Fighting Against A Trump Dictatorship

 I finally got around to Robert Kagan's The Trump dictatorship: How to stop it. I do not understand why any rational American thinks a dictator is a good idea. Imagining Donald J. Trump as a strong leader is beyond my abilities. Kagan suggests the following:

The first step is to consolidate all the anti-Trump forces in the Republican Party behind a single candidate, right now. It is obvious that candidate should be Nikki Haley and not because she’s pro-Ukraine but because she is clearly the most capable politician among the remaining candidates and the performer with the best chance, however slim, of challenging Trump. All the money and the endorsements should shift to her as quickly as possible. Yes, Ron DeSantis is likely too selfish and ambitious to drop out of the race, but if everyone else does and the remaining money and support all flow to Haley, he will quickly become irrelevant.

From that premise flows many subsidiary ideas until we get to:

Even if she loses, as she probably would, her campaign could nevertheless establish a useful and interesting dynamic for the general election. The formula for defeating Trump in November is simple enough: Unite the Democrats, and split the Republicans. That is why all the third-party candidacies now under consideration are disastrous. A middle-of-the-road, bipartisan third-party candidacy of the kind being promoted by No Labels is sure to hand Trump the election by siphoning more votes from Biden than from Trump. To defeat Trump, a third-party candidate must attract almost exclusively Republican voters. Who would be in a better position to do that than the person who already has a substantial Republican following, such as Haley? If No Labels really wants to help the country, it will hold its third-party slot open for Haley. And if Haley really wants to save the country from Trump, , and if she cannot defeat Trump in the primaries, she will run as a third-party candidate with the intention of drawing away Republican votes from Trump. Should Republican voters devoted to defending the Constitution vote for Biden over Trump in the general election? Yes, they should. But it would be smart to give them a more palatable alternative.

Lastly, there is the idea of a coalition:

What are they saving it for? If it’s for a future in the Republican Party, forget it. The Republican Party is finished as a coherent legitimate political party. Either it is about to become the party of the Trump dictatorship or it is going to break up into Constitutional and anti-Constitutional wings. The two-party arrangement the nation has known since the Civil War ended when the Trump cult captured the GOP. We are heading into a new era of politics in America. We could do worse than go into it with a coalition of Democrats and Constitutional Republicans. The fact is, even if Trump is defeated in November, the nation will still be in crisis as Trump leads his supporters in rebellion against that outcome. Democrats and Constitutional Republicans will need to stick together then, too. 

 My oldest sister calls herself a conservative with a tone indicating a chip on her shoulder as if she is ready to martyr herself. I have no idea what it is she is conserving - other than conservative seems to mean a vote for Trump. I do not think any Republican is capable of rising above the cult of Trump. In my view, Trump is the product of the anti-government mantra Republicans have made part and parcel of the conservative mentality since Ronald Reagan.

The same mentality I see whenever Nikki Haley speaks. She is not a rebel, she is not a maverick, she is as suffused with groupthink as Ron DeSantis. neither Haley nor DeSantis can rise above this mentality. They only prolong the ferment that feeds the anti-democratic right wing.

Chris Christie runs in a primary for a party that is not his. Christie's GOP is dead.

The Democrats need to run on changing the Constitution. Get rid of the Electoral College. Term limits for Congress. Proportional representation in the House (which will also expand it). An amendment which brings Roe v. Wade into the Constitution, but which also gives to mothers a right to family leave, and pre-K education and a child care credit that will help lift children out of poverty. 

Finally, the Democrats need to recruit those who do not vote, a large number in Indiana. 

How much has changed with me? I find Mona Charen a voice of reason. While writing the above, I listened to her podcast “Dictator on Day One”. It gave me some insight into how there came to be an anti-democractic right in this country.

sch 12/10