It’s Not Us, It’s You: How Elites Rationalize This Year’s Voter Rebellion
August 31, 2016 by Chris Buskirk
It’s not us, it’s you. That’s the line being floated by Conservatism, Inc. to explain this year’s voter rebellion. And it’s not just voters that have run afoul of the conservative crossing guards, it’s their enablers on talk radio and at Fox News. Got that? This year it’s not the liberal media that’s to blame—it’s the conservative media. You might want to buy a program because the enemies list changes quickly.
Conor Friedersdorf at the The Atlantic, quoting the editor of RedState, claims it’s Rush Limbaugh’s fault. National Review says it’s Fox News. But leave it to Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal to defend the punditocracy from the slings and arrows of the popular uprising against party leaders and the destructive policies they have pursued. Stephens claims that Trump voters (at least 80 percent of the Republican Party by most polls) see themselves as “America’s latest victim class†while casually equating Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s equally ruthless strongman Recep Erdogan.
Apparently, if you object to the alienation of voters, to the stretching to the breaking point of the link between the sovereign citizen and the government—between rulers and ruled—then you are self-pitying milksop, a loser in the meritocratic war for money and status who has brought this upon himself.
Calling a supermajority of Republican voters the nation’s newest victim class is pretty rich coming from Bret Stephens who is on the record wishing that Donald Trump would “be so decisvely rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson…†Voters have already learned some hard lessons—that’s why they rejected every conventional candidate and nominated Donald Trump with 5 million more votes than any other Republican nominee in history on a platform of border control, common sense trade deals that put the interests of American citizens ahead of Wall Street, and an American nationalism that believes this country is at its best when citizens are served by government not the other way around.
Still, these critiques of Trump voters, which are arrogant when they’re not merely condescending, offer a good insight into the disconnect between voters and elites. These are not people looking for pity or scapegoats onto which to load their sins. But confused by Trump’s rapid rise and enduring appeal, that’s how pundits, pols, and the consultant community have chosen to understand it. To their minds Trump can only be understood as a base appeal to self-pity and “identity politicsâ€â€”the term conservative writers use when they want to call Republican voters racists without actually saying it.
But it’s simpler than that, in fact, this is Occam’s Razor at it’s simplest. Trump voters are ordinary Americans, motivated by a core set of beliefs about the country that used to be a given, especially on the Right. It isn’t Republican voters who have changed, it is Republican leaders.
August 31, 2016 by Chris Buskirk
It’s not us, it’s you. That’s the line being floated by Conservatism, Inc. to explain this year’s voter rebellion. And it’s not just voters that have run afoul of the conservative crossing guards, it’s their enablers on talk radio and at Fox News. Got that? This year it’s not the liberal media that’s to blame—it’s the conservative media. You might want to buy a program because the enemies list changes quickly.
Conor Friedersdorf at the The Atlantic, quoting the editor of RedState, claims it’s Rush Limbaugh’s fault. National Review says it’s Fox News. But leave it to Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal to defend the punditocracy from the slings and arrows of the popular uprising against party leaders and the destructive policies they have pursued. Stephens claims that Trump voters (at least 80 percent of the Republican Party by most polls) see themselves as “America’s latest victim class†while casually equating Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s equally ruthless strongman Recep Erdogan.
Apparently, if you object to the alienation of voters, to the stretching to the breaking point of the link between the sovereign citizen and the government—between rulers and ruled—then you are self-pitying milksop, a loser in the meritocratic war for money and status who has brought this upon himself.
Calling a supermajority of Republican voters the nation’s newest victim class is pretty rich coming from Bret Stephens who is on the record wishing that Donald Trump would “be so decisvely rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson…†Voters have already learned some hard lessons—that’s why they rejected every conventional candidate and nominated Donald Trump with 5 million more votes than any other Republican nominee in history on a platform of border control, common sense trade deals that put the interests of American citizens ahead of Wall Street, and an American nationalism that believes this country is at its best when citizens are served by government not the other way around.
Still, these critiques of Trump voters, which are arrogant when they’re not merely condescending, offer a good insight into the disconnect between voters and elites. These are not people looking for pity or scapegoats onto which to load their sins. But confused by Trump’s rapid rise and enduring appeal, that’s how pundits, pols, and the consultant community have chosen to understand it. To their minds Trump can only be understood as a base appeal to self-pity and “identity politicsâ€â€”the term conservative writers use when they want to call Republican voters racists without actually saying it.
But it’s simpler than that, in fact, this is Occam’s Razor at it’s simplest. Trump voters are ordinary Americans, motivated by a core set of beliefs about the country that used to be a given, especially on the Right. It isn’t Republican voters who have changed, it is Republican leaders.
Amgreatness
I can't wait. Please go on.
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