Clarifying Trump's Once-Inexplicable Takeover of Parts of the Conservative Movement What more is left to be said about Trump? A surprising amount, it turns out. Ordinarily, I would jump out of my chair at the comparison of Trump and Andrew Breitbart. In 2011, Andrew Breitbart scoffed at the thought of Trump as an acceptable presidential candidate. "Of course he's not a conservative. He was for Nancy Pelosi before he was against Nancy Pelosi." But Abe Greenwald makes an intriguing comparison, suggesting that Breitbart's death left a void, a void Trump partially filled with his campaign: Trump perversely filled the vacuum left by Andrew Breitbart, the company's famously combative founder. Andrew was a fire starter. At his core, he loathed leftwing hypocrisy and groupthink. He took on progressive bullies furiously and without apology. And his fury was entertaining and infectious. Andrew had the most natural charisma of anyone I've ever encountered, and this made him the inexorable center of the action. He could have stood perfectly still on a street corner for an hour, and a movement would have sprouted up around him . . . But Trump is no Breitbart. If Andrew was a force of nature, Trump is a monument to artifice. Everything Andrew did came directly out of his sincere distaste for leftism. Trump is a pro-wrestling, reality-show schtickmeister without ideological affinity. Andrew could articulate thoughtful theories on culture and media while tying in an anthology of novel references. Trump's understanding of politics is a public mystery. Andrew once shared with me his anxiety over appearing on a particularly wonkish radio talk show. He was, of course, the furthest thing from shy. He was concerned, though, that he wasn't up to the in-the-weeds policy analysis the show routinely featured. In other words, he sensed his strengths and his weaknesses; he was self-aware, self-critical. If nothing else, his sense of humor demanded it. Trump issues "No Disparagement" contracts. This theory from John Podhoretz takes the most unexpected turns of recent American history and almost brings it to the point where it makes sense: In September 2008, after months of uncertainty following the collapse of Bear Stearns, the financial system went into its terrifying tailspin. A disastrous recession shrank the overall economy by 9 percent, and the unemployment rate rose to 10 percent a year later. Now imagine that the meltdown had taken place not in September 2008 but rather in September 2006. Imagine that housing prices and stock prices had fallen in the same way -- such that the wealth invested in the 63 percent of home-owned American households and in the stocks owned by 62 percent of all Americans had declined by 40 percent. Further, imagine that serious proposals arose that the 8 percent of homeowners who had defaulted on their home loans be forgiven their debts -- the very proposal in 2009 that led investor Rick Santelli to call for a new "tea party" uprising on the part of the 92 percent who paid their bills on time. Only this time Santelli's comments had been spoken in 2007. Imagine all these things. And then imagine the presidential race that would have followed. Does the rise of Trump and Bernie Sanders suddenly make all the sense in the world? Of course. But of course the meltdown didn't happen in 2006. It took place a mere seven weeks before an election. The Obama election had a distorting effect on the American response to the meltdown of 2008. The next seven years in American political life came to revolve around him. His actions in the wake of the crisis -- a $1 trillion stimulus, the partial nationalization of the auto industry, and Obamacare -- became the policy focus of American politics. What I'm suggesting is that the weird timing of the meltdown and the rise of Obama hindered and delayed a reckoning for 2008 that everybody would have expected as a matter of course had the crisis hit earlier. In a lot of cases, the fight between GOP "elites" and the "grassroots" is overhyped. But I'll bet there is a genuine, serious chasm of opinion between the two on Wall Street and American financial leaders in 2008. There's moderate frustration among the elites, with cautionary notes to not blame everyone in the financial industry for what went wrong and a focus on federal regulations on required loans. And I think the grassroots see a bunch of fat-cats who took insane risks, lost big, hurt everyone else, and escaped with golden parachutes. I remember a few years ago talking to a friend who had read Michael Lewis' The Big Short, a detailed book about how the financial meltdown came about. My friend noted that there were five guys at the ratings agencies who were ultimately responsible for the agencies' assurances to investors that the mortgage-related securities were safe investments. And that in a mess with many responsible parties, these guys did the most to steer the country into the rocks: "Perhaps more than any other single event, the sudden mass downgrades of (residential mortgage-backed securities) and (collateralized debt obligation) ratings were the immediate trigger for the financial crisis," the