Thirty years ago this year, Donald Trump was parodied by actor Thomas F. Wilson in Back to the Future Part II as a rich, corrupt, egomaniacal and powerful conman straight out of 1980s Wall Street power tie culture. It was laughable because then, like now, he was the poster child for his kind of person. And no one could imagine him actually having such power so it was safe to laugh.
Since he announced his intention to run for the presidency four-and-a-half years ago, and since their laughter died down eight months or so after that, pundits and observers forced to take him seriously have been flummoxed by how Trump managed to capture an entire major political party. A party he owns today as securely, quite possibly more so, than some of his properties. I think what's been missing is an honest and clear view of what has transpired in the country in recent times to get us here. And I haven't heard anyone else say it so I will.
It begins and ends with an understanding of what motivates conservatives. As I describe in my definitions, conservatives instinctively conserve or expand their margins. That's their nature and their starting point, always. They have what they have and they don't want to lose it to up-and-comers who have less than them. So when they vote for politicians, they vote for politicians who share that same view. The only problem is that doing so is a delicate compromise because those voters could find themselves on the wrong end of a future conservative policy that makes them the up-and-comers, and therefore inconvenient to the richer and more powerful they've elected into office. That's why voting Republican means voting against your own interests, sooner or later.
Sooner or later, that time came. When the John Roberts Supreme Court agreed to hear Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, and came down on the side of the corporatation rather than the person, the floodgates holding back dark money and special interest influence broke open. And true to form, with dollar signs in their eyes, establishment Republicans got greedy on the premise all they needed to do was fool their constituents into voting for them endlessly and they could reap the benefits of a culture where money, favors and promises of lucrative jobs after leaving office lived just slightly to one side or the other of the bribery legalized under the new ruling.
Except, well, the voters weren't fooled. That delicate compromise was thrown in the trash, leaving the base betrayed and fending for itself. The early days of the Tea Party coincided with the ruling, exacerbating anti-establishment fervor and leading to the 2010 midterm tidal wave that rushed record numbers of freshman Republicans to Washington to wreak havoc on the Obama presidency. On the presidential side we saw Mitt Romney - as rich, white collar and establishment as can be - emerge as the Republican nominee for president in 2012, but only after nearly every other candidate (Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and others) took systematic turns at the top of the polls during the primary. The press dubbed it the "Never Romney" moment, as voters clearly did NOT want him to get the nomination (it was during this campaign he famously declared, "corporations are people too, my friend," to a voter challenging him on his defense of the SCOTUS ruling). But party mechanisms were still too strong at the time and he became the nominee anyway, losing to Obama later that year and giving conservatives more reason to believe they were right about him and his political class.
Enter Donald Trump. A man waiting for this moment since he first considered running for president in 1985, the same year the first Back to the Future was released and four years before he was parodied in the second film. Like a pro, he read the moment and swooped in to tell voters exactly what they wanted to hear: the establishment is corrupt, is screwing you over, and everything not of the heartland is the "deep state." In 2016 there would be no rotation of favored candidates in the Republican primary. Once Trump reached the top of the polls he stayed there. And more completely than a political movement such as the Tea Party could do, he single handedly transformed the party into his personal club a la Mar-a-Lago.
What about those establishment Republicans who were actually the ones responsible for his rise? They've either retired, refused to change and were primaried, or have converted to Trumpism and blended quietly into the woodwork. Among the very few critics is Romney himself, as of January this year Utah's junior senator and safely distanced from a reelection challenge.
So now that he owns the party - at least publicly while congressional Republicans still play footsies with the donor class and pretend to be pro-Trump for the cameras - what else can they do but defend him regardless of what he does? Even if, for example, he extorts another country for political favors and gets impeached in the House?