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It’s tempting to say Donald Trump is just making it up as he goes along. But according to Rush Limbaugh, Trump has been planning this for years.
The signs of his preparation are obvious. His political donations switched from the New York Democrats who could help him with business deals to the conservatives he hoped to win over. He started giving to groups like the American Conservative Union so he could speak at venues like CPAC, even deploying the Make America Great Again slogan as far back as 2013. He made small videos and explicit policy statements on issues which mattered to the grassroots, like support for gun rights and opposition to Common Core, saying there should be “local education.” Trump also cultivated relationships with the conservative media figures which have proved so valuable to him over the course of his campaign.
Most significantly, Trump identified a popular base by seizing on Rick Santorum’s message of “Blue Collar Conservatism” and purging it of Christian religiosity while giving more overt nationalist overtones. Indeed, he actually took Santorum’s policies to heart more than the former Senator himself, as Santorum ultimately endorsed the neoconservative caricature Marco Rubio for reasons which even he couldn’t name.
If you take a step back, Trump’s seemingly chaotic campaign has a startling consistency and inner logic. He’s precisely targeting that constituency of working class and mostly white Republicans which conservative commentators — and Dissident Right commentators like Steve Sailer and Peter Brimelow — have talked about as a political force for years. Unlike everyone else, Trump’s media presence allows him to get around the Donor Class and their agenda and directly connect with the people he wants.
In short, Trump approached this campaign like a negotiation. He appeals to interests, rather than vague principles. He essentially offered himself, his celebrity, and his talents to the conservative movement with the promise he would push through the policies they support. He also is promising to grow the party, trusting that he could keep the base on board with red meat like immigration, Common Core, and even his past birtherism. He would get around the Beltway Right and connect directly with the grassroots.
But that doesn’t mean he’s ignoring the major conservative foundations. In some ways, he’s taking this pandering to almost ridiculous extremes. Knowing he has no credibility on something like Supreme Court nominees, he’s essentially promised to outsource the nomination process for judges to groups like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, a staggering gift to the Beltway Right. After all, it was George W. Bush who tried to appoint the all but unknown Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, triggering outrage from “the movement.” Trump is essentially giving them a guarantee this would never happen.
And on paper, Trump actually is more of a “true conservative” than many of the other Republican candidates he has vanquished. While Ted Cruz is more of a doctrinaire conservative than Trump, it’s hard for a reasonable person to say Trump is dramatically more left wing than candidates like Jeb Bush or George Pataki. John Kasich is well known as a supporter of Common Core and is widely perceived as being soft on Obamacare because he accepted federal funds as Ohio’s governor. On issues like H-1B visas and limits on legal immigration, the “consistent conservative” Ted Cruz has aped Trump’s position, reversing what he’s said in the past.
Despite his image, Trump is actually not a real populist nationalist in the European mold. He cut off that possibility in order to keep at least parts of the conservative movement on board with his candidacy. After promising an amazing health care plan, Trump announced a policy which looks like something an intern at the Heritage Foundation could have slapped together in a few minutes. After talking tough about taxing the rich (and even proposing a wealth tax) years ago, Trump’s tax plan for this campaign is a “pro-growth” supply side approach blessed by Beltway stalwarts like Grover Norquist and Larry Kudlow. While Trump has promised not to slash programs like Medicare and Social Security, he hasn’t presented any creative proposals like the Citizens’ Dividend being proposed by some European parities in response to the challenges of automation and unemployment.
Despite his use of the phrase “America First” and his promise of a new approach to Russia, Trump is far less of a challenge to American foreign policy than, say, Pat Buchanan, who would have cut America free from the dead weight of the “alliance” with Israel. Stylistically, Trump is a nationalist, but when it comes to substance, Trump is well within the mainstream of the conservative movement.
This is most likely deliberate. Trump bet if he could win the nomination and move close enough to the conservative grassroots on key issues, the party and the “movement” would both swing behind him. Even now, Trump says if he can finish off “Lyin’ Ted,” they will eventually become best friends as the Donald consolidates the American Right behind him. After all, they will have a common interest in defeating Hillary Clinton. Nothing if not a pragmatist, Trump trusts in interests rather than ideology.
