The first post I ever wrote on this blog – a month ahead of the 2016 Iowa caucus – was about the “unique political genius” of President Trump. It dealt with variety of tactical and psychological reasons that Trump, despite snickering among the political class, was continuing to perform strongly in early polling, and why I thought he was the most likely Republican nominee. I like to think it was fairly prescient in identifying some of the key traits that ultimately put Trump in the White House.
But that post also contained a warning about what an eventual Trump collapse might look like:
It is easy to see how the Trump narrative could quickly unravel. If he doesn’t win, he’s (obviously) no longer the guy who always wins. If he’s in second (or third or fourth) he loses alpha male status. If he’s not ahead, his sniping at competitors goes from bullying and derisive to petulant and desperate. Trump is not set up to endure failure, and losses could set him up for a vicious and rapid downward cycle.
It took 18 months, but that unraveling has arrived. The Trump presidency death spiral has begun.
Trump’s response to this weekend’s abhorrent white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, and the corresponding terrorist attack that killed an innocent woman and injured 19 others, will rightly be seen as the tipping point at which his presidency failed. In a situation with obvious moral clarity, the President hedged, blaming “many sides” and only reluctantly denouncing Nazis (NAZIS!) two days later. Then, for reasons that can only be attributed to personal pique or actual support for white supremacists, he gave an even more appalling performance in a press conference at Trump Tower, during which he claimed there were “many good people” marching in a torch-wielding crowd that chanted racial epithets and gave Hitler salutes.
This is a point of no return. There are few things that can unite Americans across partisan lines, but denunciation of the Nazis is one of them. Having already made it utterly impossible for any Democrats to stand with him on much of anything, Trump has now cost himself the support of Republicans, who can’t get to Twitter fast enough to separate themselves from him. Even White House aides have been eager to distance themselves from the President, telling reporters that his remarks are “off-script” and against their advice.
In addition to the moral offense that almost all of them certainly feel, Republicans also have a simple political calculation to make here. For a long time, the prospect of Republican control of the White House outweighed whatever damage Trump incurred. Now that balance has changed. He’s clearly hurting the party far more than he is helping, and members can be expected to react accordingly.
This is where Trump’s combative nature will particularly hurt him. He’s spent no time investing in building relationships within the party, and in fact has mostly done the opposite, insulting and bullying his fellow party members throughout his campaign and his time in office. He stormed the GOP like a berserker and was incredibly successful in ravaging a path to the nomination. But doing so left him without a reservoir of goodwill or loyalty from the party infrastructure. Now that he’s run himself into the proverbial iceberg, none of them are going to be rushing in to bail him out. In reality, many will probably take joy in his downfall.
Cynically speaking, this might be different if Trump had shown himself to be an effective leader and champion of the party’s interests. Instead, he has run a completely chaotic administration and demonstrated little aptitude or interest in governance. His public approval stands at just 34%, which is a disaster for any President this early in his tenure, but especially so when you factor in that the economy is healthy and there are no current international crises. In 200+ days in office, Trump has led Republicans to little of consequence on their agenda other than the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and even that was achieved only because of the long-term Machiavellian maneuvering of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. There’s just no benefit for elected Republicans to continue taking heat for Trump when he offers them nothing of consequence in return.
None of this is to say that Trump will be gone from our lives anytime soon. Odds are strong that he’ll limp along through the remaining three and a half years of his term. But he’ll do so as the lamest of lame ducks, impotent and isolated, with little public approval and few strong allies in Congress.
And given his behavior, he’ll have earned his fate.
lousypundit 