg’s Melinda Henneberger sheds light on this tendency. “[V]ery little of what the conservatives in the hall were going wild over could be characterized as conservative,” she noted while nevertheless adding that the rapt audience remained enthralled by the candidate’s whistle-stop ramblings. Henneberger, a keen observer of politics, seemed vexed by the fact that “many heads nod” when Trump floats proposals that were, until yesterday, traditionally liberal policy positions.
When Trump vowed to compel American automotive manufacturers to dismantle manufacturing operations in Mexico and return them to the United States, his argument was that he could make this policy manifest by sheer force of will. “This is too easy, too easy!” Trump averred. “This is a couple of phone calls.” In their hearts, Trump voters know that there are economic forces at work that would render this misguided project a bit harder than simply making a phone call, but they want to believe that the avatar of their rebellion can move mountains. They want to comfort themselves with the notion that ill-defined wreckers within the Republican firmament are working against them. They want to think that displays of resolve are sufficient to create positive “change,” however they as individuals define it. Indeed, victory for the Trump backer cannot be defined as the pursuit of traditionally conservative solutions to vexing policy problems. Conservatism is of secondary interest to the Trump supporter. All that matters now is sticking it to a variety of perceived enemies; liberals, establishment Republicans, globalization, economic integration, foreign workers, et cetera. Trump is an outlet that facilitates venting.
Deep down, the Trump backer cares little for about what comes out of the candidate’s mouth; his support is derived not from what he says but what he represents. The Republican media consultant and political professional Rick Wilson recently performed a compelling dissection of Trump’s stylistic approach to campaigning. He noted accurately that the reality television star’s methods are virtually indistinguishable from Barack Obama’s circa 2008.
“You hated Barack Obama’s cult-like followers, with their mindless stares of adoration, their impervious barrier between emotion and reason, and their instant fury when confronted with the facts about his record, his history, or his philosophy,” he wrote to Trump supporters. “You hated Obama’s shallow, facile rhetoric, with its hollow promises and loose, lowest-common-denominator word-vomit disconnected from any real policy.”
“But you love it from Trump,” Wilson added.
Wilson’s admonition was dismissed by those who needed to hear it most. As a member of the enemy class of Republican campaign consultants – a group partly responsible for electing more Republicans to state and federal office in the Obama era than at any point since the 1920s, mind you – he can be safely ignored until the revolution is complete, and its nemeses are purged for their deviationism. The salience of his observations is, however, confirmed by the hollow and emotional objections it yielded from Trump supporters.
Those on the right who have convinced themselves that there is some value in this void vessel into which they pour their discontent are sacrificing one of the most compelling arguments in opposition to Barack Obama’s administration: its self-evident incompetence. Trump’s backers have earned their anxieties — they are the product of the years of mismanagement over which this president has presided. Trump’s success, however, reveals that a significant number of conservatives do not merely seek remedy for their years of suffering; they want revenge. The right’s “hope and change” moment does differ from the one that Democrats are only just beginning to awaken from in one critical aspect: for those backing Trump, his appeal is as much aspirational as it is about score settling. And after almost seven years of “hope and change” there are a lot of scores to settle before we can “make America great again.”