staff for Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn wrote in their report. My friend -- one of the smartest, even-tempered, most rational guys I know -- said he wanted those five guys brought up onto a platform on Wall Street and one by one ritually shot in the head. In other words, you don't have to be a maniac to think that some people showed irresponsibility on such an epic scale that they deserved harsh punishment, and they managed to escape any accountability at all. Podhoretz concludes, "He says he wants to 'make America great again,' but I don't think that's what his acolytes hear. I think they hear that he is going to turn his vicious temper and unbalanced rage on the large-scale forces they feel are hindering them. They want someone punished. Could be China. Could be Muslims. Could be Mexicans. Could be bankers. Could be the GOP "establishment." Whatever. He's their Punisher." Finally, while the major conservative media entities named in John Zeigler's essay would probably vehemently deny that they let clubby groupthink, a desire for ratings and other bad influences alter their judgment, there is this remaining unexplained about-face from some of the biggest names in the conservative movement. From about 2009 to early 2015, to be praised in conservative media, you had to be indisputably conservative. Even a longtime record of voting conservatively didn't protect you if you were seen as flinching in a tough fight. Mike Castle? Unacceptable! Mitch McConnell? Sellout! John Boehner? Worthless! Thad Cochran? Everything that's wrong with the Senate! Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan? Useless squishes! Then in mid-2015, along comes Trump, with his long history of donating to the Democrats, support for Planned Parenthood, affirmative action, gun control, and a national health-care system, even friendship with Al Sharpton . . . and some of the biggest names on television and radio are perfectly fine with him. Some Americans Are Better Off Remaining Politically Disengaged Oh, hey, let's take a look at the previously-apathetic Americans who are now energized and interested in politics, thanks to the Trump campaign! Last night, PBS NewsHour ran a story on the Tilly family of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The Tillys do not have a history of being active in politics, but various members of the family -- both old and young -- are being motivated to vote or work for a campaign for the first time by Donald Trump. If you can put aside the fact that the Tillys are rallying behind Trump, this is a small but almost heartwarming story of a family choosing to engage with democracy. That's also if you can put aside the fact that Grace, one of the central characters in the story, has large white power tattoos on each of her hands. Terrific. One of the two tattoos in question is a Celtic cross or Odin's cross. Lest you suddenly fear that your tattoo of a cross has created the impression you're a white supremacist, apparently there's one particular version of the ancient cross that's been adopted by white supremacists, and even then, it's not exclusive to them: Although white supremacists will occasionally use this version of the Celtic Cross, the overwhelming use of this version of the Celtic Cross is non-extremist and, in the absence of other hate symbols, does not denote white supremacy or racism. You might think this woman is getting unfairly accused, but the other tattoo is just the number 88 . . . let me just Google "88 tattoo" and see what comes up . . . oh, damn. You notice I'm not linking to any of those sites or pictures. Here's the Anti-Defamation League's explanation: 88 is a white supremacist numerical code for "Heil Hitler." H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH = Heil Hitler. One of the most common white supremacist symbols, 88 is used throughout the entire white supremacist movement, not just neo-Nazis. One can find it as a tattoo or graphic symbol; as part of the name of a group, publication or website; or as part of a screenname or e-mail address. It is even sometimes used as a greeting or sign-off (particularly in messages on social networking websites). (88 is now a symbolic number, huh? Great. Now I'm wondering if anyone ever thought something from my Al Toon Jets jersey.) It's an extremely unlikely coincidence that a non–white supremacist woman would just happen to pick two tattoos that are associated with white supremacy and put one on each hand. We shouldn't overstate the significance of this one supporter, but when you throw in David Duke's praise, the cheers from Stormfront, white nationalists recording robocalls for him, and how frequently Trump retweets (presumably unknowingly) white supremacists . . . it starts to paint an ugly picture. Sure, Donald Trump's candidacy is bringing new voters into the GOP. But in some extreme cases, they're voters no self-respecting party would ever want to be associated with, in any circumstances. ADDENDA: Somebody retweeted one of my Tweets from October 2012:  Love or hate the anti-Trump stance, you know it's consistent.  | 
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