Donald Trump is so fond of the word “winner” that he even applies it to pieces of chicken. Having lunch with the Financial Times a couple of years ago, the mogul-turned-politician pointed his interviewer towards a particularly succulent portion and declared: “That piece looks like a winner.”
In Trump’s world, the biggest winner of all is, of course, The Donald himself. His campaign for the Republican nomination has been based around the claim that: “I’m very good at winning. I believe in winning.” It is a remarkably successful pitch. Most opinion polls still show Trump leading the race to be the Republican nominee.
All this chest-thumping is revealing. For Trump’s claim to have magical winning properties appeals precisely to those Americans who fear that they and their country are turning into losers. In a typical rhetorical flourish, Trump once argued that America is “going down fast. We can’t do anything right. We’re a laughing stock all over the world”. (The fear that people are laughing at you is, of course, a classic loser’s trait.)
All the leading Republican contenders argue that America is going to the dogs, even if they sometimes differ on the details. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon, who is challenging Trump for the leading position in the polls, has even claimed that “political correctness” means that America is now “very much like Nazi Germany”.
People who vote Republican still tend to be richer than Democrats, so all this despair in Republican ranks is a little surprising. But the US is changing in ways that are clearly making much of the party’s base fearful and insecure.
There are four big changes that seem to underpin Republican insecurity: The first is ethnic, the second is social, the third economic and the fourth is a shift in America’s global position.
Just 39 per cent of white Americans voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and yet the President was easily re-elected, after gaining the support of 90 per cent of minority voters. Whites still make up 72 per cent of the electorate, but America is changing fast. According to the US Census Bureau, by 2020 “more than half the nation’s children will be part of a minority race or ethnic group”, with Hispanics the largest single minority group. By 2043 the US will be “majority-minority”, with whites less than 50 per cent of the population. Trump’s rhetoric appeals to white voters who are scared by this change. He has promised to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants in the US and to build a giant wall along the Mexican border.
With real wages stagnant for many Americans, including the middle-class, the Republicans have also begun to adopt the rhetoric of economic insecurity. Trump bashes hedge-fund managers. Even Ted Cruz, who is fighting hard to be the most right-wingright-wing candidate, has complained that Obama’s economic policies have only benefited the richest 1 per cent of Americans.
Mixed in with all this domestic insecurity is a pervasive sense that America itself is becoming less powerful. All the Republican candidates seem to want to show a more aggressive face to the world. Carly Fiorina, who is sometimes touted as a voice of moderation, has said of President Vladimir Putin of Russia: “I wouldn’t talk to him at all... What I would do immediately, I would begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet ... I would also conduct military exercises in the Baltic states.” This kind of “strong” talk is so strident that it risks looking weak.
The key question for the Republicans is whether it is possible to put together a coalition of “losers” that could actually win.
Yet, if the Republicans base their strategy on a relentlessly gloomy message about the state of the US, they will be ignoring lessons from their own past. The great hero of the modern Republican party remains the late Ronald Reagan, who managed to combine highly conservative views with sunny optimism. President Reagan also had a self-deprecating good humour that is a million miles away from the dark warnings and shameless bragging of Trump.
The modern Republican party needs a Reagan-like candidate who can say, “our best days lie ahead” and sound like he means it. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has done the best job of condemning the Obama years, without sounding angry or unhinged. He is also Hispanic, which may go some way to undoing his party’s massive disadvantage among minority voters. As the Republicans search for a candidate who “looks like a winner”, Senator Rubio increasingly looks like their best bet.
— Financial Times
