I might vote for Donald Trump for President because I am an optimist. I have long considered the real problem in this country to be the imperial Presidency. Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority over the past 20-25 years and given the Executive Branch opportunities to seize that power.
Trump’s support comes from Republican voters’ discontent with a flaccid Congress.
A Republican-controlled Congress, pledged to confront an overreaching President Trump, would give me exactly what I needed to vote for the television reality star:
Brian Brady, a tea party organizer and former Republican committee member, said the only way he’d vote for Donald Trump would be if Ryan and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell reassured him that a President Trump would be held to even more constitutional scrutiny than Barack Obama.
I am as upset with Congress, too. We gave them the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the only Senators who have actually tried to stop President Obama were Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz. What did they get for their courage? Criticism from the old bulls in the Senate and the House.
The Republicans in Congress could save the Republic and the Republican Party by saying one thing; no matter who is elected President in November, the Republican Party is going to be the party which respects and enforces the Constitution.
Alas, it might be too late for that. An interesting sub-culture has developed within the Republican voting coalition– the alt-right. I call it the TVGOP (to give it a name) because it is influenced by talk radio and Fox News hosts rather than books and history. Sarah Palin is the grand dame of the TVGOP and Donald Trump appealed to it with his fame and willingness to say the outrageous.
The TVGOP recognizes that culture influences the electorate, not ideas. An online discussion of Bastiat’s Broken Window Theory doesn’t speak to voters as well as a confrontation of political correctness does. The TVGOP sees America as two tribes with government being the ultimate weapon. Control of the government then, is good for our tribe and bad for theirs. The TVGOP knows that Americans just don’t understand what made America great in the first place:
So, then, what happened to the majority of Republicans? Why aren’t they conservative? The answer lies in America’s biggest – and scariest – problem: Most Americans no longer know what America stands for.
As Margaret Thatcher put it: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” Why haven’t Americans over the past three generations known what America stands for? Probably the biggest reason is the influence of left-wing ideas.
The TVGOP has this right– most Americans are clueless. It’s an end justifies the means approach rooted in identity politics. It’s the direct confrontation to the Obama machine’s “fundamental transformation of the country”. It celebrates the notion that force, rather than ideas, is the only effective countermeasure to force. The TVGOP could be helpful if it weren’t so focused on destroying the modern Republican Party. To wit– Sarah Palin wants to “Cantor” Paul Ryan.
I am no cheerleader for Paul Ryan. I wish he were more like Paul, Lee, and Cruz rather than Boehner and McCarthy but, to me, he is the only line of defense from a TVGOP government. If Ryan and McConnell step up, and publicly pledge to hold Trump to a higher standard of constitutional scrutiny than they did Obama, I can support the presumptive Republican nominee.
Otherwise, who cares about the November election? It would just be two tribal leaders feuding over command of an army.