“Democracy,” said H. L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Right now the “common people,” or at least enough to matter, want Donald Trump, and we’re all getting lessons in American politics, “good and hard.”
One lesson is that actions frequently have unintended consequences. In other words, it’s wise to be careful about what you wish for, since you may get it. Trump is the odds-on favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination since he’s won the most pledged delegates in the most Republican primaries. The primary system in which Trump is thriving was produced by political reformers who wanted more democracy in the process by which presidential candidates are chosen.
Before primaries were invented, the parties used conventions at all levels of government to nominate candidates for local, state, and national office, and from these nominees the voters would select officeholders in the general elections. Never mind that this system produced Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. Political reformers said that officeholders, once elected, were more likely to serve the interests of the party leaders who dominated the conventions which nominated them than the voters in the general elections. The only way to make officeholders truly serve the public rather than the party leaders was to transfer the power to select nominees from the party leaders to the public itself. To that end, reformers created presidential primaries in which voters could help select delegates to their parties’ national presidential nominating conventions, as well as direct primaries in which the voters could select their parties’ nominees for Congress as well as for state and local offices. States gradually began to adopt primaries in the early 1900s. By 1972 a majority of states had adopted presidential as well as primaries.
Enter The Donald.
The rise of Donald Trump seems as unstoppable as it was unpredictable. Yet Republican Party leaders, unable to defeat him in the primaries, are hatching plot after plot to somehow deprive him of the presidential nomination after all—and with good reason. Trump is accused by both Democratic and Republican elites with being racist, sexist, xenophobic, ignorant, unrealistic, and authoritarian. Polls show that despite his great and growing popularity among the Republican rank and file (and apparently with many Democrats as well), he still lacks the strength to defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election. Republican leaders hope that should Trump be unable to win a majority of pledged delegates before the convention they can therefore forge a coalition of delegates pledged to Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio strong enough to defeat him on the convention floor and nominate a Republican candidate more electable in November.
But Republican attempts, so far unsuccessful, give rise to a second lesson: Unintended consequences may well be irreversible as well. Once the genie’s out of the bottle, or the toothpaste’s out of the tube, it’s nearly impossible to get either back in. Whatever else Trump’s doing, he’s succeeding through the rules as he found them, and those rules say: “More power to the people!” And however true the elites’ criticisms of Trump may be, the people—or at least enough of the people to make him the GOP frontrunner—have chosen to support him, and there’s no sign yet that their support will abate any time soon. Trump is not only playing by the rules, he’s winning—winning big time, as Dick Cheney might put it. And if Trump’s popularity continues to grow, and especially if he attracts more blue-collar Democrats, he may win even bigger come November. Then not only the Republican Party, but the entire country, will get what it thinks it wants—good and hard.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville and taught politics and government at Tarleton since 1987. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990 to the present). He was Mayor Pro Tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Stephenville Rotary Club, and does volunteer work for the Boy Scouts of America. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
Malcolm has once again hit it on the head-good and hard. His comments on Trump’s rise to power are as educational as they are frightening. I, for one, would love to have a president that puts integrity above all else. Those candidates do not seem to rise to the top in either party. Gary Key