New Yorker: "The Republican Identity Crisis After Trump"

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I wouldn't refer to the reversalist role as Sanders/Warren lite or even as reversalist. I would refer to it as Bismarckian.

It expressed a number of the points that I made as far back as 2016 in terms of how and why Trump got nominated. The disjointed message between social stability and economic turbulence of unregulated capitalism are operating at cross purposes and something had to give here, and hence you got Trump. The fact that Trump failed to deliver here is entirely because of his personal deficiencies, but it doesn't mean that these go away.

I also think it is a mistake to necessarily separate out the remnant approach from this reveralist approach as both agree that the pre-2015 GOP is dead and think the path forward on economic policy is the same. The difference is how wide a net it is going to cast and while the former casts a narrow one, political necessity dictates that the latter increasingly becomes the operative strategy. Indeed they are the same on this aspect, the difference is whether you are rallying white resentment or working to get the black percentage up in South Side Chicago to flip Illinois.  Yes, racial annimous is a powerful force but power and control are also and that along with math will dictate certain actions here. It is not inconceivable for things to evolve in this direction.

I also would caution against Rove's interpretation of McKinley for the obvious reality that McKinley was an economic nationalist and in fact he was the poster boy of the protectionist system and was able to use this rally industrial votes against the Bryan agrarianism, that was going to wipe out their industrial jobs.

Lastly, in terms of business. This is not the first time the country was dominated by a pro-free trade elite dominated by internationally oriented trading systems, foreign powers and international cartels and conglomerates. That is precisely what the the Federalist Supporting Merchants of New England (destroyed by the embargo) were and the Plantation Owners of the south (destroyed by the Civil War). Also the Websterite Whig supporting Textile owners (Speaker Winthrop) were not too keen on the anti-South shift of politics in the 1850's. The businesses that didn't adapt were destroyed by the Civil War, and those that did became the dominant tycoons of the Gilded Age.

People don't understand the dynamics of nationalism and business well because they have spent years studying neoliberal and other schools with this stuff basically white washed from existence. It works like this, you destroy the internationally oriented business entities and then in their place a new crop of business and a new business mindset is created, that is nationalist and while very much in favor of pro-business policies internally are very much concerned with everything being couched on the basis of being for the good country or benefit of the country. Either directly (nobless oblige) or indirectly (success uplifting others), but all operating on a basis of a nationalist economic mindset. This was very much (more so the latter) how business in America functioned in the late 19th century mindful of being destroyed by the British Juggernaut economically with their free trade policy and the agrarians internally.  This is the "pro-business nationalism" that defined the GOP economic policy in the late 19th century and it is certainly the policy that McKinley was very much steeped into.



If you read Holt's work on the Rise and Fall of the Whig Party and his discussion on 1854 in MA, the similarities between the Whig Establishment and the Paul Ryan types and between Gardner's American Party and Trump are striking. Reading this in 2015 was what led me to predict that Trump was the disruptive agent, he was not the final end result, and I still hold that to be the case.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If MAGA wanes, could the Tea Party make a comeback? Or is the latter squarely an Obama era opposition movement. I just don’t know how Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio (well he’s been rebranding himself as more of a Catholic common good type), and others of their ilk will call themselves. There will still be plenty of small government types in the GOP who don’t care about protectionism and leave immigration as a secondary concern.

The Senate GOP seems to think we are on the verge of a Tea Party comeback, but I don't necessarily think so at this point.

Even if there is a populist wave or discontent, I don't think it is going to be exactly like the Tea Party and will almost certainly contain a much more populist element.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Well the preliminary data seems to indicate a lot of good news for the "reversalist path" at least in terms of the feasibility of making inroads with various minority groups, opening the door to even more gain in said groups with the right platform, messaging and outreach.