political statement about reconstruction of political parties.

1. OPINION FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020A16 |
The Democrats, Not the Republicans, May
Face Reconstruction After This Election
CONRAD BLACK
The admirable (and con-
vivial) Peggy Noonan,
always the most civi-
lized of the vast anti-
Trump media gallery,
again contemplated on
Aug. 1 (Wall Street Journal)
the post-Trump era, with the peppy
confidence of Never Trump Republicans
that it’s about to begin.
Her column addresses the question
of whether the post-Trump Republican
Party should be “burned down,” totally
dismantled, as if that were a real option.
The last major American political party
to endure this fate was the Whigs, at the
onset of the Civil War and after all of its
major figures had decamped to the new
Republican Party.
She correctly attributed Trump’s
victory in the 2016 Republican prima-
ries, and in the presidential election,
to public impatience over expensive
and strategically disastrous wars, the
greatest economic crisis since the Great
Depression, a complete failure of every-
body to deal with the endless inflow of
penurious illegal immigrants across the
southern border, and a general feeling
among working and lower-middle-class
Americans that they were being ignored
by a bipartisan government of financial
and celebrity elites.
This is a reasonable and not overly dif-
ficult analysis, but it omits the failure of
the Bush-Clinton-Obama era to gener-
ate economic growth. Per capita GDP
growth declined from 4.5 percent in the
bustling Reagan years steadily to 1 per-
cent under Obama, with admonitions
from senior administration officials that
the country had to accustom itself to
flatlined growth.
This was, in effect, an assault upon
the American ethos of ever-greater
plenty and of unlimited rewards for
honest hard work. The Noonan analysis
also underplayed the national frustra-
tion at a loss of manufacturing jobs
through trade agreements with osten-
sibly friendly countries, and a foreign
policy that, despite invincible military
strength, led to failures and self-eradi-
cating redlines.
Trump’s Decision to Run
Before addressing the pretended ques-
tion of the fate of the post-election Re-
publican Party, there was the usual anti-
Trump mind-reading of the motives for
his candidacy. It was a brand-building
exercise, and Trump’s program was
allegedly assembled in mid-campaign
by measuring the applause generated
by various oratorical gambits as Trump
proceeded around the country making
flamboyant stump speeches.
In fact, Trump had been considering
and exploring the possibilities of trans-
forming high public recognition into the
highest political office for 20 years since
he recovered from his financial crisis.
He did win two primaries as the pro-
gressive candidate in 2000, a party that
included Ross Perot and the wrestler
Jesse Ventura (governor of Minnesota).
He changed parties seven times in 13
years, looking for the right moment and
the correct vehicle. He withdrew in 2000
after realizing that the original Repub-
licans in 1860 were the only third-party
in American history to become a gov-
erning party. He saw that he couldn’t
run against an incumbent in 2004 or
2012 and that in 2008, he had no chance
of the Democratic nomination and the
Republicans had no chance of winning.
The roulette wheel stopped in 2016 and
he placed his bets. Brand-building may
have been the default position that he
would have invoked (doubtless profit-
ably), but he had substantial and, as
events revealed, well-founded hopes for
political success.
Testing crowd reactions is a more
reliable and cheaper canvas of public
opinion for someone who can pull large
crowds spontaneously than employing
the experts who infest Washington and
overcharge all candidates for frequently
erroneous guidance.
Appeasing Violence and Leaning
on Pestilence
Obviously, if Trump loses this election
it will be by a relatively narrow mar-
gin and the Republican Party will be
in perfectly good condition to reorient
itself and will win again in four or eight
years, especially as a Biden presidency
can be confidently assumed to be a
catastrophe.
That’s the pattern of American poli-
tics, and the Republicans will do much
better than they did with Barry Gold-
water in 1964 or the Democrats did with
George McGovern in 1972, and in both
cases, the White House changed hands
at the next election.
So the question of the Republican
Party ending is nonsense and not only
for the reasons the author gives: that
the two-party system is a good thing,
and that a Democratic White House and
both houses of the Congress would do a
good many bad things, and that Trump
is destroying himself, so nothing further
need be inflicted on the Republicans.
Noonan had already written that the
president has “produced a different kind
of disaster” than the one he ran against.
“The past six months, Mr. Trump came
up against his own perfect storm, one
he could neither exploit nor talk his way
past,” referring to the pandemic, the
economic contraction, and “prolonged
sometimes violent national street pro-
tests. If the polls can be trusted, he is on
the verge of losing the presidency.”
Certainly, he can’t talk his way past
these problems, but he is managing the
pandemic and the economy quite well,
and he can exploit in different respects
all three of these crises.
Trump didn’t create them and the
disaster that Noonan refers to was, in
fact, a presidency that had a gold ap-
proval rating and was almost univer-
sally expected to be reelected prior to
the onset of the coronavirus. As long as
the polls have been judging the level of
public discontent and not measuring
candidates against each other, Trump
was sinking. But as the process grinds
toward Election Day, he is recovering
in the polls, and the Democratic effort
to make the election a referendum on
Trump is giving way to a choice of avail-
able alternatives.
Joe Biden accused Trump of hysteria
and “xenophobia” when he stopped di-
rect air flights to the United States from
China at the end of January. The Demo-
crats want a continued shutdown of as
much as possible to prolong the artifi-
cial recession and represent Trump as
the Herbert Hoover of the 21st century.
The Democrats have been (as Attorney
General William Barr mentioned in
the House Judiciary Committee on July
28) unable to condemn mob violence.
Violent crime is rising steeply in most
U.S. cities where corrupt Democratic
municipal authorities are curtailing or
even abolishing police departments.
The Democrats want a prolonged
shutdown and the nonsense of urg-
ing self-quarantine on anyone who
has been near a coronavirus-afflicted
person in the previous two weeks and
can be identified and located, an insane
proposal.
Trump has drastically reduced illegal
immigration, had effectively eliminated
unemployment, and shown what he
could do to generate prosperity espe-
cially in lower-income groups prior to
the virus onset, and is running against a
completely implausible candidate who
in the hands of his minders is appeasing
urban mob violence and leaning upon a
pestilence to sustain him.
On Nov. 4, the country will be more
likely to be considering how to recon-
struct a defeated Democratic Party
than the Republicans. On that day, a
hand should be extended to the Never
Trumpers who have sleep-walked
through these four years, inviting them
to return usefully to the Republicans,
and they should accept the offer.
Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s
most prominent financiers for 40 years,
and was one of the leading newspaper
publishers in the world. He’s the author
of authoritative biographies of Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and,
most recently “Donald J. Trump: A Presi-
dent Like No Other.”
The views expressed herein are solely
those of the author. As a nonpartisan
public charity, The Epoch Times does not
endorse these statements and takes no
position on political candidates.
(Left) President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in the BOK Center in Tulsa,
Okla., on June 19, 2020. (Above) A polling station at the First Congregational
Church during the Michigan primary in Detroit on Aug. 4, 2020.
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES BRITTANY GREESON/GETTY IMAGES
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