Hanania on the GOP

Here’s Richard Hanania:

We can already see Republican candidates and institutions shifting over to Gribble messaging. The Heritage Foundation, once believed to represent elite conservative thought, goes to Twitter and implies that the Secret Service tried to assassinate Trump. JD Vance has praised Alex Jones as a truth teller. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz and Vivek Ramaswamy went around earlier this year predicting that the Democrats would make Michelle Obama their presidential nominee. Recall that Trump’s original rise to prominence within Republican politics was through his embrace of Birtherism. . . .

I’ve always said that if Trump loses this election, he’s got a very good chance of being the 2028 Republican nominee. But if he’s not in the running for whatever reason, then the Gribbles will be up for grabs. They won’t get anywhere in a Democratic primary given that the party is now composed of more educated and high trust voters. But on the Republican side, a candidate who consolidates Joe Rogan and Tucker types can be a force in a divided primary where it may take no more than a third of the vote to win. He may not be a conventional conservative, but it would be fitting if the Trump era culminated in Republicans becoming more moderate on policy while getting crazier and more paranoid.

Could this figure be RFK himself? Note that the Low Human Capital types who make up the Republican base love celebrities. There’s a reason that some conservative papers that sometimes do serious journalism like The Daily Mail and The New York Post double as gossip mags. The Kennedy family itself has a large role to play in QAnon cosmology. RFK has a history of holding liberal positions, but Trump showed that one can easily flip-flop, and even if you don’t, Republican voters can be very forgiving if you’re a celebrity who hates elites enough and endorses conspiracy theories. Kennedy has already started walking back some of his prior beliefs, like his previous views on gun control, that would be unpalatable to a conservative electorate.

I doubt that either Trump or Kennedy will be the 2028 nominee (partly because I expect Trump to win in 2024.) But Hanania’s entire post is well worth reading, if you like politics. Or should I say if you hate politics? And when you think about it, is there any difference?

The TLDR is “Yeah, we’re definitely a banana republic.”

PS. NYT headline of the day: “Trump Can Win on Character”

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