Why are decent Republicans for Trump?
Say it ain’t just for the money.
Jeffrey Denny
Good people can make bad choices.
But we still wonder what in God’s name is going on with decent, reasonable, educated, upstanding, church-going, patriotic business Republicans who once stood for democracy, law and order, and traditional American family values starting with decency.
Why are so many willing to hold their nose to be in the sewage tank for Trump? And destroy everything they cherish, including their beliefs?
Let’s look at the reasons they cite:
Bidenomics
Many point to inflation, especially food prices, which largely flow from Covid and Trump economic forces. Democrats historically inherit and fix Republican-ruined economies and hand them back for Republicans to ruin again.
Today, interest rates remain high (to burn off inflation), but at 7% are still lower than during Republican administrations when rates surged to 8–13%. Home prices have reached shocking levels but largely because the Millennial population wave demand is swamping the supply of homes to buy.
By other key indicators, the Biden recovery is going gangbusters. GDP growth has defied recession predictions, joblessness is at rock bottom, and the stock market has reached record highs, pumping wealth into 1-percenter investment portfolios and middle-class retirement funds alike. Even the high home prices are boosting the average homeowner’s equity nest egg.
And if Bidenomics has impoverished the average American, then what’s the deal with the explosion in vacation travel?
Airlines reported the busiest Memorial Day flight traffic ever. Over 90% of Americans plan to spend at least as much on travel this summer as last, over 50% plan to spend more, and 80% report feelings of “excitement” and “happiness” about their summer getaways to “make memories,” “let loose” and “have an adventure,” a Trip Advisor survey found.
And Disney World crowds — a middle-class economic harbinger — have surged because, “In a nutshell, fears of a recession are diminishing, inflation is easing, real wages are increasing, consumer confidence is improving, and the stock market is up year-to-date and has reached new record highs,” Disney Tourist Blog explained like many top nonpartisan economists do.
Sure, Fox News boohoos Biden to help reelect Trump. But aren’t Republicans smarter than to swallow obvious propaganda that defies reality, like Groucho Marx quipping, “Who are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?” Aren’t we better off than four years ago when Trump bobbled the pandemic and oversaw a near economic and market collapse?
The Biden border crisis
It’s not Biden’s per se but definitely not not a problem. One that Republicans strategically refuse to solve. They need the immigration bugaboo to scare poor white MAGAs who parrot Trump and Fox talking points about “invading hoards” and “poisoning our blood.” Instead of caring about poor, desperate, endangered refugee families seeking a better life, like Jesus and the Statue of Liberty call on us to do.
But don’t call MAGAs nativist bigots. They simply want immigrants to come here “the right way.” Like they believe their white European families did. As Trump supporters, they stand for law and order, no exceptions.
Yet immigration is a conundrum for responsible, reasonable corporate Republicans. They know our economy will wither if we don’t welcome new workers to fill jobs that Americans — including MAGAs on the government dole — won’t do. Like in factories, farms, or landscapers and contractors that tend wealthy gated communities.
Indeed, as the homebuilding industry says, a key driver of today’s exorbitant home prices is not Bidenomics inflation but a lack of labor to build more homes. “Immigrants account for 30% of all workers in construction trades,” the builders’ trade group says, citing Census data, as it calls for speedier approval even of asylum seekers — what MAGAs call “illegals.”
Most curious are the GOP’s border militants in Congress whose states and constituents are thousands of miles from the southern border and not harmed in any discernable way.
Like in the U.S. Senate, where a bipartisan immigration reform bill was killed by Arkansas’s Tom Cotton, Indiana’s Mike Braun, Kansas’s Roger Marshall, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, Montana’s Steve Daines, Nebraska’s Deb Fisher, Ohio’s J.D. Vance, Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, Utah’s Mike Lee, and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson.
Could it be they’re fighting border solutions to appease MAGAs who prefer the South of the Border tourist attraction on I-95 near Dillon, SC — with the infamous Sombrero Tower and Pedroland Park — over people actually from south of the border? Silly me for thinking our esteemed Senators should be inspiring our better angels, not our worst demons.
The Biden liberals
Smart Republicans must know Biden is no Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or heck, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
They must see through the ridiculous right-wing cartooning of the largely sensible moderate Biden Democrats.
They know Democrats aren’t actually a global Soros cabal conspiracy of America- and freedom-hating Socialists, communists, atheists, LGBTQ+ pedophiles, baby killers teaching our white children to hate themselves, criminal coddlers, BLM, Antifa and Ivy League student rioters, and Deep State enemies of the Christian Republican state.
Only Fox junkies believe all Democrats are hellbent on outlawing snowflake-melting speech, hunting rifles, trucks, steaks and Bibles, stealing elections with illegal nonwhite voters, and jailing an innocent former president as if he’s a dangerous and divisive Third World banana-republic dictator criminal.
Yes, this is the portrait Fox paints about the Democrats every day. Like the Ludovico Technique in the 1972 film “A Clockwork Orange,” if you’re constantly exposed to propaganda, you end up believing it. Even though Fox admitting to lying to viewers to feed what they believe.
Biden’s Age
Setting aside Trump’s demented, incoherent ramblings (latest: sharks and electric boat engines) and mere three years in age difference with Biden, Republicans enriched by the stock market have no problem with advice from the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, 93.
Many deeply respect their seniors who paved their way. And aging veterans of foreign wars.
And while Republicans surely respect people with disabilities, many seem happy as schoolyard bullies and other sociopaths to blame Biden’s stutter on cognitive decline. And forgive Trump for inspiring a rally crowd to meanly laugh along as he mocked a man who, despite his physical disability, rose to the top of his profession as a New York Times national reporter. Trump accused the man of “using his disability to grandstand.”
Why are decent Republicans ok with this? And coddle Trump like a wayward teen, dismissing his base ugliness as, “Well, that’s just Trump being Trump.”
Does wealth trump values?
Cynics darkly posit why over 70% of Republicans, even the decent ones, want Trump back in the White House, despite the real and present danger he poses to their values and the nation they love.
It’s about money. From tax and regulation breaks. Which Trump promises more than any president in history.
If true, it makes you wonder if all these decades of Republican family values race and culture wedge issues to divide and conquer America have been fake all along. That the values messaging is nothing but a grasping gambit by a desperate dying party of monied elites and their slick Washington swamp spinners to do whatever’s necessary to win elections, power and the spoils. Even if they hurt the rest of America, including the poor saps they manipulate into voting against their interests. The only value that matters is valuation.
I desperately try not to believe that. But as the clock ticks down to November 5 and Republicans are making Trump a shoo-in, hope is losing its feathers.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
