Donald Trump’s 100 Days Of Conservative Failure
Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been a failure. He has failed in the presidency in every way imaginable. He has wholeheartedly embraced a right-wing authoritarian approach to governance that has led to false imprisonment, death, economic failure and international disaster. But most importantly, Trump is a failure of conservatism.
Over the last ten years as Trump has secured full control of the Republican Party, there has been a concerted effort to depict Trumpism as some sort of aberration. We are told that Trump stands apart, that “MAGA” represents a break from the past and a separation from the conservative tradition. I think this is bullshit.
Trump is directly in line with his predecessors as the head of the American conservative movement. We cannot get to Trump without Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney and so many others. That is why Trump is such a failure. Trump’s second term is conservatism being allowed to run wild and that has been terrible for America and the world.
Trump is not a moderate, he is, as Mitt Romney once described himself while unsuccessfully running for president, “severely conservative.” Trump has buried America under a flurry of right-wing executive orders and policies, granted a blank check with no oversight by Republican leadership in the House and Senate. Trump has been allowed to pivot every agency of the government in a right-wing direction and the power to kill agencies whose very existence is anathema to right-wing desires.
It is a mess. Not only are innocent people being kidnapped and deported, but we are seeing anti-science initiatives run science agencies, incompetent boobs in the defense and intelligence agencies handing off secrets to adversaries and allies, and a host of failures and screw ups that will keep historians busy for centuries to come.
I have no idea how this will all end, but like Trump’s first term it will end badly. America is already worse off and thus far there is no end in sight. And yes, this has all been an even worse time because of the fecklessness of the Democratic Party in opposition. The Republicans are the primary actors in American failure, but the Democrats have played a pivotal role in enabling them with their votes and their unwillingness to stand up for what is right and decent. They will have to be a part of the reckoning as well.
But what we cannot do is allow these failures to be dismissed as a sideshow from conservatism. We keep doing that and this merely allows the right to hurt us all again. In the late eighties and early nineties, we got hit by the missile that was Reagan/Bush. We witnessed the dissolution of key infrastructure put in place by the post-World War II order generating fall out that we still deal with today. Reagan gleefully attacked Blacks with lurid lies about “welfare queens” and there’s no difference between that and Trump/Fox News’ spin about Latino immigrants. George W. Bush dragged us into the Great Recession while asleep at the wheel on 9/11 and lying us into Iraq. He spewed venom on weapons of mass destruction more than a decade before Trump attacked the truth as “fake news” – it’s the same thing.
Collectively Reagan and both Bushes escaped blame for their failures. Democratic leaders like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden chose to merely “turn the page” on what the right had done – contributing via neglect to the rise of the Trump-era right. Not only did the elections of those three men not slay the conservative dragon, but the network of liars and bigots that constitutes the Republican Party and the wider conservative movement grew stronger and more influential during their periods of leadership.
The road back will be tough. In all likelihood even this early one hundred days of disaster will seem like a bright spot when we look back on this time. Right now, nothing stands in the right’s way.
But the core understanding that we will need to take away is remembering that this is the outcome of conservatism. Trump is no aberration. This is the dream come to life, what the organizers who pushed Goldwater in 1964 wanted in their heart of hearts, what Romney and George W. Bush whisper about in the gold-plated quiet rooms of the country club.
Conservatism is a toxic mindset. We do not need a “strong Republican Party” as liberal leaders of the Democratic Party are so fond of saying. For the health of the world, conservatism needs constant and unrelenting opposition and to ultimately be brought to its knees and defeated. Conservatism is an existential threat to America and the world.
It needs to be kept away from the levers of power for all eternity, if we are ever to be safe and secure again.
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— Oliver
Follow me, Oliver Willis, on BlueSky @owillis.bsky.social
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I’m always reading stuff about dogs waking up their families. This never happens to me. I’m always the one who has to wake up Kal.
Why do you so studiously avoid using the correct term- fascism?
The GOP has been trafficking in fascist attitudes and policies since before you were born, and it is the unifying worldview of the rank and file GOP voter.
The failure to recognize the reality what we are facing has, in all likelihood, already cost us our pluralistic democracy.
Modern Conservativism is a cover/fig leaf for middle class/rural white people to advance grievances & express their bigotry & for rich folks(mostly white) to make a lot of $$ thru tax cuts deregulation & removal of oversight/watchdog government functions especially at SEC IRS EPA etc. GOP FRIENDLY BILLIONAIRES created powerful media platforms like Fox news RW 📻 to control the information space. Non fox media now regularly eschews ''journalism'' in favor of ratings, their social media tie ins etc.