And this is where Trump makes his mistake. The critical point to understand about the conservative movement, what writers like James Kirkpatrick has called “Conservatism Inc.,” is that it has no stake in political victory or even implementing particular policies. Indeed, the “worse” things get, the more money it makes. At the same time, no matter how badly it is defeated politically, Conservatism Inc. functionaries have to continue to believe they are really in charge both of their “movement” and the country itself.
Most polls indicate Trump is well behind Hillary Clinton. Of course, this was not always the case. Trump’s decline really began when the organs of the conservative movement began a coordinated attack against the frontrunner of their own party. This makes no sense if you think the conservative movement actually opposes Hillary. But it doesn’t.
The primary interest the Beltway Right has is keeping its control over grassroots Republicans. Trump is the real threat, not President Hillary. President Hillary is an opportunity.
Notice the condescending rhetoric from our favorite cuckservatives, men like Erick Erickson, Rick Wilson, or whatever “Republican strategist” you’ve picked as a bête noire for your sock account on Twitter. There’s always the tone of superiority, that they are explaining politics to the rubes. This is after months of being proven incompetent as operatives and ineffective as analysts. It’s like Maggie De Block lecturing you about losing weight.
Rick Wilson, to gang up on the Alt Right’s whipping boy, does not know anything about politics either in terms of ideology or tactics. However, as a political consultant, that’s not his job. His job is to convince campaigns to give him money and to win exposure for himself by telling the mainstream media what they want to hear about Republicans. And here, he is quite good at his job. He’s good at his job in the same way Benny Hinn or Peter Popoff are good at their jobs at fleecing the gullible. Most conservatives are as effective at hucksterism as they are failures at winning and using political power.
This is also why the supposed division between a corrupt Republican “Establishment” and a virtuous conservative movement is overstated. Yes, most Big Business donors want cheap labor. But ultimately, they want to make money. They will compromise because there are other interests (government contracts, favorable legislation, regulatory reform) elected leaders can offer.
In the same way, an “Establishment” politician John Boehner was mainly interested in staying in office. He thinks Cruz was “Lucifer” not just because Cruz was personally unpleasant, but because Cruz would consciously sabotage his own party’s agenda in order to raise his profile among conservative activists. An Establishment politician will go along with a nationalist platform so long as it can win.
“True conservatives” won’t. The movement creates a theatrical opposition while profiting off failure. It’s worth noting Cruz did nothing on a winnable issue like opposing President Obama’s unilateral amnesty for illegal immigrants, but was willing to shut down the government (and cost the GOP politically) over an issue like Obamacare where the GOP had already lost.
The point of the movement is to fail. They are militant precisely on those issues (cutting Medicare, cutting expenditures on infrastructure, pushing upper class tax cuts, restricting abortion for victims of rape) which are deeply unpopular, while rolling over on issues which they can win, like stopping illegal immigration, pushing English as the national language, or opposing trade policies which hurt the interests of American workers.
They claim to defend Christian values but provide tax cuts to the very corporate leaders who are pushing homosexuality and transgenderism on Southern states with threats of boycotts. And they either never see the contradiction or simply don’t care.
To be a “true conservative” is to embrace a tribal identity, to belong to a kind of religion. Trump “is not one of us,” therefore, he is to be rejected, even if he can give conservatives much of what they want. Even if conservatives lose everything, they remain saved in their own eyes because they remained true to the faith and will be redeemed by history or by the vaguely Christian God they imagine supports their movement. Their “Constitutional Republic” is not of this world.
For that reason, Trump may have fatally miscalculated. He appealed to interests, but conservatives wanted him to absorb their identity. He couldn’t and now #NeverTrump is never going away. Someone like RNC head Reince Priebus actually has a stake in Trump victory; someone like bucket food salesman Glenn Beck simply doesn’t. Trump claims he can win without party unity, but considering the disadvantages he already faces, it seems unlikely.
The current hostility between Trump and Ted Cruz and between self-identified nationalists and “true conservatives” is in many ways an accident. Cruz and Trump were practically in alliance for most of this campaign. If Rubio had emerged as Trump’s primary challenger instead of Cruz, it’s easy to imagine Cruz still being on the shortlist for Trump’s VP pick. But as it has developed, Trump’s most stalwart opponents are those voters who identify as “very conservative,” the same people he had assumed he would have won over by now.
