For all the energy motivating its base, the GOP was a very divided party, split by its battle against the sexual revolution and against any government role. Fully one in four of the base were moderates who were fiscal conservatives, patriots, and those concerned with immigration who felt isolated in their own party. Their alienation from dominant GOP thinking began on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and whether homosexuality should be discouraged by society, but it was also evident on issues such as climate change and the Second Amendment.
The country would hit a tipping point within two years, according to the Gallup Poll, when 60 to 70 percent said gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and divorce were “morally acceptable.” Acceptance had jumped fifteen to twenty-three points, depending on the issue, since 2001, when the GOP culture war was being escalated. It was in 2015 that a majority of Americans said gays and lesbians are born, not made. That pretty much put to bed the issue as a moral question, and, as a result, many moderate women in the GOP would be pushed out of the party before long, as Evangelicals became even more central.
Evangelicals felt most threatened by the ascendant demographic and cultural trends in America and brought unique intensity to their opposition to what was happening with homosexuals. Abortion was one of the issues on which Evangelicals and the Tea Party base were equally aligned and intense—and they had led the charge in that battle against the trends in marriage and independence for women. The observant Catholic bloc was strongly opposed to the growing public acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage but less strongly than Evangelicals.
The Evangelicals talked about how the dominant politics and culture encroached on their small towns, schools, and churches. They were troubled by these trends and talked with friends, family, and fellow believers about Obamacare, guns, government intrusion, gay marriage, and “culture rot.” It used to be different and very white in their towns:
It’s a little bubble. So everybody—it’s like a Lake Wobegon. Everybody is above average. Everybody is happy. Everybody is white. Everybody is middle class, whether or not they really are. Everybody looks that way. Everybody goes to the same pool. Everybody goes—there’s one library, one post office. Very homogenous.
—EVANGELICAL MAN, ROANOKE
In Roanoke, participants remarked that it was refreshing and unusual to be in a room where everyone shared their beliefs—which gave them an opportunity to speak openly about guns, gay marriage, church, and their values. In Colorado Springs, participants remarked that Colorado used to be a conservative state where they could expect that their values and rights would be protected. This seems to be slipping away, one noted: “We’re having to realize that we’re going to be in a very politically incorrect minority pretty soon” (Evangelical man, Roanoke).
The Evangelicals felt besieged and wondered why their own party had not stood up, battled, and won. Republican establishment politicians had lost their way, and there were too many “RINOs” (Republicans in name only) who could not stop what was happening.
For the GOP, Barack Obama was the starting point for everything that was wrong with the country. For the GOP base, President Obama was a “liar” and “manipulator” who fooled the country, and when he was reelected, they were frustrated with a country that believed him. When some were asked to write open-endedly what comes to mind when they heard the name Barack Obama, this was the result.
The Tea Party participants described him as a “spin doctor,” “misleading,” “slick,” “slimy,” “untrustworthy,” “condescending,” and “an SOB.”
When they watched a TV video of the president speaking on the Affordable Care Act, the Evangelical women in Colorado Springs wrote some pretty harsh and dismissive things: “Spin Dr.” and “chronic liar”; “fake”; “lies”; “just a speech”; “liar”; “bullshit.” The comments from the moderate men there were almost indistinguishable: “lies, lies, lies, lies, lies!!!!!!!”; “lies”; “disregards real facts”; “socialism”; “lies, lies, lies”; “health care lies.”
The private doubts they wrote on a piece of paper before discussion with the group betrayed a much deeper suspicion of the president as a person. Many had questions about him being foreign, not a citizen, non-Christian, secretly Muslim, or a socialist.
These questions on character and legitimacy mattered so much because the Republican base thought President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic Party were conspiring to push for bigger government and more spending to control the people. The GOP base was united in its opposition to big government programs and wasteful government spending, including the new health care reform law. Evangelical and Tea Party group participants also thought he was trying to fool the middle class with a more palatable patina while pursuing a darker, secret, socialist agenda. The Democratic Party existed to create programs and dependence—the food stamp hammock and entitlements—for the “47 percent,” a critique of government that Mitt Romney took on.
The GOP believed President Obama was on the verge of using his powers to pursue his agenda without limits. When asked what was going right in the country, a Tea Party woman in Roanoke joked, “Well, we’re not a communist nation … yet.” This fear was evident in the frequent discussions about executive orders and action: “When Congress is gone … he just does an Executive Order. He’s going to get anything he wants. And there’s nobody there that will have the guts enough to stand up to him”; “There’s so many secret things that go on—that are—bills are passed and regulations are passed—we never know about” (Evangelical man, Roanoke).83
What united the base of the GOP then was a deep hostility to Obamacare. That was why it would become the unifying issue in the 2014 off-year elections, and why it became the litmus test for Republicans in 2016.
