The Never-Trump Failure of Leadership and Imagination

Sorry, but it’s true

The non-MAGA, Never-Trump wing of the Republican Party is suffering from a colossal failure of leadership and imagination that threatens the future of our nation. It’s far past time for a come-to-Jesus reckoning with what they have wrought and for them to chart a new course.

With the likelihood that Trump will become the party’s nominee, Never-Trumpers need to own-up to the 40+ year role that Reagan-initiated “Trickle-Down Economics” played in the vast disaffection of the middles class / working class. Failure to do so will help perpetuate Trump and Trumpism for the foreseeable future.

The fuel behind Trump’s candidacy and then his presidency was the message: “A plague on BOTH their houses. I can fix it.” Why was that so powerful?

Although it was initiated by Republicans, Democrats collaborated with Republicans for decades around a Neo-Liberal, Globalist agenda -- based on Reaganomics. This totally fabricated, untested, “Trickle-Down Economics” financially eviscerated the middle/working class. This Neo-Liberal agenda undermined individual workers, families, communities, and even regions, creating widespread anger, fear, and resentment.

Many thought that Obama, who campaigned on “Hope” and “Change We Can Believe In,” would be able to address all of this disaffection. But his failure, caused in no small measure by the 2008 banking/mortgage crisis and subsequent recession (a direct result of Reaganomic deregulation policies) and unrelenting Republican obstruction and “Dog-Whistle Politics,” opened the door to Trump and the authoritarian impulse. (How is it that pundits could be puzzled by why middle class / working class people who voted for Obama, would turn around and vote for Trump? How more obvious could this be?)

Trump built furiously on the anger, fear, and resentment of our disaffected millions with a bombastic, self-aggrandizing term in office built on contempt for any and all authority and agendas but his own. While building a belligerent narrative around Making America Great Again, Trump modeled himself as a strongman on the side of the (White) working and middle class, and managed to cultivate an enormous populist following.

Thankfully, a majority of Americans were not won over.

Biden presented an alternative, more moderate and less incendiary tack and, thankfully, a majority of Americans chose his approach.

Once elected, Biden then led a critical public policy pivot: He directed his entire administration to “center” the rebuilding of middle class and working class America. It was an obvious pivot but not an easy one.

With not a little drama and with much ugly legislative sausage-making, the Biden team was able to help shepherd several major pieces of legislation through Congress that effectively recast economic policy from “Trickle-Down Economics” into “Bottom-Up and Middle-Out Economics.” This pivot was opposed by virtually every single Republican in both houses of Congress and throughout the ranks of leaders in the party.

Nevertheless, hundreds of billions of public and private-sector dollars are now being committed to creating good, steady jobs that can help reestablish the vitality of the working and middle class. This can empower them and rebuild their communities so that they regain their agency and dignity as builders and bulwarks of our great nation.

Bottom-Up and Middle-Out Economics represents the main thrust of a great Democratic pivot to meet the crisis of our times: a massively disaffected middle and working class.

But where is the Republican analogue?

There isn’t one. And that’s a huge problem.

Republicans, from the Never-Trumpers to the most radical right-wingnuts, are still demanding ruinous Reaganesque policies of more “Trickle-down” tax cuts for the rich and even more radical deregulation of industries as well as of finance and even child labor laws. And most also sit silently by as mini-Trump governors and others impose extreme and cruel government controls over many people’s health care choices, school curricula, voting rights, corporate equity policies, and much, much more.

Where, among Republican never-Trumpers or others has there been any -- ANY -- effort at taking stock of the Republican party’s leadership role in the generational hollowing-out of the middle and working class? There’s endless criticism of Biden’s policies and spending, and continuing demonization of democrats and liberals often tied-up in anti-woke and anti-grooming hysteria. But where are the “normal” Republican’s arguments and planning for a better way forward?

I have looked and looked and have found almost nothing. Republicans of all stripes have nothing. Instead, they just criticize every proactive step Democrats propose to rebuild our middle and working class while remaining chained to the same-old tried and failed Republican orthodoxies.

Remember: Trump’s cult-like following has to do with his hyper-aggressive championing of the aggrieved:“A plague on both their houses.” How can Republicans possibly believe that demanding the continuation of the failed policies of the past will win MAGA and MAGA-adjacent voters back to some sort of “normal” party governance?

This failure of both leadership and imagination among Never-Trump Republicans is the most urgent problem we face in our current political environment. Nothing will change on the Republican side —and especially in the overall passion for Trump and Trumpism — until Republican leadership gets real about Reaganomics and its perverse outcomes -- and until Republicans start articulating, and FIGHTING FOR, a better set of policies that do not promote or support authoritarian thuggery.

The endless polling and surveys and statements by disaffected middle and working class people make unmistakably clear that what they want and need most of all is to be “centered” in public policy — as they should be -- as a cohort of citizens absolutely essential to the greatness this nation is capable of.

Never-Trumpers, this ball is totally in your court.

Democrats are doing what they think is best and what they can get done in the current political environment. Republican “normies,” you are basically doing nothing — or at least little more than chucking peanuts from the upper galleries —- or sitting out the game on the bench. It’s become a thing to have thrown-up one’s hands and to have declared oneself “Party-less” or Homeless.

Well, you can’t play winning ball or stir “fan” loyalty and commitment by abstaining from playing. You play winning ball by coming up with good players, managers, and the better plays that can be competitive and successful. Often you do that by studying what the other teams do that is successful and then innovating beyond that. And then you go out and give it all you’ve got.

Never-Trumpers, please: it’s time to come down out of the peanut galleries and off the bench. Own your missteps and your failures. Learn the lessons that will help you formulate better policies. Take responsibility for the damage you’ve caused and for making things right. Revisit your assumptions and especially your failed prior game plans.

Then develop better ideas, better plans and plays, that can move our republic forward in constructive competitive directions.

The failure to do pretty much any of this has put our nation at great risk. The ball is in the Never-Trumper court and — BREAKING NEWS! — this is not a game.

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