Ali Minai in Barbarikon:
With a deep understanding of the zombification of the Republican electorate, and with the financial resources and the ambition to act on this knowledge, Donald Trump has gone about the business of systematically pressing every button that the Republican Party had built so carefully into their system – except that, in signature Trump style, he has pressed each one ten times as hard as the delicate hands of any Republican political consultant would ever have dared to do. Where a Karl Rove or Lee Atwater might have run a subtly racial campaign commercial or pushed a little xenophobia, Trump has promised high walls, carpet bombings and full-blown torture. He is offering far-right voters trained on little pieces of candy a whole chocolate factory, and they’re eating it up. The Republican elites have been disarmed because Trump is using their own arms to steal their electorate. And the reason they can’t do much about it is not that they haven’t recognized their predicament, but that they recognize it all too well. Their problem is that, to stop Trump, they have to disown the very “ideas” on which they have built their own electoral successes. At best, all they can say is that their wall would be a bit lower, the carpet of their bombing a bit smaller, and their torture limited to waterboarding. That’s a lousy argument to be stuck with!
More here.
