Rip Gop

by Stanley B Greenberg

  —OLDER WORKING-CLASS WHITE WOMAN, MACOMB

  My girlfriend’s little brother is ten years old and right away he is saying, “Oh, screw Trump.” […] it’s like you don’t even know anything about anything. It’s like the mass media is brainwashing the younger generation and it’s that serious.

  —WORKING-CLASS WHITE MAN, MACOMB

  Two years into the Trump presidency, most rallied to protect him in this divided and polarized country, and were mobilized by the issues he raised, but not all, as we shall see.

  President Trump’s 2018 off-year, ugly campaign threw off all nuance as he slandered the caravan of immigrants and warned of an immigrant invasion and sent troops to the border to teargas any lingering refugees. Trump’s GOP stood against the country’s rising immigration, foreignness, and multiculturalism, and stood up as an American “nationalist” against the liberal globalists.

  President Trump also stood up for the men who had been toppled from their breadwinner roles and had lost their security in American manufacturing. He and the Republicans in Congress battled for that “good man, Kavanaugh” and all the men who have been on the defensive at home and in the workplace. Men were being casually accused of rape, and President Trump alone stood up for them and their children, who were being victimized by the liberal orthodoxy.

  Trump used his rallies and Fox News to wage war against the liberal media, “the enemy of the people,” whom some of his supporters were motivated to stop with pipe bombs and guns. Cesar Sayoc’s path to mailing pipe bombs to Trump’s political enemies started in 2016 when he posted links to a YouTube video claiming “Satan Sent Obama to Destroy America” and a Sean Hannity clip exposing the “illegal immigrant Crime STATS.” By the 2016 election, he was focused on Islamic terrorism, illegal immigration, and the Clinton Foundation. He later cheered on President Trump’s tax cuts and added, “Happy Birthday to greatest gift from God President TrumpTrump Trump.” His posts became more threatening and visually bloody in 2018.1

  United States Coast Guard lieutenant Christopher Paul Hasson of Silver Spring, Maryland, worried about America’s changing demographics and wrote in 2017 to an unnamed neo-Nazi, advocating a “white homeland.” In 2018, he wrote of killing on a large scale and amassed an arsenal of fifteen firearms. He was readying a plan to kill prominent Democrats and members of the media.2

  On March 15, 2019, fifty Muslim worshippers at two New Zealand mosques died at the hands of a white nationalist who worried about “white replacement” and referenced President Trump in his manifesto.

  These violent acts were not isolated. In 2017, the Anti-Defamation League reported a 57 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents, including “bomb threats, assaults, vandalism, and anti-Semitic posters and literature found on college campuses,” before the murder of eleven Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 by a Trump supporter motivated by the refugee threat.3 The Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2018 annual census of hate groups showed a 50 percent increase in the sheer number of white nationalist groups, with 40 people killed in radical-right terrorist attacks in the United States.4

  The president mobilized in the 2018 election his legions of ardent Tea Party supporters and the Evangelicals, who together formed 42 percent of registered Republicans, though importantly, 47 percent of those who vote in primaries. They cheered his abandon that led some on the fringe to turn to violent resistance. Trump’s bragging and rallies were loved by the Tea Party supporters and Evangelicals, but they sent the Catholics into a brawl among themselves and pushed away most of the secular conservatives and nearly all of the moderates.

  It turns out the Republican Party is more complicated than you imagine. The conservative and observant Catholics were more conflicted, but rallied to Donald Trump because he was pro-life, took on big corporations, and defended the border. Trump could stir and mobilize at least 60 percent of the party.

  I listened to these GOP base voters in the summer of 2018 as Trump turned up the heat on the country.

  THE TEA PARTY

  The Tea Party supporters proudly share the ethos and passions that have dominated the party since 2010.5 These are the voters that Trump was speaking to in his campaign rallies, and they are the only group of Republicans who responded to videos of his rallies with uncompromising enthusiasm. The Tea Party GOP were sick of the “PC-police” and loved that Trump was speaking his mind and driving liberals crazy. They were glad someone wasn’t scared of liberal name-calling and would roll up his sleeves and get tough on issues like immigration, the Second Amendment, and taxes. The Tea Party base were motivated to stop Democrats and defend Donald Trump in the 2018 off-year elections and are rallying to Trump to lead their party in 2020.

  They loved that this businessman president was producing such a strong economy and some of the lowest unemployment rates—and those were the biggest validators of their vote when they faced pushback from their family or at work.

  IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURALISM

  Immigration was the first issue mentioned when we asked these Tea Party GOP what were the “hot topics” with their families and friends. These group sessions were held in the weeks following President Trump’s so-called reversal of the child-separation-at-the-border policy and their social media feeds were still dominated by conservative headlines that defended the hard line on immigration.

  When asked what comes to mind when they think of immigrants to the United States, they went straight to illegal immigration, the border, and the need to get tough on enforcement.

