06-28-2016, 12:38 PM
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"Conservatives Have Groomed the Perfect Suckers for Trump?s Epic Scam"
Conservatives Have Groomed the Perfect Suckers for Trump?s Epic Scam
Win or lose, he'll get what he wants out of this campaign.
By Jeet Heer
June 28, 2016
Quote:
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"Republican strategist and Never Trump stalwart Rick Wilson hit upon the perfect coinage when he described Trump as running a ?scampaign.? It?s not that Trump doesn?t want to be president. It?s that the real objective, win or lose, is relaunching his lucrative brand. In recent years, Trump was getting diminishing returns with his main reality-show career, with The Apprentice facing dwindling ratings despite Trump?s false claim that it was the number-one show on TV. So his move to politics was a way of revitalizing his celebrity and opening up a new revenue stream. And now with talk about creating Trump TV, which he plans to launch in the wake of the election (whatever the result) to monetize the ratings that are currently being enjoyed by CNN and FOX, Trump looks to have a financially rewarding future even after his likely defeat. The move toward Trump TV will be especially helpful since his other traditional brand?as a hawker of high-end goods?has been tarnished by his political escapades. In effect, Trump?s campaign amounts to a very public re-branding maneuver.
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In a sense, conservative voters have been groomed for Trump since the 1960s. As the historian Rick Perlstein wrote in The Baffler and The Nation in 2012, the American conservative movement has become more and more amenable to get-rich-quick schemes, snake-oil salesmen, and confidence men. Direct-mail barons like Richard Viguerie began raking in the dough in the 1960s by stirring up ideological hysteria and convincing an audience of senior citizens that only their small-dollar donation could fend off union bosses, abortionists, and gays. Of course, most of the money ended up with the fundraisers.
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Conservative ideology, as Perlstein persuasively argues, is particularly vulnerable to grifters because of its faith in the goodness of business and its concomitant hostility toward regulation?which makes it easy for true believers to buy into the notion that some modern Edison has a miraculous new invention that the Washington elite is conniving to suppress. In Perlstein?s words, ?The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place?and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.?
There?s another factor at work here: The anti-intellectualism that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement for decades also makes its members easy marks. After all, if you are taught to believe that the reining scientific consensuses on evolution and climate change are lies, then you will lack the elementary logical skills that will set your alarm bells ringing when you hear a flim-flam artist like Trump. The Republican ?war on science? is also a war on the intellectual habits needed to detect lies.
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The affinity of conservatives for hucksterism not only explains Trump?s rise?but also why the Never Trump movement has never gained enough traction to stop him. By the time Trump launched his campaign, the conservative movement had already destroyed the intellectual immune system that is necessary to resist grifters. A telling example can be found in the famous ?Never Trump? issue of National Review from February. Amid all the editorials and articles warning of the dangers of Trump was a full-page ad for something called ?The Patriot Power Generator 1500.? The ad begins: FORMER CIA OFFICIAL WARNS; ?ISIS TERRORISTS WANT TO CRIPPLE AMERICA?S ELECTRIC GRID!? Further down is a series of alarming sub-headlines designed to sell the generator: ?IT May Have Already Begun,? ?You Know We?re Targeted,? ?Weather Is the Other Enemy.?
Here is the paradox of Never Trump in a nutshell: Could the people who have been conditioned to think they need to buy the Patriot Power Generator in order to fight off an ISIS attack on America?s power grid really be expected to see through Donald Trump? Conservative publications like National Review have spent a generation cultivating an audience of gulls. Now they?re shocked that a far more talented hustler has stolen them away."
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https://newrepublic.com/article/1346...umps-epic-scam
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