The Bush-McCain Vision v. The Palin-Trump Vision

On Election Day 2008, as the calls were being made across the country, and it became clear that Barack Obama had won the Presidency, John McCain prepared for his concession speech. Waiting in the wings, quite literally, was Sarah Palin. She wanted to speak to her own people, the people she felt she'd brought on board, the hard-right, aggrieved conservatives, the angry rural whites, the ones who now keep Trump's failing campaign vaguely afloat.

McCain said no. Absolutely not. Palin was livid.

In that moment we see the outline of the Republican Party's future, a future that is playing out before us in these final two plus weeks of the 2016 campaign. It is perhaps hard to remember, and Bush-Cheney were so terrible at everything that we tend to forget, but the Bush vision for the GOP, embraced, I think, by McCain, was for a far more inclusive party. It would be a party that embraced Latinos, that sought out even moderate conservative African Americans, that worked with women, that enacted actual policy to win the Arab-American and Muslim votes in Michigan and elsewhere, that was, in short, "compassionate." As much as we derided that notion at the time, it was probably an ethos, and at the very least a brand.

Palin destroyed it. The GOP had a roadmap for undercutting their demographic disadvantages, and the Palin factions within the GOP destroyed it. The Palinization of the GOP has been completely destructive - to the GOP. Trump is merely its logical flag-bearer, and perhaps the last one. It's unsustainable. So, over the next months, you'll see, I suspect, a massive effort to revive the Bush vision, not in any Bush, but throughout the Party organization. Whether it succeeds or not will depend on the scope of Trump's defeat.