Washington Post (Opinion)
By Jennifer Rubin
August 21, 2017
Last week, the creaky facade of Trumpism came tumbling down as Americans saw for themselves that, at bottom, President Trump’s populism isn’t about economic theory, trade policy or foreign policy. It is an ugly effort to stoke white grievance, convincing working-class whites that their problems are attributable to non-whites who are out to take their jobs and destroy their culture. With Stephen K. Bannon’s departure, even the pretense of economic populism is likely to shrivel, leaving a weird mix of right-wing supply-side economics and nativism — combining, for example, big tax cuts for the rich with virulent opposition to immigration. For policy wonks, this is distressing and destructive; for average Americans, the stench of Charlottesville tends to obscure the policy incoherence.
In Europe, the “pull the curtain back” moment is also occurring. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Europe’s populist politicians hoped this would be the year they rocked the Continent’s establishment. Instead, their assault on the European Union has brought election defeats, recriminations and self-doubt.
Hervé de Lépinau, a parliamentary candidate for France’s far-right National Front, ended a rally before parliamentary elections in June with an attack on his own party’s leadership. “Making a French exit from the euro the essence of our platform was an absurdity,” he said. His party subsequently lost that seat in what was supposed to be a party stronghold in France’s sun-baked south.
Many of Europe’s far-right politicians now believe their attempt to associate themselves with the antiestablishment uprisings behind the U.K.’s vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential victory has backfired.
Economic recovery in Europe (and in the United States, well underway as Trump took office) certainly helps. But focus on the far right has exposed the anti-Semitism, the economic confusion (not even Marine Le Pen could justify immediately abandoning the euro) and the nonsensical trade policies that its advocates spew. (German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to explain trade to Trumpists in an interview with German media: “While we are looking at the possibilities of cooperation to benefit everyone, globalization is seen by the American administration more as a process that is not about a win-win situation but about winners and losers.”)
Trump’s surprise win, ironically, makes the far-right populists’ task that much harder. Trump, of course, has no idea how to “cover everyone” on health care or redesign world trade rules without causing immense economic disruption. On the foreign-policy front, Trump’s Afghanistan policy announcement tonight, according to reports, will not adopt the America First pseudo-isolationism but rather continue America’s leading role in the war against Islamist terror. Trump, in other words, offers virtually nothing new on the policy front and spews a great deal of cringe-worthy, noxious rhetoric that pleases David Duke, but not respectable voices in either party. The man who promised to shake up the establishment brought corruption and an ugly brand of racial politics, but little else. And what did you expect? His campaign message was a phony as the Trump University sales pitch.
Trump’s stream of invective directed at the media cannot conceal his predicament: He has promised the sun and the moon, but all he really brings with him is a reservoir of bile. His and Bannon’s worst nightmare was winning — and thereby proving the emptiness of Trump’s message and the extent of his political scam.
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