And critically, they viewed undocumented and illegal immigration as negatively as Obamacare, underscoring how central a role immigration and the growing Hispanic presence played in their vote. The Tea Party bloc led the opposition to both Obamacare and “undocumented” immigrants. On immigration, Republicans spoke literally and in graphic terms of being invaded, and the immigrants’ failure to speak English made them pretty crazy. This was a party ready for an anti-immigrant and nativist leader.
The Tea Party bloc was the most anti-immigration, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, anti–food stamp, and anti–Obama and Obamacare, and they led the GOP into its total war against the New America. The explosion produced two parties now fully polarized on race and civil rights, and immigration; indeed, on rejecting or embracing America’s multiculturalism.
3 THE TRUMP GOP BATTLE AGAINST MULTICULTURALISM
WHEN DONALD TRUMP CAME DEFIANTLY DOWN the long escalator in Trump Tower in July 2015 to announce his candidacy for the presidency, he understood that the Tea Party was the heart of the GOP fight against Obama’s America, and he set out to make them his base.
In his announcement speech, Trump focused with great discipline on trade agreements, immigration, Obamacare, and the useless politicians who had sold out the country to foreigners. His speech was a nationalist cry of anger against the elites and GOP politicians who had betrayed America, its working people, and their hopes of realizing the American dream. It sounded as if Trump had read the research I had conducted two years earlier. He targeted the Tea Party voters like a laser, giving full voice to their contempt for “the politicians.”
He assured the Tea Party voters, as well as moderates and Catholics, that he and the GOP would “save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts.”1
Trump made no mention of abortion, the social conservative issues, or the moral rot that was so motivating for the Evangelicals. His focus was the Tea Party.
“Our country is in serious trouble,” Trump began, because “we don’t have victories anymore.” And, he asked, when was the “last time anybody saw us beating” China or Japan? Answering his own question, he continued: “They kill us. They send cars by
the millions,” and “when was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? They beat us all the time.”2
And then he went to the primary threat: “When do we beat Mexico at the border?” They’re “laughing at us, our stupidity.” America “has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.” And that was Trump’s vehicle for sending his anti-immigration message in the most racist form possible. “Mexico is not sending their best.” Lest anyone look for nuance, “They’re not sending you. They are not sending you”—i.e., they are not sending white people. They are sending people that “have lots of problems.… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”3
Foreign political leaders in Mexico, South and Latin America, and the Middle East are sending their worst, while our “politicians are all talk, no action.” Trump almost spits out the “p”: “How stupid are these politicians to allow this to happen? The politicians negotiating on our behalf are clueless and treasonous.”4
The result of the politicians’ collective perfidy, according to Trump, is an economy at near zero growth and unemployment at 18 to 20 percent. America’s workers struggle to get jobs “because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs,” but he will bring them back. “Bring back our manufacturing” and “rebuild the country’s infrastructure.” He declared modestly, “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”5
He also made clear his priority on Obamacare. Right up front he declared, “We have a disaster called the big lie: Obamacare. Obamacare.” Premiums and deductibles were unimaginable. “You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high.” And this is before Obamacare becomes fully operational: “Obamacare kicks in in 2016. Really big league.” That is why he promised “to repeal and replace Obamacare” with “something much better for everybody.”6
And then, as if almost aggressively ticking off a Tea Party checklist, “I will immediately terminate President Obama’s illegal executive orders on immigration, immediately.”
“Fully support and back up the Second Amendment.”
“Renegotiate our foreign trade deals.”
“Put a General Patton to lead our war on ISIS.”
He won’t be a corrupted politician because “I’m not using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using the donors.”7
And “so I’ve watched the politicians,” he concluded. “They will never make America great again.” They are “talk, no action,” and, sorrowfully, “they will not bring us … to the promised land.”8
But Donald Trump will.
Donald Trump surged into the lead with 32 percent of the primary vote when I conducted my first poll in February 2016. He pushed the former Tea Party favorites, senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, far back in the pack with 17 and 18 percent support, respectively.9 He had a real base that wanted to put out lawn signs and let people know.
Trump spoke directly to the Tea Party bloc that was the most working class and most male and formed a quarter of the GOP base. Trump immediately won half their votes and surged into an unassailable lead with them. Trump was competitive with another candidate in all the other factions (with Cruz among Evangelicals, with John Kasich among observant Catholics, with Rubio among moderates), but no other candidate had a base that gathered support from them with this intense audition. Trump rode the Tea Party base to the nomination.
