We hear a
lot lately about the threats that Donald Trump poses to this country. We hear about his racism, his attempts to be
tough acting like a Putin, his outrageous attacks against Muslim refugees, his
narcissism and his bluster about negotiating with other nations (all of which
his latest endorser, Sarah Palin, supports!).
On the other hand, we hear from those who don’t share his views to any
degree that if he is elected, they plan to move to Canada.
I totally empathize
with their concerns and fears, but I have to say that Donald Trump’s views and
bluster are not necessarily the only concern about which one must be energized
or exercised. Personally, I am very
worried about the people who are supporting him and especially those who have
come to support him from a position of uncertainty or fear. Who are they? How are they being pulled-in?
First, it
appears that some of his supporters are those who are basically associated with
the original Tea Party. This group began
as an antidote to those Republicans in Congress who were advocating their
conservatism, but not following through in terms of their votes or their
legislation. Abandonment of ideological
purity on the part of these neo-conservatives came forth especially during
budget negotiations and in cases where legislation prevailed that favored progressive
values.
The Tea
Party emerged around 2009 generally opposing excessive taxation and government
intervention in the private sector while supporting stronger immigration
controls. Encyclopedia Britannica tells the story of their ascendancy within
the Republican Party and here are some of the highlights that remind us of
their questionable positions:
- The catalyst for what would become known as the
Tea Party movement came on February 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, a
commentator on the business-news network CNBC, referenced the Boston Tea
Party (1773) in his response to Pres. Barack Obama’s mortgage relief plan.
Speaking from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Santelli
heatedly stated that the bailout would “subsidize the losers’ mortgages”
and proposed a Chicago Tea Party to protest government intervention in the
housing market. The five-minute clip became an Internet sensation
- Spurred on by conservative pundits, particularly
by Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck, the generally libertarian character of
the movement drew disaffected Republicans to the Tea Party banner, and its
anti-government tone resonated with members of the paramilitary militia movement. Tea Party ranks were swelled by
“Birthers,” by those who considered Obama a socialist and a ‘secret’ Muslim.
- The Tea Party’s first major action was a
nationwide series of rallies on tax-filing day April 15, 2009, that drew
more than 250,000 people proclaiming that “Tea” was an acronym for “Taxed
Enough Already.” The movement gathered strength throughout the summer of
2009, with its members appearing at congressional town hall meetings to
protest the proposed reforms to the American health care system,
particularly the proposed “public option.”
- Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska in
July 2009 and became an unofficial spokesperson on Tea Party issues, and
in February 2010 she delivered the keynote address at the first National
Tea Party Convention. Glenn Beck of Fox News helped draw tens of thousands
of protesters to the U.S. Capitol on September 12, 2009. Freedom Works, a supply-side economics
advocacy group headed by former Republican House majority leader Dick
Armey, provided logistical support for large Tea Party gatherings
- January
2010, in the special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by
the death of Ted Kennedy, dark-horse and Tea Party affiliate Scott Brown
defeated Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley in a race that
shifted the balance in the Senate, depriving the Democrats of the 60-vote
filibuster-proof majority they had held since July 2009
- The November 2010 midterm elections saw the
Republicans gain approximately 60 seats to take control of the House and
reduce the Democratic majority in the Senate. Many observers credited this
performance to the interest and enthusiasm generated by the Tea Party and
their insistence that Obama (and “Obamacare”) was to blame for a poor
economy, higher taxes, small business failures plus domestic and foreign
incompetency.
- Although Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz coasted to
an easy victory in his race for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, that result
was far from typical for both the Tea Party and the Republicans in the
November 2012 elections. Several first-term
Tea Party representatives were turned out in their reelection bids. In Massachusetts, Sen. Scott Brown, was
defeated by Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. Republicans ultimately
ceded small but significant gains to the Democrats in both houses of
Congress
- In May 2013 the IRS revealed that it had unfairly
targeted for additional scrutiny conservative groups that had applied for
tax-exempt status as 501(c)(4) nonprofit social welfare organizations. The
so-called scandal served to reinvigorate a movement that had struggled to
regain its footing in the wake of the 2012 elections
- Later in 2013, Tea Party members in the House and
the Senate demonstrated their influence when they used the threat of a
government shutdown as a bargaining tool in their ongoing campaign against
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
- Those parts of the government deemed nonessential
were shut down on October 1, the start of the fiscal year, and some
800,000 federal workers were furloughed. Business leaders, traditionally
strong supporters of the Republican Party, vocally criticized the Tea
Party and the tactics that led to the shutdown
- Seen as the group most responsible for the
government shutdown and facing increasingly vocal and robust challenges
from pro-business lobbies, Tea Party candidates suffered losses in a
string of 2014 primary contests. Across the country, establishment
Republicans, many of whom had tacked right to embrace elements of the Tea
Party platform won nominations. The
narrative of a resurgent Republican establishment took hold in the media.