What can he do? Agree and amplify may be his only choice. Rather than trying to bring conservatives home, Trump may have to double down on nationalism. Dispense entirely with the nonsense about “limited government” which the true conservatives constantly talk about but never deliver. Perhaps Trump should say he’d repudiate all student loan debt as a precursor to abolishing the program entirely. If you’re going to be a populist, go full populist.
But what is clear is Trump’s path to victory, if he has one, can’t rely on American conservatives. And more broadly, neither can a path to victory for Identitarians. This despicable charade, this nightmarish collection of obese con artists and double-chinned mountebanks has to end. It must be hollowed out from within even as it is attacked from without. Because if 2016 has proven anything, it’s that the conservative movement was never interested in even nominal victory over the Left. It’s only ever been interested in keeping its own constituents in subjugation.
34 Comments
I am a bit more optimistic about Trump than Mr. Hood but I do think,strictly from a practical political viewpoint, that the time has come for him to reach out across the aisle a bit more and perhaps court some Sanders-supporting millenials. Repudiating student-debt would be a great way to do that (uh, just saying that for a friend) as would finding some old-school working class Democrat support. He could quote the cost of illegals, the amount of money lost by outsourcing, the price of our endless wars, etc. and start speaking about all of the other and better things we could be spending that money on rather than just complaining about its disappearance.
I also think that the Never Trump movement will not hold together quite as well as one might think. We all can agree that mainstream conservatives have no true principles. But they also cannot maintain the charade of having principles by throwing the election to Hillary because that could possibly doom them even among their cuck base (whom they rely on to some extent for their ability to operate without principles in the first place). I suspect that even now they are conspiring ways to backslide and cash in on the Trump Train when it arrives at the station. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but my faith in the greed and duplicity of conservatives has never been higher. Of course, I say all this only if that very same greed and duplicity does not deny Trump the nomination.
I think for many people the term or label ‘Conservative’ or ‘Conservatives’ represents a class of people who are only in it for themselves. I also think this doesn’t mean this class of people function and inhabit the privileged class of the political system which exists to con candidates out of their money. Anyone who turns their back on the stated principles, well-being, and future of their people ought to be considered a conservative, honestly.
The fathers who shouldered their children with the burdens of the present, the politicians who sold out their base for the pathos of power and status, and the ‘conservative’ cultural system which, instead of creating an oppositional narrative to combat the Gramscian culture war of the Jews, just went along with it and gave these people tax credits because ‘muh business’.
Nothing profound here I suppose just my thoughts after reading this great article by Mr. Hood. But, then again, when were nationalists or identitarians ever under the illusion they’d be gaining their victory by walking through the gates of conservatism?
Every time when I’m reading some of the nonsense from National Review or other “respectable” publications, I try to imagine what it would look like if billionaires hired some dummy to disguise the agenda to keep the billionaires rich at all costs. They would talk about limited government while billionaires actually collude with government and have a revolving door between Goldman Sachs, Treasury, the SEC, etc. They would talk about American principles and values instead of the American people, to obscure traditional American identity for the usual pool of cheap labor.
They would throw out red meat by pretending to care about abortion, gays, and other non-issues for them, because they know the Left has alienated many traditionalist Americans and they can rope these people into associating all this with “liberals” and “the government,” when of course the general trend of things has a more ethnic and ancient bent to it, a Clash of Civilizations Samuel Huntington never bothered to notice.
Another thing they would do is to remove the Founding Fathers and bring in a new version, where Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and the rest weren’t unabashed racists, Anglophiles and/or Francophiles (the left does the same thing of course, tarnishing them while also praising the idea of them for supporting what the Left wished they had supported, in order to rewrite the script). They would justify wasteful defense spending and wars for Israel by constantly playing up “islamo-fascist” threats while never questioning what Muslims ever got about, or doing anything to assuage their anger, but only continuing to anger them with frivolous wars, while importing Muslims, and claiming that “Judeo-Christian values” forever linked us to helping Israel, regardless of whether Israel ever lifted a finger to help us.