  And if you don’t do it [the legal] way, then I think you should be kicked out of the country. I think you should be deported. And that goes back to the children, and I really was kind of in the middle on that one, cause I really didn’t know—cause you see it, kind of like what we were talking about, you see these children, and you see your own, you think oh gosh. But then I thought to myself, If I was standing at the border with my ten-year-old kid, and they said you can come in but he can’t, I’d say forget it, we’re not coming.

  What I got real annoyed about is you turn on TV, turn it on to see what the local news is, and stuff like that. And they have a picture of people walking with the little hobo things, with the family, with the picture of the American flag in the back of it. They’re not Americans. They’re people crossing the border illegally.

  They liked Trump and appreciated his views on immigration and border security because “it made everyone on the left decide that they were against it suddenly.”

  The Tea Party were the base voters most uncomfortable with the country’s growing diversity and ready to say it. Portrayals of a multicultural America were reminders of demographic changes and they took them personally. They felt Black Lives Matter was out of control.

  I had the moderator play in each of the groups a Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad featuring “America the Beautiful” sung in several languages. The reactions to this celebration of a multicultural America were mixed or positive elsewhere in the GOP base, but not here. The Tea Party voters called it “political propaganda” and, instead of bringing Americans together, “it just causes more conflict.”

  I get offended by it. What it’s telling me is that as Americans, we don’t include people. Whereas if something goes wrong in the rest of the world, where do they come? The United States of America to help them out. It just seems rather tacky.

  It’s every commercial these days, whether it’s—it’s always in the sporting event, or some huge event where people are trying to have fun and then it’s political ads showing in our face.

  I feel like inclusion of culture in American is a great thing. But it’s showing that ad produces conflict on both sides. Because the left is saying the right is not inclusive, and then the right is saying the left thinks we’re not inclusive.

  The Tea Party GOP were very bothered that the song was not sung in English and complained, “those lyrics were written in English. They were not written in—whatever the hell they were—Spanish, or Indian, or any other lang
uage.”

  The Tea Party base resented Black Lives Matter. They thought the media sided with the protestors and failed to defend the police officers who were being killed. They resented that concerts and music were being politicized with lyrics depicting blacks as victims and police as villains. “The last song for the encore was this song, was a poem composition by somebody that named all of the people, the Freddie Gray and the Michael Brown all of that,” one of the men in Raleigh lamented.

  And they are all onstage and they are trying to get the whole crowd, 5,000 people to say, “Michael Brown, Michael Brown, say his name, say his name.” And this is in Durham, North Carolina, and I’m sitting there looking like holy crap this is driving me crazy. And it’s like I didn’t hear one—they went through about fifteen different names of either black men or black women that had been killed by police officers recently. I did not hear them say one name of one police officer that had gotten killed.

  Another man asked the others, “How many times does something happen at Waffle House in a week or two where some drunk girl wanders into Waffle House and spits in somebody’s face?” And then somebody makes a video on their phone, and then the media is on it:

  They rushed some girl out because she was Black. And everybody is up in arms and there is protests and there is all these stuff. And oh it turns out she was drunk and belligerent, threw something at somebody and they called the cops and they asked her to leave, and she refused and punched someone. But by then it’s too late.

  They make a correction, but nobody pays attention because if it’s something that doesn’t fit the narrative then it’s not interesting and they’re not going to put any kind of emphasis on it.

  ABORTION, GAY MARRIAGE, AND GUNS

  The Tea Party base is deeply socially conservative, starting with abortion, but to them, the threat to their guns is nearly as central.

  When asked what words or phrases came to mind when they thought of Planned Parenthood, they said they were “terrible” and “murderers.” “They advertise that they do a lot of good stuff,” said one man, “but there’s been a lot of information that came out that they make money off body parts and do all kinds of crazy stuff.” Another one said that if more white women were having abortions, then society would call it genocide.

  They were viscerally uncomfortable with gay marriage. Some said it was an “abomination” and complained it “turns to propagating the acts, the sexual acts and leniency in our communities.” One of the men pushed back. Some gay relatives “changed my mind about that” and “that’s fine if that’s what makes them, those two people happy.” But openness was pretty isolated.

  Protecting guns produced the most animated defense of the Second Amendment. They felt that with all of the school shootings, their gun rights were even more at risk. “One thing I’ve seen a lot, I feel like it really is under threat. Every time there is a school shooting now—kids got shot, that’s terrible and now we’ve got get to rid of all guns,” said one Tea Party man. Another exclaimed, “People will walk all over you if you are not PC, if you are not politically correct.”

  That is why the open seat on the Supreme Court was so important for them. I listened to these Tea Party GOP the day after Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, as they reported “90 percent of the people on Facebook, that’s what they’re posting about.” For many it was a reminder of one of the most important reasons for voting for Donald Trump. They stressed it was “very important” for this nomination to succeed “because the Supreme Court, really, in the last twenty years has become so much more politicized than it used to be” and they “realize that the major successes from the left have come from activist judges.” The Tea Party voters wanted to see “more constitutional conservatives” and Brett Kavanaugh was their chance to appoint “someone who interprets the laws” and “not someone who thinks they can make the laws.”