- That narrative suffered a stunning blow on June
10, however, when Republican House majority leader Rep. Eric Cantor of
Virginia was soundly defeated by a dark horse Tea Party candidate in the
Republican primary election—a vote that was widely seen as a rejection of
the incumbent’s support for immigration reform.
- In the 2014 off-year national elections, the Tea
Party’s resurgence helped Republicans win majority control of both House
and Senate.
- 2015 saw the emergence of Republican presidential
candidates who had substantial Tea Party backing, including Cruz, Rubio,
Huckabee, and continuing front-runner, Donald Trump, who was endorsed on
January 19, 2016 by former Tea Party spokesperson, Sarah Palin.
(For
further details on Tea Party history, see http://www.britannica.com/topic/Tea-Party-movement)
It is very
difficult to know how many supporters of Donald Trump are also Tea Party
supporters, but one thing is clear: they
would come not only from the ranks of registered Republicans, but from
Independents and even from some conservative Democrats. One estimate is that 32% are from the Tea
Party movement. This analysis from
arbiter news gives us some more interesting demographic information to keep in
mind.
Gender
42% of Trump
supporters are female (MSNBC poll)
58% male (MSNBC poll)
Age
2% are under 30 (Real
Clear Politics, YouGov)
14% are between the
ages of 30 and 44 (Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
About 50% are between
the ages of 45 and 64 (Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
34% are 65 and over
(Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
Race
91% White (MSNBC
poll)
Income
33% earn under $50K
(MSNBC poll)
72% earn under $100K
(MSNBC poll)
28% earn over $100K
(MSNBC poll) / 11% earn over $100K (Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
Education
43% have a high
school degree or less (MSNBC poll)
19% have a college or
postgraduate degree (Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
Ideology
65% describe
themselves as “conservative” (Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
20% describe
themselves as “liberal” or “moderate” (Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
13% describe
themselves as “very conservative” (Real Clear Politics, YouGov)
32% indicate involvement
with the Tea Party movement (Public Policy Polling)
82% support Trump’s
proposed ban on Muslims, compared to 54% of Republicans (Public Policy Polling)
66% believe President
Obama is a Muslim (Public Policy Polling)
61% think President
Obama was not born in the US (Public Policy Polling)
41% are in favor of
bombing Agrabah, the fictional country from Aladdin (Public Policy Polling)
(which may well have something to do with the 43% with high school or less
education)
No one
analysis is extensive enough or deep enough to be entirely accurate, but
because this particular analysis takes information from several sources, I have
chosen it simply to give us some idea of from where Trump support
emanates. Having established that, I
want to leave it for your consideration, keeping it in mind as we move ahead to
emphasize one more important point that has been made by a doctoral student’s thesis:
that all of these demographics need to be tempered by one factor that seems
determinant about Trump’s supporters. Here’s a compendium of that story as it
appears on inquisitr.com.
“A survey conducted by (the
author) suggests that there’s one strange determining factor that makes a Donald Trump
supporter, and it has nothing to do with race, religion, age, gender,
education, or income. A Donald Trump supporter tends to be someone with authoritarian leanings.”
Matthew MacWilliams sampled 1,800 voters from across the entire
political spectrum and ran a “statistical analysis” of the poll answers. He
found that it didn’t really matter what age, race, religion, etc. the voter
was, they tended to support Donald Trump if they agreed with authoritarian
values. Donald Trump supporters also had a strong fear of terrorism, according
to the survey, but that was greatly overshadowed by their authoritarian
inclinations.”
Just what does authoritarian mean?
While MacWilliams mentions that authoritarianism has been “widely studied” as a
result of the authoritarian leadership in the Nazi party, this does not mean
that Donald Trump should be fairly compared to Adolf Hitler.
Authoritarian
leanings are defined by Dictionary.com in the following way.
