Trumpism is a many splendored thing. It encompasses both support for the Iraq war and opposition to it. On a meta-level, it condemns supporters of the Iraq war and also forgives them.
It is, in short, a study in contradictions.
But because Trumpism corrupts, the man’s contradictions infected the movement and now infect even his reluctant supporters. Consider some of the arguments that have been deployed on Trump’s behalf over the last several weeks:
1) The party is useless and has not accomplished anything of use over the last 24 years. So if it’s destroyed by a Trump candidacy, it will be no grave loss. We need to burn it to the ground/foment creative destruction/etc.
Also, all conservatives and/or Republicans have a moral duty to vote for whichever candidate has an R next to his name, because party affiliation trumps all other considerations. Only a Republican will appoint good personnel throughout the government. Only Republican personnel can achieve good outcomes for the country. Only Republicans can be trusted with the levers of power.
2) Donald Trump is expanding the electoral map, will compete in California, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey even, and doesn’t need the support conservative/Republican holdouts because he is part of a realigning wave.
However, if Trump loses, it will be because of the traitorous #NeverTrump bitter-enders who will be the ones responsible for electing Hillary Clinton.
3) Trump always tells it like it is. His candor may get him into trouble sometimes—like with his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country—but that’s just the price of having a guy who won’t bow to PC pressures and will always shoot straight with the public.
But Trump is so crafty that sometimes he postures for the benefit of suckers. Like when he backtracks on H1B visas. Or backtracks on his Muslim ban. He doesn’t mean these things at all, and the fact that he’s willing to say them shows how clever he is to be “making a move on independents and Democrats.”
So you can trust Trump because he always says what he believes. But you can really trust him when he says things he doesn’t.
4) The most interesting contradiction of Trumpism, however, was on display Monday in Cleveland. And it concerns not Trump but the Republican party.
You will recall that during the primary campaign, the GOP establishment was powerless to stop Trump. That wasn’t actually true—the party establishment had a great deal of power. It simply refused to exercise it when Trump decided to run for the party’s presidential nomination.
So instead of stopping Trump, Reince Priebus, rushed to New York and emerged, like Neville Chamberlain, waving a piece of paper he believed would guarantee peace in his time. And that was that. The party then awkwardly stepped to the side and wrung its hands as Trump rose. By all accounts, the men who run the organization never even considered a strong response to prevent their nomination from being taken by a man who praises and supports Democrats, admires dictators, has ties to the mafia (and worse), and charges former (Republican) presidents with treason.
Such a response from the party (monkeying with the debate calendar; denying Trump access to the debates; altering delegate allocation and selection rules; attacking ballot access; coordinating opposition fundraising and spending) would have been ugly and unfair. It also would have worked. If Republican party elites had decided that Donald Trump couldn’t be the nominee, he wouldn’t have been.
Yet once Trump became the presumptive nominee, the party establishment suddenly found itself capable of exercising a great deal of power on Trump’s behalf. Priebus has never been half so effective a chairman as he has been in helping Trump consolidate power. Look at what the party establishment did Monday. Ugly and unfair isn’t the half of it.
If the Republican establishment had been willing to act as ruthlessly in opposing Trump as they were in helping him at the convention Monday, then an actual Republican would be accepting the party’s nomination in Cleveland.
Which leads us to a final contradiction. Trump’s big insight about the 2016 race was his belief that the Republican establishment was so weak and decadent that they were practically begging to surrender to someone.
It’s just that before Trump, no one had ever thought to demand it of them.
But I doubt Trump ever imagined that in order to keep his nomination, he’d need to rely on the determination and toughness of the party elites who had become his vassals.
