The GOP Establishment Failed to Make the Sales Pitch
It wasn't enough to just point out Democrat failures. The Republicans needed to read the room and didn't.
After listening to the latest episode of America This Week, I'm wondering how many people running the show in the two major parties learned anything from the rise of Donald Trump.
The Republican Party was at first pushing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the alternative to Trump. DeSantis was one of the first governors to start sending immigrants coming into Florida to other locations (in this case, Martha's Vineyard). His actions drew cries from the elite about how they couldn't possibly accommodate these migrants.
DeSantis also gained a reputation for pushing back against Disney; specifically, when Disney took actions that would be associated with the "woke" movement. It sure seemed like the GOP had a strong candidate.
Fast forward to today and the DeSantis campaign is on life support. Rather than present himself as somebody who exposes elitist hypocrisy and push back against and the various industrial complexes that involve a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate CEOs, DeSantis instead came off as somebody who was tiptoeing around those issues, railed against woke ideology and acted as though the only thing that need to happen was to change whoever was in charge of corrupt institutions.
Meanwhile, Nikki Haley entered the GOP race and, at first, seemed like she was going to be there just for the hopes that she'd be a vice president pick. Now she's being looked upon by certain elites as their savior, with Haley hitting all the talking points about Vladimir Putin, the Middle East and anonymous social media accounts.
Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, in their latest America This Week, saw the recent DeSantis-Haley debate as a case of figuring out which candidate is disliked the least. Neither DeSantis nor Haley distinguished themselves as somebody who had broad appeal to voters. Instead, one is failing to understand what really could make his moves with immigration (dump the problem on the elites and see how they react) and with Disney (powerful corporation embracing DEI to distract from bigger problems) connect with voters. The other, meanwhile, is too busy trying to connect Putin and Hamas to even bother with actual voter concerns.
Their failure to read the room comes because Trump, for all his faults, understands how to do a sales pitch. He demonstrated that in 2016 when he was the only GOP member who would point to the failures of endless wars, concerns about military contracting, the rise of Big Pharma, broken immigration policy and the gutting of America's manufacturing sector.
More importantly, he could start spinning tales about these people he met, how nice they were and how they did these incredible things. He could also do the same with a person he met, how he didn’t like him, how dishonest this person was and how they did these not-so-nice things.
Each time, it was basically the old "fish story" joke in which the fisherman talks all day long about the one that got away ("And it was as big as a whale, I tell you!"), where you may be uncertain as to whether or not the story is true, but the fisherman is so good at telling it you can't help but be amazed.
But while one can disagree with Trump's proposals, one can still recognize there's a lot in America that is broken -- and it's not because we didn't engage in more censorship of MAGA movements (or maybe that's Free Palestine now -- who can keep track these days). The reality is that there is a clear disconnect between the average American and the elite establishment. The elitists roll out one policy after another, never feel a negative impact themselves and assumes either (a) all is well or (b) if a fellow elite says things aren't working, they just need to put somebody else in charge. The average American, though, feels the brunt to some degree and has yet another reason not to trust the establishment.
Trump isn't necessarily a tactical genius; he's simply somebody who capitalized on the current environment. Taibbi, in a recent Racket News post, compared Trump to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, in that Trump's stump speeches are filled with one-liners that poke fun at DeSantis, Haley and others. People fire back with how Trump got this or that wrong, or whether or not Trump is being mean, or whatever. They miss the point, though, that Trump is able to make his pitch and get people to buy it, whereas the people who fire back "he's wrong!" or "he's mean!" think the way to sell an idea is a lengthy PowerPoint presentation filled with facts and figures, that only has the effect of putting the majority of Americans to sleep.
And along comes Vivek Ramaswamy, who is similar to Trump except with a couple of differences: He's younger and he spends less time telling countless tales that may or may not be about the fish that got away. What Ramaswamy can do well, though, is make the sales pitch. It seems every time you turn around, somebody presents Ramaswamy with an issue and Ramaswamy fires off an idea in a matter of minutes.
Once again, whether Ramaswamy has good or bad ideas, or whether he's right or wrong, is beside the point. What matters is that Ramaswamy, like Trump, sees enough to know what Americans are really upset about and is capitalizing. And while Ramaswamy isn't likely to keep Trump from winning the GOP nomination, what a shock it would be if Ramaswamy manages to finish ahead of DeSantis and Haley during Monday's Iowa caucus.
Democrats have had their failures, to be sure. They've made multiple errors that have both eroded Joe Biden's approval rating (while Trump's crack about the current President as "Sleepy Joe Biden" is considered by more people to not be a joke any longer) and allowed Trump to go from bleeding support in January 2021 to gaining it all back -- and more on top of it -- in three years time.
But if Republicans believed all they had to do was watch the Democrats make lots of mistakes and just ride that to victory, they were foolish. The failure of Republicans to actually understand the current situation in America is why they are watching their anointed candidate turn into Jeb Bush version 2.0 and now may have to settle for their version of Hillary Clinton as their savior. And all it comes from their failure to read the room.