  With his nomination they felt satisfied that the Supreme Court would now stand with them on abortion and the Second Amendment.

  THE PC POLICE AND PRESIDENT TRUMP FIGHTS BACK

  The Tea Party GOP were sick and tired of being told they are not politically correct. For them, it is the PC liberals and the media, not people like them, who are responsible for all the division in America. In my September 2018 poll for Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, 72 percent of Tea Party voters said the liberal media is the institution that most threatens their beliefs—higher than for all other GOP groups.6

  They were thankful that President Trump has the backbone to say what they are all thinking, unlike typical politicians. When Donald Trump was on the campaign trail pumping up the audiences at his rallies, these were the Republicans cheering him on.

  The Tea Party men in Raleigh felt under siege for their “politically incorrect” views. They complained that liberals were constantly changing the goalposts on them.

  “Socialists attack the conservative viewpoints and find any area they can to say that conservatives” are constantly facing changing liberal standards, “and they can change their views any which way they want,” one man complained. Many of them felt that on issues like race and sex, liberals had taken things so far they defy common sense. “Ten years ago people were bisexuals, now its six genders,” said one Tea Party man. They were especially sensitive to being called racist. At the time of these groups, for example, they accused liberals of saying “all conservatives are racists for supporting the separation of the immigration stuff.”

  These Tea Party men complained that they were the victims of a double standard: it was okay for liberals who are “so worried about people’s feelings” to harass people who disagree with them:

  It seems like we have very intolerant people in our society right now. People that consider themselves to be the most tolerant people, but yet, if you’re anything conservative, anything on the right, they don’t want to hear it.

  I think that the left or the Democrats are always talking about … transgender acceptance. But they’re only accepting if you believe what they believe. If you don’t believe what they believe, then they don’t want to hear that. They’ve always been the party that’s talking about acceptance, and when you get somebody that’s a conservative going to a college campus and then you see a riot by the people in the college campus, it just goes crazy.

  Being a student at NC State, I don’t post any political stuff on social media. My family doesn’t either because of a lot of the hard core or liberals will make you feel ashamed to be conservative because of all the crazy things they say conservatives do.

  I would say it’s a cultural thing that’s being promulgated by our leadership, whether it’s in schools and government. Yeah. When you’ve got a sitting representative telling people to go and harass political opponents that you disagree with.

  When I asked their reaction to the NFL protests, they quickly turned to how fearful they were of being punished for their political views. They felt they had to walk on eggshells and honestly worried that they could lose their jobs or leadership roles for their views, even in North Carolina.

  We’ve now got the thought police and the word police out there. If you say the wrong thing, if someone looks on my Facebook account and sees that I post a view that, for some reason, irritates somebody, I can lose my livelihood. My daughter doesn’t get fed. My wife doesn’t get fed. That’s just not right.

  I’m in a student organization so I have a leadership position at school. So when somebody in my organization sees it and is not really fond of what I’m saying, they don’t agree with it, then of course they can go to somebody in the office or whoever and say, “This guy is being racist because he is posting conservative viewpoints on Facebook.”

  Working at NC State, I mean, a lot of people I work with, most of the people I work with are very, very liberal and I’m very, very conservative and I have to really be careful what I say around the office. It’s like in the office if I said, “Man, Trump is doing great,” I can guarantee you I’d have three or four pe
ople on me. Not physically on me but verbally just coming after me.

  It led many to censor themselves on social media.

  The pushback against conservatives and Trump voters led them to map who in a certain group of friends or family members was “conservative” and who was “liberal.” They filtered out non-conservative news outlets where their views were under attack. They were the biggest fans of Fox News. They said it was the “only option, right now, really” because “they at least give the [conservative] guy a chance to talk.”

  Maybe the single most appealing thing about President Trump to the Tea Party base was the way he unapologetically expresses what they all think but are too afraid to say. They enjoyed watching moments when he gives the media and liberals what they called “Trump derangement syndrome.” The liberals are losing their heads on social media, spreading disinformation, and “calling him a Nazi.” “He could literally cure cancer and they’d scream about it,” but Trump has the backbone to take it.

  “I finally since Ronald Reagan feel that there is somebody in there that is not going to take any crap and he’s willing to take all the crap and have everybody left be all over him and every media outlet be all over him,” said one man. Now “there is a large population of people that feel like their views are valid again. I mean people who have views that have been deemed unpopular,” and it all started “the day Donald Trump went down that escalator.”

  This was the one group in which some of the men took up his disparaging remarks toward women during the presidential campaign. “You want equal everything, well, here’s equal,” said one man. “It’s just dirty. Politics are dirty in general. I mean we used to duel over it.”