LITTLE AMERICA: THE BIRTH OF A NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY
Evan Osnos, The New Yorker
Thirteen months ago, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President with a speech that sparked a revival of America’s far right, a seething confederation of white nationalists, “racial activists,” and anti-immigration zealots. On Thursday, the final day of the Republican National Convention, in Cleveland, I bumped into Richard Spencer, the “identitarian” who is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future” of white people in the United States. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has called Spencer, who has degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago, a “professional racist in khakis.”)
Spencer was not a delegate; he was in town to organize and demonstrate on the sidelines. When I interviewed him last summer, he was enjoying Trump’s surprising appeal to the far right but had no reason to expect that it would last. On Thursday, when I asked him how he felt about the Convention, he beamed. “Ebullient!” he said. “Euphoric! I’ve met dozens of other people in the alt-right here. We have a presence, and we didn’t otherwise have one before.”
For Spencer and others who share his views, the past week has been astonishing. The surprise is not that Donald Trump has embraced their ideas (that has been true for a year) but that the Republican Party, for all intents and purposes, has followed suit. “I was worried about Mike Pence because he is more connected to the religious right and the neocons,” Spencer said of the Indiana governor and Vice-Presidential candidate. “I thought this was a sign that the Party was going to undo everything that had happened.” Instead, he said, “Pence has signed on one hundred per cent.” In the Republican Party today, he said, “we have the nationalist wing.”
That evening, in a speech traditionally devoted to embracing as much of the electorate as possible, Trump presented the world’s most powerful nation as an enfeebled giant, humiliated and victimized by “illegal immigrants with criminal records” who are “roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.” Four years after the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, told delegates that “we are a nation of immigrants,” Trump connected killings of police officers, misperceptions of immigration levels, and distorted anecdotes about crime in order to employ the classic technology of the demagogue: he created a grave national threat that only he can solve. His opponent, he said, promises “mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness. Her plan will overwhelm your schools, your hospitals.”
For moderate Republicans, the Convention cemented a bewildering transformation at the top of their Party. There was no clamorous showdown, as some had predicted. The Party slid gently into a new incarnation. When Trumptold the Times this week that he might undermine the future of nato by withholding support from the Baltic states, he drove away a dwindling number of Republican foreign-policy hands who might have imagined that he harbored a belief in a strong national defense. Speaking on NBC after Trump’s speech, Nicolle Wallace, who worked in the George W. Bush White House, said, “The Republican Party that I worked for, for two decades, died in this room tonight.”
Thomas More Dickinson, a Rhode Island delegate who had supported John Kasich, told me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do in November.” He was considering abstaining from voting for President, something he had never done before. He went on, “I don’t like Hillary Clinton. I can’t see myself voting for her. I’m pro-life. I’m very nervous about the Supreme Court. And I think with Trump, at least, there’s a chance that he would appoint more conservative judges.” Trump used to say he was “very pro-choice,” and I asked Dickinson if he believed the transformation. “I really don’t know,” he said.
Thomas More Dickinson, a Rhode Island delegate who had supported John Kasich, told me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do in November.” He was considering abstaining from voting for President, something he had never done before. He went on, “I don’t like Hillary Clinton. I can’t see myself voting for her. I’m pro-life. I’m very nervous about the Supreme Court. And I think with Trump, at least, there’s a chance that he would appoint more conservative judges.” Trump used to say he was “very pro-choice,” and I asked Dickinson if he believed the transformation. “I really don’t know,” he said.
It will take a few days to measure the real impact of the Convention on public opinion, but some effects are already clear. If the week’s events have helped Trump gain voters, they will likely be from one reservoir: white, heterosexual males. Even among core Republicans, the Convention offered little to help build a coalition. Ted Cruz, the second-most successful primary candidate, used his speech to encourage listeners to “vote your conscience,” adding later that he would not be a “servile puppy dog” to Donald Trump.
Most of all, Trump seems to have mistaken Americans’ frustration about governance and economic opportunity for a darker turn in the nation’s self-image. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” he said. Trump’s message is one of surrender. For the moment, he has camouflaged that retreat in the bunting of wounded pride. For all of the fatigue and frustration bequeathed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American idea rests, at bottom, on the willingness to rise above fear when others will not. It’s not clear whether the Republican Party still has the will to remember that.
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"There is no fear in love.
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
1 John 4:18
"Any Religion That Needs Fear To Thrive Is Bad Religion"
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