Byron York’s description of the South Carolina GOP’s mourning over the nomination of Donald Trump reminds me of something I’ve seen on twitter. It is a picture of Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott with the caption that this is what the GOP gave up when it nominated Trump. I will never vote for Trump, but the buried assumptions in this commentary makes me sympathize with Trump supporters a little bit.
York writes:
“I’m going to invite up my friends Tim Scott, Trey Gowdy, and you’re going to look at what the new conservative movement looks like,” Haley said at a campaign event with Rubio in Columbia on election eve. “Because it looks like a Benetton commercial. Look at this.”
What is so new about this “new conservative movement”? Has this new conservative movement learned anything of consequence from the debacle of the 2003-2006 Bush occupation of Iraq, or does this new conservative movement just mouth 1980s peace-through-strength clichés? Has this new conservative movement come to terms with the overwhelming public opposition to increasing future low-skill immigration, or does it take its cues from a business class that thinks guest worker programs are preferable to hiring from America’s current labor pool? Has this new conservative movement anything to say to wage-earners other than a tedious explanation of how tax cuts on the rich will make everything better for everyone else?
As it happens, Rubio had some things to say about those issues, but no one heard him because they were too focused on his flip-flops (and later evasions) on the subject of immigration. Also, it is tough to be the candidate of the wage-earner when your aides are pushing for guest worker programs because American workers can’t cut it.
The hopes for a party built around candidates like Haley, Scott, and Rubio are bound to be disappointed if the GOP doesn’t reckon with the real sources of the party’s problems. Having diverse-looking candidates can’t help when your real problem is an elite monoculture built around business lobby priorities. Allegedly dynamic candidate can’t resuscitate a decayed 1980s ideology.
It was the elderly Reagan who did best among young voters. The young, handsome, Hispanic, Rubio wasn’t the candidate of the multicultural American young. The young are voting for an elderly, white socialist. Maybe that is a clue that the reason Romney lost didn’t have anything to do with Romney having the wrong skin tone, or the wrong birth date, or the wrong set of genitalia.