The Republican Party has failed to stop Trump.
Nowhere was this more obvious than in our own primary, in which Florida’s Republican senator (and arguably the most moderate candidate) got so utterly obliterated by Trump that he quit his campaign. Marco Rubio was the GOP’s golden boy; this time last year, he was considered the obvious choice for the nomination. He gave up five months before the convention in July.
With each passing day, Trump edges closer to victory at the Republican convention, making that gala the likely deathbed of the GOP as we know it. The party has two choices: nominate a neo-fascist monster voters elected, or broker the convention, saving the face of that tattered, shameful organization at the cost of voter outrage and reprisal. Elite, influential conservatives are already preparing an attempt to run a third-party “true conservative” should Trump win the nomination. The latter option would at the very least give the GOP the dignity that comes with self-sacrifice, if it could do anything other than briefly slow Trump down. Though I crave these outcomes, I struggle to see it as anything other than cowardice on part of the Republican Party. This thing is their fault.
For years, the party functioned as an apparatus to preserve corporate power by tricking working-class whites into voting against their own economic interests, appealing to traditional social values — and to the white-supremacist tendencies among them. Formed under Nixon’s cynical Southern Strategy, the GOP coalition seemed unshakeable for generations.
Unfortunately for them, this coincided with decades of disastrous economic policies that decimated the working-class white communities on which they depended on for votes. These people are pissed — and rightly so. But years of GOP indoctrination did its work. The angry, underemployed masses don’t identify business elites as the cause of their suffering. Instead, they understand themselves in relation to sexier, more tangible problems: ISIS, Black Lives Matter’s “war on cops,” drug addiction and illegal immigration.
Once we understand this, we can easily see why Trump is so appealing. His campaign is founded on his reputation as a doer: a go-getter who’ll sort out immigration and destroy ISIS and Black Lives Matter in a jiffy. No more uncertainty; no more chaos. Mr. Trump will bring things back to the way they once were. Oh yeah, and he’ll get Mexico to pay for that wall.
Trumpism is nothing but a rebellion fueled by the very same vile Fox News and other GOP-propaganda arms pumped into the hearts and minds of voters for decades. They converted economic depression into ethnic resentment and didn’t care a damn about Trumpism until it washed up on their doorstep; they can’t be counted on to stop it. Blocking his nomination is nothing other than an attempt to save face before Nixon’s coalition deteriorates completely, leaving the party to implode.
Trump encourages violence; Trump has a volunteer militia; He has threatened riots if he doesn’t win the nomination; His followers support ethnic cleansing. They are violent. Some are literal Nazis. Even if he loses in November, we’ll have to deal with them and their backlash. How?
Not with the armchair liberalism of proud Democrats. John Oliver is funny, but “Make Donald Drumpf Again” won’t succeed at anything other than making liberals feel better about themselves. That’ll last as long as there’s any humor left to be squeezed out of the Trump phenomenon — I have a feeling it’ll run dry soon. Smugness, condescension and mocking Wal-Mart shoppers isn’t anti-Fascism.
What will work, then? Hell if I know. I wanted to praise the anti-Trump protests in Chicago, but then folks pointed out Trump deliberately chose the setting of a diverse college campus hoping to inspire such a protest, proving to his supporters that they really are embattled by “far-left” activists. It seems to be working in his favor. It’s an awful mess.
All I do is hope for a boring ending to this story.
Alec Carver is a UF history junior. His column appears on Fridays.
