It has come to this. Donald Trump swept Super Tuesday and has put himself firmly on the map to become the Republican nominee for US President. This has put the Republicans into turmoil. Id imagine it would be hard to countenance Donald Trump as any kind of Republican candidate based on previously professed Republican positions. He has flip-flopped on abortion and gun laws, he's from New York and doesn't look to be terribly religious, he's on to his third wife, the third wife once posed nude in a magazine, and so his 'family' credentials are beyond tarnished, they're atomised. About the only thing he has in common with the Republican establishment might be that he inherited money and he's a white guy playing what he think is a 'white' identity card - which of course works out to be racist. On that last point, he's even garnered support from David Duke, formerly of the KKK, and the current incarnation of the KKK have also endorsed Trump. So by default Trump is not only the Republican front runner, he's the racists' front runner as well.
The enthusiastic endorsement of Trump is quite disturbing because it essentially proves what liberals in America have accused the Republicans all along, that they harbour racists and lend them an air of credibility. It's been going on for some time, but the fact that Trump is their frontrunner candidate reveals that the charges laid by the small-l liberal set are indeed true.
Conservatives remain loath to acknowledge the obvious, but the liberal critique of their politics is correct, and it took the Donald Trump juggernaut to wake them up to it. Indeed, the fact that liberals had a more accurate read on conservative politics than most professional conservatives seems to bother many conservatives more than the substance of the critique itself.
“It would be terrible to think that the left was right about the right all these years,” Bret Stephens wrote on Monday at the Wall Street Journal. “Nativist bigotries must not be allowed to become the animating spirit of the Republican Party. If Donald Trump becomes the candidate, he will not win the presidency, but he will help vindicate the left’s ugly indictment.”
So it's that moment once more where the Centre Right has to confront the Far Right, and the question is whether it has it within it to do this and make it decisive for a generation.
The funny thing about conservatism is that you'd think they have fewer and fewer places to plant their flag. From issues ranging to economics through trade, industry, the environment and foreign policy, they don't have a lot of positions based on facts, but rather positions based on vested interests donating a lot of money to their super PACs. And this has been going on for some time. The Republican Party's been peddling the lie that their policies are good for the heartland when in fact they have been aggressive globalists, effectively exposing jobs out of the country. Now that the base has found out it has been sold down the river they're lining up to vote for Trump as a protest vote.
The problem is, 'they' (as in the Establishment) might have more moral authority in confronting the populist fascism of Donald Trump had they not sold their constituents down the river., because those people are really angry now and voting for Trump to make a point.
Will This Happen In Australia?
It's arguable that it has already taken place in Australia. If there is a figure like Trump in Australia, it has to be Clive Palmer. Palmer's rise to the Lower House was funded out of his company's pockets. (I'd like to have written his own pockets but this has been shown to be not true), in a populist move that split the conservative vote. Certainly a clever electioneer, Palmer managed to get three Senators, and a loose alliance with Ricky Muir to ostensibly grab the balance of power. Since then of course, two of his Senators have abandoned him and Muir has proven himself to be much more of an independent with policy views not too far from the ALP, but notwithstanding, Clive Palmer represents the same move inside the conservative politics to go populist.
Even the climate change topic has surely split the Nationals Party from its roots. The farming heartland that used to vote for the Nationals is seeing their livelihoods put to increasing risk because of climate change. The drought of the early 2000s really knocked the stuffing out of them after the big El Nino droughts of the 1990s. There are plenty of people in the traditional national Party constituency that can see the ideological opposition to doing anything to deal with climate change is being opposed. The grassroots of the Nationals Party had every reason to run to Palmer United Party just to send a message.
Even the climate change topic has surely split the Nationals Party from its roots. The farming heartland that used to vote for the Nationals is seeing their livelihoods put to increasing risk because of climate change. The drought of the early 2000s really knocked the stuffing out of them after the big El Nino droughts of the 1990s. There are plenty of people in the traditional national Party constituency that can see the ideological opposition to doing anything to deal with climate change is being opposed. The grassroots of the Nationals Party had every reason to run to Palmer United Party just to send a message.
Perhaps the more bitter struggle is going on inside the Liberal Party where Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott, who was backed by the 'far right' faction in the Libera; Party - yes, those people with the rather illiberal views on Gay Marriage and safe schools and the such, and also challenge Climate Change as a scientific finding. There are some irreconcilable differences going on in there, and this is leading to policy paralysis of the Coalition government. Malcolm Turnbull's popularity is only as high as the expectation that he will deal with things. The party room that doesn't allow him to do those things might be winning the cultural wars but is going to lose the election.
It's one thing to elevate Malcolm Turnbull because he personally polls much better than Tony Abbott; it's another thing entirely for those very same people to repudiate the retrograde delinquents of their own party like Abbott and Cory Bernardi. Clearly they can't. At the moment the Australian electorate is ambivalent because it fears the turmoil of the ALP in the last government, but at the same time does not like the kinds of changes the Coalition government has proposed one after the other. Malcolm Turnbull may well call that double dissolution election but he is in no way a shoe-in to win.
The point is, the infighting between the Centre-Right and the Far Right is inevitable even in Australia. Until now, the Far-Right has not been given much grounds for legitimacy. Yet, as discussions move closer to things that the Far Right just won't countenance, they are going to increasingly try and sabotage the middle. Tony Abbott may have only been the beginning.
The Minds That Hate
I caught this week's Q&A by accident. I try not to watch it because it's too infuriating, and that seems to be its chief purpose: to rile people into being active viewers. The bit I specifically caught was the bit where a woman asked whether gay marriage and the adoption of children by married gay couples will lead to a situation like the Stolen Generation where a government will have to apologise. It was the sort of rhetoric that attempts to mount a position whereby it posits that children adopted by gay couples would be 'taken' from some mother and therefore stand in the same situation as aboriginal children taken into custody by the state. It's a spurious construction likening two totally unlike things.
What really vexes me is that the brazen rhetorical travesty is put out there by some idiot religious woman with a straight face and then the panel has to take it seriously because it has been put to them with a straight face. Worse still, we had to sit through a mealy-mouthed defence of this idiotic position by Lyle Shelton of the Christian Lobby as if the position had any merit. Dr. Keryn Phelps was hyper aggressive in trying to justify the LGBTQ position while Anna Burke argued a legalist line; but really, somebody should have just said, "madam, that is an offensive construction that only you could conjure because you want to offend while trying to look reasonable. It is not reasonable, it is simply offensive."
But no. Tony Jones doesn't say it, nobody says it and instead they go on and on trying not to offend this woman who clearly came to offend with her question. I know, I know. If I don't like it, just turn it off. I did, because I couldn't take it anymore.
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