The
Logic of Populism: The Right Wing
In my January post I argued that “populism is not so much an ideology as it is a ‘political logic’ mobilizing the common people against big government and the most powerful economic interests” (and that) ... “Because populism is an attitude rather than an ideology it can manifest across the ideological continuum from right to left.”
Populists seek to shake up the established way of doing things. They wish to disrupt the cozy relationships amongst people in the political establishment. As a consequence, they see politics as a “battle between us and them” in which they (the populists) are the real people, the “makers,” while other people are “takers” who leech off of the common folks.
In January I gave an overview of populist movements on the right and left in the 19th century. I want to fast forward to contemporary times and use the model set forth by Michael Kazin to frame the discussion. [1]
Populisms of all kinds tend to be cross-class in character. Kazin says that left populism is dyadic. That means that it seeks to lift up common people of the middle and working classes against economic elites and big government.
Conversely, right populism is triadic. It sees the people as the white working and middle classes. They are poised on the one hand against economic and cultural elites and big government, and on the other against people of color and big government protection of them.
Traditionalism is conservative American nationalism. It has economic (free market capitalism) and social (patriarchal, anti-LGBTQ, racist) components. Traditional conservatives use the levers available through government processes to achieve as much of their agenda as they can incrementally. Since the Reagan era mainstream conservatism has been pushed to the right by populist pressures. Populists often hold similar values as traditionalists, but their intolerance for different opinions, or different kinds of people leads to a desire to blow up “business as usual” processes to get their way.
Donald Trump certainly has no respect for the normal processes of government. His forced shutdown of the government in 2018 when he couldn’t get Congressional funding to build the border wall, his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement which the international community had worked so hard to broker, his attempt to get the Georgia Secretary of State to “find 11,000 more votes” so he could win the state in 2020 and of course, his role in instigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 election outcome are all great examples of Trump’s populist disregard for conventional processes.
Of course, Trump’s role in instigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcome is another great example of populist tactics.
Since the time of Richard Nixon traditional conservatives have attempted to balance the low taxes corporate and white nationalist factions within Republican politics. Until Trump the corporate faction managed to control the presidential nomination process to prevent both anti-immigrant extremists like Patrick Buchanan (1996) and Tom Tancredo (2008), and free market ideologues like Steve Forbes (1996, 2000), Alan Keyes (1996, 2000, 2008), and Ron Paul (2008) from being serious threats to eventual establishment nominees.
That all came undone in 2016 when twelve candidates crowded the field. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was the early establishment favorite. But his candidacy was weakened when his protégé Florida Senator Marco Rubio entered the race along with several other mainstream candidates.
Every state has different rules for how the percentage of the vote is reflected in delegate distribution. But the winners typically get a share of the delegates that’s larger than the percentage of the vote they get. In most states the primary winner is the person who gets the most votes: so a plurality of the vote, not a majority. With such a crowded field Trump was able to win early primaries with very low percentages of the vote. In February in New Hampshire he won over half the delegates with only 35.3% of the vote. His four mainstream opponents together won over 44% of the vote. But they garnered only 39% of the delegates. Two weeks later in South Carolina, because of various decision rules, Trump was able to win all 50 delegates with only 32.5% of the vote. His mainstream opponents won over 37 % of the vote, but no delegates.[2]
After South Carolina all the mainstream candidates except former Ohio Governor John Kasich pulled out of the race leaving him and two extremists, Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, in the race. The mainstream candidates, not recognizing the seriousness of Trump’s threat, failed to rally behind one candidate who could defeat him. That failure handed the nomination to a white nationalist and a populist who sought to blow up the traditional ways of doing politics. Trump’s nomination and subsequent campaign fired up the white nationalist and white working class, making them the dominant faction in the party’s social base, that is, those who vote in primaries and decide the party’s nominees for office.
Trump has engineered a full blown far right populism arrayed against people of color and government and corporate elites who seem to be protecting them against supposedly “defenseless everyday white people.” This is the looming question. Can traditional conservatives in the Republican Party recapture the ability to control the center in American politics from the moderate right? Or, will the party be the haven of a far right racist populist Trumpist nation ideologically and psychologically separated from the rest of America?
Next time, with racial issues as the centerpiece, I'll juxtapose Trump's right populism to the left populism of Bernie Sanders.
References
[1] Michael Kazin, “Trump and American Populism: Old Whine, New Bottles,” Foreign Affairs, 95(6): 17-24.
[2] “2016 Presidential Primaries Results.” Politico, December 13, 2016, https://www.politico.com/2016-election/primary/results/map/president/
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