How the GOP Lost A Slam Dunk Election

As Donald Trump’s poll numbers crash to Earth the autopsy team is starting to assemble to assess what exactly went so wrong with the 2016 election process. How did a slam dunk election turn into such a catastrophic loss for the GOP? And yes, this should have been a slam dunk. In a world of populist discontent in which the Democratic party was torn between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, a Clinton victory set the stage for the perfect GOP target. She’s the lifelong Washington insider who has consistently contributed to the policies that led to this environment of populist discontent. Deserved or not, Clinton’s weak favorability numbers are a reflection of the general population’s growing intolerance of Washington.

But where did it all go so wrong? Yes, it’s easy to say that this is all Donald Trump’s fault. But this started long before Donald Trump hijacked the GOP and started spewing his hate through every well functioning mic he could get his little tiny hands around. The GOP started down a lost path on February 9th, 2009 when a CNBC reporter named Rick Santelli called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest the government stimulus during the financial crisis. I remember the moment vividly as I was glued to financial TV watching the financial markets plumb their lows in early 2009. Emotions were running extremely hot and people were scared. The environment was ripe for a new movement. And that’s what the GOP got.

In the wake of the financial crisis there has been a flurry of misinformation and fear based propaganda regarding the causes of the crisis and the government’s response. We heard continual cries about how QE would cause hyperinflation. We heard continual cries about how an increase in the national debt would cause a currency crisis. We heard continual cries about how interest rates would rise as the government “crowded out” private investment. The list goes on and on. All of these myths were based on flawed understandings and misinformation. They’ve been thoroughly debunked (most by me, in real time many years ago), however, many still persist in some fashion under a revised argument promoting the same political ideology. And much of this misinformation stemmed directly from the misguided belief that the crisis was caused largely by the government, when, in reality, the financial crisis was the result of many bad actors (of which the government was merely one).

While the Tea Party formation was based on good intentions, it was also based on misinformation and spread through fear. This emotionally charged misinformation campaign fed easily into the confirmation bias that so many wanted to believe. And it also drove the GOP into an extremist realm that threatened its existence. Trump is nothing more than the culmination of this extremist rhetoric and misinformation campaign. Trump is the Tea Party propaganda at its worst where post-factualism is accepted so long as it confirms a certain political ideology.

All is not lost, however. As George Will recently noted, this election can be a curative experience. But the GOP must release itself of this extremist grip and shift to a platform that is more moderate. Trump and the Tea Party are living in the past and envision a GOP that reminds them of the 1950’s. But those days are gone and the country is moving forward leaving the old GOP in the dust. The good news is that there are many independents (like myself) and Democrats who would embrace a platform based on protecting personal liberties and reducing the government’s involvement in our lives. But this platform must be based on empirical evidence, pragmatic economic perspectives and embracing of the diverse country we are increasingly becoming. Trump happened because the GOP allowed itself to be derailed into an extremist direction in a fragile environment unduly influenced by misinformation and political ideology. Hopefully, this election will be the learning experience that gets the GOP back on the right track.