“A personality pattern reflecting a desire
for security, order, power, and status, with a desire for structured lines of
authority, a conventional set of values or outlook, a demand for unquestioning
obedience, and a tendency to be hostile toward or use as scapegoats individuals
of minority or nontraditional groups.”
I don’t usually quote another author extensively, but, because I think this
particular author has a major valid point that corresponds to thoughts I have
previously posted, I have taken the liberty of doing so. So, let us conclude with a more detailed
analysis of this “authoritarian inclination” according to MacWilliams’ thesis
and his article on Politico.com at: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533
[THE
AUTHOR, Matthew MacWilliams is founder of MacWilliams Sanders, a political
communications firms, and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he is writing his dissertation
about authoritarianism (all emphases are mine)]:
“Trump’s electoral strength—and
his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. And
because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American
electorate, among
Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible that Trump’s fan base will continue to
grow.
“Authoritarianism
is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. While its causes are
still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians
obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to
outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. From pledging to “make America
great again” by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and
ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.”
“Not all
authoritarians are Republicans by any means; in national surveys since 1992,
many authoritarians have also self-identified as independents and Democrats. Based
on 14 years of polling, (it has been found) that authoritarians have steadily
moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party over time. The trend began decades ago, as Democrats
embraced civil rights, gay rights, employment protections and other political
positions valuing freedom and equality. In my poll results, 49 percent of likely Republican
primary voters score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale—more
than twice as many as Democratic voters.”
“Trump was
the only candidate—Republican or Democrat—whose support among authoritarians
was statistically significant. And in a
general election, Trump’s strongman rhetoric will surely appeal to some of the 39 percent of independents in my
poll who identify as authoritarians and the 17 percent of self-identified
Democrats who are strong authoritarians.
“What’s
more, the number of Americans worried about the threat of terrorism is growing…
published research finding that non-authoritarians respond to the perception of threat by behaving more
like authoritarians… (which means that) more voters are susceptible to
Trump’s message about protecting Americans. In my survey, 52 percent of those
voters expressing the most fear that another terrorist attack will occur in the
United States in the next 12 months were non-authoritarians—ripe targets for
Trump’s message.
“So what does
this mean for the election? In a statistical analysis of the polling results, I
found that Trump has
already captured 43 percent of Republican primary voters who are strong
authoritarians, and 37 percent of Republican authoritarians overall. Take activated
authoritarians from across the partisan spectrum and the growing cadre of
threatened non-authoritarians, then add them to the base of Republican general
election voters, and the potential electoral path to a Trump presidency becomes
clearer.
“So, those
who say a Trump presidency “can’t happen here” should check their conventional
wisdom at the door. The candidate has confounded conventional expectations this
primary season because those expectations are based on an oversimplified
caricature of the electorate in general and his supporters in particular. Conditions are ripe for an
authoritarian leader to emerge. Trump is seizing the opportunity. And
the institutions—from the Republican Party to the press—that are supposed to
guard against what James Madison called “the infection of violent passions”
among the people have either been cowed by Trump’s bluster or are asleep on the
job.
“It is
time for those who would appeal to our better angels to take his insurgency
seriously and stop dismissing his supporters as a small band of the
dispossessed. Trump
support is firmly rooted in American authoritarianism and, once awakened, it is
a force to be reckoned with.”
As I have
indicated in previous posts on this Blog, the tactics being employed by the Far
Right Wing of the Republican Party are not to be ignored; they are the tactics that
put fascists (or “authoritarians,” if you prefer that term) into complete
control of Germany in the mid-20th century. And, here’s the main point of today’s
posting: it was not just the strategy and
tactics of Hitler himself, or those of his cadre of ‘brown shirts,’ that
brought him to power. It was the fertile
ground of authoritarianism in the people (or susceptibility to strong-man characteristics)
plus the power of fear that led to the Third Reich and the
leadership of a Fuhrer.
If Trump
continues to attract this authoritarian strain from all political parties and
from independents, he could become the new authoritarian leader (Fuhrer) of
this country and, by extension, a leader who could produce dire consequences
for the rest of the world. It is those “dire
consequences” -- in all matters domestic and foreign-- that we must avoid.
In
2016, we MUST:
VOTE AGAINST authoritarianism (Trump is not
the only purveyor!)
DEFEAT Republicans at local, state and national levels
ELECT a Democrat to the Presidency (who will appoint progressives to
the Supreme Court)
TAKE BACK the Senate