With this obscurantism of Jewish power in mind, I still have yet to find a single one of these conservatives who doesn’t follow this script, who is remotely committed to preserving anything about traditional America, traditional Americans, or republicanism, which explicitly lies in not acquiring too much economic, military, or political power in any one person or small group of people’s hands. These conservatives support precisely that by obfuscating in whom the power lies, and what their interests are, which leads to absurdities like replacing the independence-minded population with permament government-dependent brown people who vote for more of the same, sending jobs overseas, starting reckless wars, etc.
I always wonder how aware the cuckservatives are of what they’re doing. Jeb Bush heartily laughed at Ted Cruz when Marco Rubio accused Cruz of not speaking Spanish. He has mongrel children, wholeheartedly welcomes the takeover of America by hostile “reconquista” types, brags about speaking Spanish in his home, and wants to make this process go national, so….clearly he can see that Mexicans and Central/South Americans in general have done terrible jobs of creating modern nation states, clearly he understands the demographic replacement that’s coming, so why support all this? Is he like “the smoking man” on X-Files who thinks the invasion is inevitable, and wants to bargain his little portion out of it? Has he somehow deluded himself into thinking that Mexicans who created a corrupt, crime-ridden hellhole will create some sort of constitutional utopia here, in the face of their crime statistics? What’s going on with Merkel, is she, Jeb, or anyone like them stupid or evil? I’ve never been in the position of not holding my people first and foremost in my entire life, I wasn’t ever “blue-pilled,” so it’s impossible for me to get in the mind of someone like that. It’s even harder when they’re higher up on the food chain, with so much of the control over these people held out of our sight. I suspect it’s just the usual human foible of myopia, ego, and avarice like usual. Girls take selfies, dummies write blog posts about inanity, politicians sell their souls and their countries.
EVERYONE, literally EVERYONE, is “in it for themselves”, no matter what “It” is. This is a truth so fundamental , so simple, that hardly anyone thinks of its implications.
Sorry, I was addressing Tharru’s first statement.
I think taking electoral politics at face value is a waste of time.
If salvation comes it will come from red-pilling a critical mass of white debils. If that is achieved the white debils will do what needs to be done.
Electoral politics is simply a tool for red-pilling.
And von Trump is perfect for red-pilling cos he drives the bad guys insane
literally
even the deep cover ones i never suspected have outed themselves.
it’s a beautiful tank, Moriarty
and remember chilluns – cultural warfare is fun or you’re doing it wrong
https://twitter.com/genbarrison/status/726289722771968000
anon, I couldn’t agree more with your point.
Excellent analysis, Mr. Hood. Superb. To put it in perspective, read Conrad Black’s article and note the similarity. In essence, Conservatism, Inc. is morally bankrupt, venal and on the cusp of disintegration. Bet on it. And the Alt-Right will fill the void.
Looks like I forgot to post the link. Here is Mr. Black:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-inevitable-mr-trump-15975
Trump was in a tough spot. He barely won a lot of these cuck-heavy states. Had he not gone Republican, he might not be where he is. It’s just an unfortunate reality that Trump was competing in contests decided by some of the dumbest and most gullible fools on the planet who don’t respond to anything but conservatism.
Youre obviously a Cruz shill, and anyone who praises idiots like Ericsson and Wilson aren’t to be given ANY credibility. You’re obviously butt-hurt that Trump has beaten your anointed idol Cruz so now you’re trying to legitimize your failing. CruzCultists like yourself are pathetic. And don’t use “cuckservative” like you know what it means, because it only applies to people like you.
Gold.
“Even if conservatives lose everything, they remain saved in their own eyes because they remained true to the faith and will be redeemed by history or by the vaguely Christian God they imagine supports their movement. ”
If I may be allowed to comment the article of yours that you link to under “the vaguely Christian God” — I think the problem with people using “bring back religion” to promote their social ideas is that they fail to see that it is society that interprets religion. That’s why there’s Orthodoxy, Catholicism and 365 kinds of Prots.
These people imagine they’d be in charge, and imposing their will like the Salem witch trials or Spanish Inquisition. Then when a Pope Francis comes along they invoke the No True Scotsman argument.
See, you can impose the same Bible and same “commandments” but people will interpret them their own way: Italian urban Catholic society vs rural Irish Catholic.
