Once again, we see the usual delusions from the Right and the same worn-out narratives that were floated in the 2012 election.
The Trump campaign is being run as a Republican primary effort. Once again, we see the Republican candidate basically just talking to Republicans, rather than swing voters. This entire "Crooked Hillary" tag is ridiculous. Anyone that buys it is already voting for Trump. Likewise, Benghazi/email server/Clinton Foundation have already been out for over a year. If you haven't been persuaded by these by now, it's highly unlikely that hearing Trump talk about it more will change your mind.
We saw the same thing in the 2008 election, when Ayers/Wright/Rezko were flogged endlessly and seen by Republicans as some kind of magic words that convert people to their side. 2012 saw the magic words "You didn't build that!" paraded as the key to victory, when anyone that wasn't already voting for Romney just shrugged.
Republicans do this because they are under a few fundamental delusions:
- They believe their base is much larger than it really is. This is due to a fixation with the 1980 electorate, and the mistaken belief that the electorate is static and written in stone. Reagan's core demographic was seniors, and those people are dead thirty-some years later. Those "Reagan Democrats" became Republicans long ago. You can't count them twice. And the percentage of whites voting has gone up, while their share of the electorate has gone down. There really aren't large numbers of non-voting whites for Republicans to draw, and it seems dubious that the majority of them would vote Republican if they were drawn in to vote.
- They believe that they have strong credibility. Think back to all of the prophesies of doom in 2008 that every conservative firmly believed, and bellowed to anyone with ears. Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim usurper, who was going to throw conservatives and Christians in FEMA death camps. Guns would be confiscated. We'd be forced to bow to Mecca at gunpoint. Treason!!! AmeriCorps would become Obama's thug police force. He would be a dictator. He would change the flag. And so forth and so on. There was the whole birth certificate issue, and death panels, and persecution of Christians. Everything that happened was a "false flag". Ebola was going to wipe us out, and Obama was going to see to it. He was simultaneously a dictator and an incompetent, a warmonger and an appeaser. He would raise your taxes, and his tax cuts were dangerous. He was a "crony capitalist", and a wild-eyed socialist. He was uncompromising, and his compromises 'proved' that he was weak. The list goes on and on. Jade Helm. Net Neutrality. Gay Marriage. Benghazi. None of these things panned out, and conservatives promptly 'forgot' the last outrage when they moved on the next. For anyone outside of the conservative bubble, it was just a lot of crazy noise from people you had learned not to take seriously. So they just turn up the volume.
- They believe that they are the default choice. Again and again, we see Republicans believing that everyone wants to vote for them. All they have to do is 'prove' that the Democrat is flawed, and people will vote for whatever sorry bozo they nominate. They scream that the Democrat is 'hated', and they lose to the guy that's hated. They never see that they are hated even more. They screamed that Obama is 'dangerous'. They never figured out that the electorate is more afraid of them running the show. Now they are slated to lose to a 'corrupt', unpopular woman. And they still think that they are loved.
- They believe that, if they truly believe, they can change reality. This is "magical thinking", and it's at the core of movement conservatism. Again and again, we see conservatives assert their desired outcomes as certainties, simply because they desire those outcomes. Any facts that throw cold water on these beliefs are dismissed as "biased" or "corrupt". Only the True Believers are free of bias and corruption -- in their own minds, anyway -- so they are the only ones with access to the "facts". The entire "unskew!" narrative, which was thoroughly proven wrong in the 2012 election, is now being presented as something completely new. The same idea that there are legions of untapped white voters for the taking is once again seen as an obvious fact by the Right. They won't just win; it will be a landslide for Trump. When they lose, they will conveniently 'forget' that they ever believed any of these things, and fill those gaps with faddish new delusions that are sure to work out for the best.
As long as I'm at it, I'll point out the ludicrous conservative fascination with square miles, rather than electoral votes. Oooh, look! Big old Montana went red! And tiny little Vermont went blue. They have the same number of electoral votes, genius! Huge North Dakota counts less than tiny little Hawaii. Wyoming counts less than New Hampshire. New Jersey counts as much as South Carolina and Alaska combined. Rhode island counts the same as Idaho. It's about the population of the state, not the size! I'll take Delaware and Connecticut (10 EV) over Nebraska (5 EV) any day.
Right now, things aren't looking good for Trump. He's already had his "rally" from becoming the presumptive nominee -- and he's still behind. Must-win states for Trump are tossups (e.g. NC and FL). And Hillary hasn't had her "rally" from wrapping up the nomination yet. Even conservative pollsters like Rasmussen are currently showing Trump losing by five points -- and Obama beat Romney by four. Solid red states like UT and GA will probably only be narrowly won by Trump -- within five points. Trump is still thinking that he can win MN and NY!
It's just going to get harder for Republicans, too. 2020 will have even worse demographics. It's also a Census year, meaning that those gerrymandered House districts will get re-shuffled.
Republicans hit the 'reset' button after their 2008 loss. No fair bringing up Bush, because they had changed! But they've become so heavily invested in this current course - doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down -- that it will be extremely difficult to hit 'reset' again and re-define themselves. And the Party organisation that would lead that effort is nearly comatose and powerless over the base. Not to mention that this primary campaign has discredited pretty much their entire bench of 2020 potentials.
As far as policy goes, there's nothing there on the Republican side except vague and unrealistic aspirations. Mostly, the GOP exists as little more than an "anti-Democrat" party now. Whatever "the libs" are in favour of becomes the new definition of conservative policy. Beyond that, it's just a basic desire to turn back to the clock to a time that they mis-remember. And those times mean nothing to those born after them.
As the oldest of the conservatives die off or become vegetative, their influence over the younger generation will rapidly fade. 2020 will be the "last hurrah" for the current incarnation of the conservative movement. They will still control states, but never again be within striking distance of the White House. The "pendulum" only swings because the losers change to attract new voters, but this incarnation refuses to change and the pendulum will refuse to swing.