Trump rode the dominant attitudinal dimension that reflected the deep hostility to President Obama, attacks on the Constitution, the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, and Obamacare. Trump was the candidate who was demonstrably the most hostile to Obama and Clinton, which was motivating the growing anger of the GOP base. That one dimension explained more than twice as much of the variation in GOP thinking as the next strongest dimension.10
Trump spoke to a GOP base where four in five believed there is “no real difference between the Democratic Party and socialism” and nine in ten believed “the Democratic Party’s policies are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.”11 Yet it was the Tea Party element of the base that believed that with the most intensity, followed by the Evangelicals. That set the foundation for Trump building support with them, too.
Donald Trump understood that the GOP was defined by its battle against the New America, making race and immigration central to why people identify with the GOP. It does not matter what faction you look at; Republican voters were uncomfortable with immigrant diversity: they thought illegal immigration was out of control and wanted their leaders to fight it. Furthermore, two thirds of the Republican base said, “It bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English,” and that included almost 60 percent of the moderates.12 A stunning 87 percent of the GOP, including 70 percent of moderates, said they wanted their party’s nominee to fight the acceptance of the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the country and the growing proportion of foreign born in our major cities.13
The GOP base broadly wanted their leaders to battle to get illegal immigration under control. That was what Donald Trump understood and what helped him to grow support among all of the parts of the base. Trump’s nationalist campaign united the Tea Party, which allowed him to lock up the party and the convention.
But the GOP was profoundly divided on the sexual revolution and on whether government should tackle major problems, like child care or climate change. Abortion became the issue that most defined the party, but moderates formed a surprising 31 percent of the GOP base in 2016, and they were solidly pro-choice on abortion and hostile to pro-life groups. About one in five were poised to defect from the party. The party was divided down the middle on gay marriage and climate change.14
All of the base groups of the GOP were predominantly working-class voters, except for the moderates: two thirds of moderates had a four-year college degree and were socially liberal. Two thirds said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. All the GOP primary candidates were pro-life, and they declined to target the moderates because support for abortion was not considered a legitimate position in this pro-life party. A pretty stunning 86 percent of the moderates, half strongly, said that the Republican nominee should accept that “women and men feel free to have sex without any interest in getting married, forming a family or a long-term relationship” and move on to other issues. Half of the Tea Party base agreed, but not the Evangelicals and observant Catholics. About 70 percent of them said the GOP should fight this trend.15
The moderates also accepted gay marriage but that set them apart from the rest of the GOP base. Over 74 percent of the observant Catholics and 83 percent of the Evangelicals were intensely hostile to accepting this change in the definition of marriage.16
The moderates were also in a different place than the rest of their party on the environment and climate change, though with less intensity. Over 60 percent said that global warming is real, produced by human activity, and now required serious measures to address it. On this issue, observant Catholics too were prepared to accept that 2015 was the hottest year on record.17
But Trump understood the Tea Party believed climate change was the work of the liberal media, and it would provide the pretext for much bigger government and regulation.
Trump topped the primary polls and was poised to lead a GOP that had waged the counterrevolution against the New America, but that produced a fractured party. One quarter of the moderates said they might split off and vote for a Democrat for president.
Donald Trump went to the Republican Convention in Cleveland determined to crush his opponents and consolidate the base that had gotten him the nomination. That meant putting the GOP 180 degrees in opposition to the new multicultural America. The party started by putting Phil Robertson, the male leader in Duck Dynasty, as the first speaker on the first night of the convention. He represented a conservative return to the traditional family in which men and women played their traditional roles. When faith mattered. And he was an en
tertainer, who had observed that the blacks he knew growing up in Louisiana, “pre-entitlement, pre-welfare,” were “happy” and “godly” and “no one was singing the blues,” unlike today, when self-reliance was in short supply.18 And most prominently, Robertson had warned that homosexuals commit “indecent acts” and “perversion” that are an insult to God: “They are insolent, arrogant God haters. They are heartless. They are faithless. They are senseless. They are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.”19
The first night’s speakers included the three parents, Donald Trump said two days later, “whose children were killed by illegal immigrants—Mary Ann Mendoza, Sabine Durden, and Jamiel Shaw”—three parents who saw “no demonstrations to protest on their behalf.”20
Donald Trump accepted the nomination “at a moment of crisis for our nation.” These “attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life.” And he reassured the country: “Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored.” Donald Trump will be “the law and order President.”21
Trump catalogued the violence and homicides that plagued American city after city and assured his audience the country “cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.” And that meant being honest about the cause: “Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.” They were “being released by the tens of thousands into our communities.” And the murder of “an innocent young girl named Sarah Root” was the sorry result.22
Trump pointed out that President Obama wanted to increase massively the number of Syrian refugees, while Hillary Clinton wanted to allow sanctuary cities, despite that “decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially African-American and Latino workers.” So, Trump’s plan was the exact opposite of what Clinton offered: “Americans want relief from uncontrolled immigration.… Clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness.” That was the choice for voters in the election.23
Rip Gop Page 6