I think this kind of thinking arises because Christianity itself is an alien creed imposed on the “pagan” masses of Europe. Heathen religion is/was an expression of the people themselves. So the modus vivendi is swearing allegiance to the creeds but “of course” using some “common sense” in daily life.
I’ll believe that “bringing back Christianity” will “stop this open borders nonsense” or “abolish gay marriage” or whatever when someone can explain to me why “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is comparable with some combination of war, capital punishment and abortion, depending on what age or society or social class you live in.
Because “Thou shalt not kill” was how Elizabethan scholars translated the phrase. I have been told that the commandment is closer to “Thou shalt not murder.” Murder is aggressive killing for some sort of gain-money, power, emotional satisfaction such as vengeance or lust. But one can ill in self-defense, as a punishment for crime or in war.
Great comment. Tweeted on my Twitter feed.
Christians would argue that their faith is capable of infinite adaptation to infinite circumstances, but always with the same end in view.
Reminiscent in many ways of their spiritual elder brother. 😉
P.S. Don’t ever take down that old blog of yours. Someone should make a backup of it. I would, but don’t know how.
Thanks! I think blogs stay up forever, which is either a feature or a bug. The late Alistair Clarke’s Aryanfuturism is still available, for ex. I ocassionally mien it or mine for quotes I know I’ve seen there.
White Europeans built western civilization and we would have built it with or without Christianity. We thought we could make Africa civilized by introducing them to Jesus and that didn’t work out. Still a violent shit hole and probably always will be. The intelligence and creativity lies within the European mind, it doesn’t lie within any religion and certainly not a foreign one. If anything I believe Christianity to be below us and was a hindrance to our advancement. Our pagan gods were much cooler.
“We thought we could make Africa civilized by introducing them to Jesus and that didn’t work out. Still a violent shit hole and probably always will be. ”
Interesting. A test case for the “Christianity made the West what it is” line. As someone once said to me online, white people can make any economic system work, so it’s pointless to argue about socialism vs capitalism before we actually have the White Republic. Same with religion; only White people could make Christianity work. I think it was Stuart Sudekum who said it was like Krishna swallowing poison an holding it in his throat (hence turning it blue) to save the world. “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
George Lincoln Rockwell: “A White Nationalist is someone concerned with his race. A conservative is someone concerned with his money.”
This entire article rests on the faulty premise that Trump can’t beat Hillary. You should have spent some time demonstrating that rather than taking it on assumption. Then again, had you done so, the article never would have been written.
http://m.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/trump_41_clinton_39
Mr. Hood…they say people hate those who tell the truth…….I don’t hate you, but don’t like the fact that, once again, you have made me re-evaluate my thinking on the conservative elite in the U.S. Some say the truth can’t hurt. Never the less, I read your articles immediately after they are published, proving I probably have a bizarre streak of loving to inflict pain on myself…..LOL Have a nice day.
Trump is a nationalist White in a post-nationalist, post-White age. His intellectual weaknesses are manifest but his heart is in the right place. Our biggest opportunity lies in the overreaction to, and mishandling of his campaign by our enemies. Increasingly, a promising dialectic that unfolds in our favor becomes distinctly more possible.
After that bad loss to Cruz in Wisconsin, Trump seemed to regain his footing by hiring that high-powered DC lobbyist Paul Manafort. Judging from his bio, this is just the type Trump needed, someone who knows how knife fight in that establishment world that has been cutting Trump to pieces.
But what I find interesting about that hire is that I can’t ignore the fact that Manafort is an ethnic Italian who stepped up to help Trump. It seems to fit with Trump winning every subset of American whites except the interior West, Plains and Midwestern rubes primarily of Germanic/Nordic derived stocks. Urban, homogenized, ethnic, rust belt and Southern whites have been coming out strong for Trump. I think the lesson is that whites on the losing side of globalization who also have proximity to vibrancy are a potential mother lode for WNst outreach. (Sorry, but that flat out excludes the kind of flyover rubes who support Ted Cruz.)
I don’t think it should be overlooked that Trump does not far as I know have a single Jew or elite-class, east coast WASP among his top people. There is a lesson there too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort
Full bred, half-breeds and ethnic Italians are ruthless when it comes to eliminate and survive in the political world. It’s in their instinct since ancient times. Besides ethnically they know which they are on.
Not matter what this Trump persona has shaken the political arena in the US not since the civil war!
correction; they know which side they are on…..
Another common denominator among Trump’s top people seems to be working class or blue collar origins. His campaign manager Corey Lowendowski went to a public college, is Catholic and judging from the name possibly of Polish origin.
Roger Stone is half Italian, half Hungarian and from a middle or working class background, and I think Catholic. Stone’s bio shows he has been advising Republicans since Nixon’s time. With all that experience working behind the scenes with politicians and donors, he must have a really good idea of how power actually works in this country. Interestingly enough, Stone dedicated one of his books to a denier of that alleged event many people refer to as the holocaust.
It will be interesting to see where Trump goes from here with all of the most powerful forces in history lined up against him. I enjoyed trolling cucks as much as anyone, but now it’s on to the big game and adversaries as competent as they are ruthless.
What are we to make of Donald Trump’s connections with Jewish real estate mogul Charles Kushner? Are we to ignore that several of Trump’s closest advisers – including Sam Nunberg and Roger Stone – have been Jews? And it is nearly impossible to overlook the fact that Donald Trump’s self-described “pitbull” is none other than Michael Cohen, a prominent Jewish lawyer and lie-peddler. Are we to expect that this is all by mere happenstance? It is doubtful. Should we dismiss these serious warning signs for the simple reason that Trump has expressed modest nationalist tendencies? Absolutely not. The Jewish Connection runs deep in the Trump Organization, just as it does in many power circles.
@Steven
The Jewish Forward /mistakenly/ reported that Stone is Jewish–he is not.
http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/318822/second-jewish-adviser-off-trump-team/
However, you are definitely right that Jews are seeking to control access to Trump. We may never know how sincere Trump is, how aware he is of their machinations (if opposed to it), etc..
@Helmuth I stand corrected, thank you.
@Steven
After a bit of digging, I’m actually inclined to distrust Stone a lot. While he’s been pilloried by various leftist blogs for racist tweets and even dedicating a book to Victor Thorn, he appears to work closely with disinfo agent Jim Fetzer (apparently a professor of psychology who specializes in making anti-Zionist truth-seekers look like idiots by distracting from legitimate concerns about Jewish power with idiotic theories–e.g. distracting from Israeli espionage in America with idiotic “hologram” theories about 9/11, or Sandy Hook idiocy) and disinfo agent Robert Morrow (whose raison d’etre seems to be hiding LBJ’s Zionist connections and JFK’s angering of the Jewish Mafia).
In this light, his access to DT should seem very concerning, although it doesn’t speak to DT’s character per se.
I have long suspected that Donald Trump has been capitalizing upon the growing dissatisfaction of people with populist and nationalist sentiments, be they of the white nationalist identity, or of the more amorphous, but still relevant “cultural” nationalist identity.
It’s not that I believe that Donald Trump is a charlatan; it’s that I do not have sufficient evidence to prove that he ISN’T one.
I believe that populists, nationalists and tribalists would be better off devoting their attention towards gutting local and state political offices, building tribes and networks and exerting self-determination from the bottom-up, eroding the foundation of the DC megalith, rather than attempting to get “our man” into its inner circle.
These are good points. I forgot about the lawyer, and it didn’t occur to me that Roger Stone might be half (((Hungarian))) rather than Hungarian.
I think the Jews around Trump are a reason for extreme caution and tempering enthusiasm. On the other hand, there is evidence he has the potential to disrupt the current power structure or even emerge as a transformational figure in moving the country toward an implicitly white-interest-serving form of civic nationalism. That’s in no way guaranteed though. If it happens, it will be an improvement over what we have now.
That possibility has to be the reason so many Jews are against Trump. They don’t want the GOP or the country evolving into something that might serve white interests even indirectly. It happened to them before when the Soviet Union evolved toward a kind of national Bolshevism. So I’m sure most Jews’ radar is up for that dangerous possibility (to them) with Trump.
Trump hired a real Jew’s Jew today. Disappointing.
http://8ch.net/pol/res/5901886.html
I explain the role of the establishment right in American politics here: https://watchfulness.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/globalist-systems-theory/