Hitler was also Against bad Trade Deals 2.0

In my last piece, I urged people not to be too quick to differentiate between Hitler and Trump. Yes, there are differences but there are a number of similarities that ought to give us pause-beginning with the fact that Trump is an admirer of Hitler's speeches.

 http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/07/hitler-was-also-against-bad-trade-deals.html

I think the Trump threat demands that you overestimate rather than underestimate the threat. I'm really not sure how it's possible to overstate the threat.

The GOP is going to have some convention fights starting this week over the rules. There is talk about a battle for the future of the GOP.

"Anti-Trump Republicans will make their final stand this week, a long-shot bid to hijack the rules of the Republican Party and deny Donald Trump the presidential nomination."

"But as GOP delegates converge on Cleveland to begin the business portion of their national convention, that marquee struggle is just one subplot in a drama that will determine the future of the party. Delegates will also weigh whether to embrace Trump’s brand of populism and protectionism, to ban outsiders from voting in GOP primaries or to reconfigure the power of the Republican National Committee — as well as how, and for whose benefit, they want to craft the rules for their next presidential primary."

"Those fights will play out in two powerful committees of delegates. The Platform Committee, which meets Monday and Tuesday, will revisit the core tenets of the Republican Party’s policy vision. The Rules Committee, which meets Wednesday and Thursday, will determine the procedures that govern the convention a week later — but also establish the 2020 primary rules."

And at every turn, factions loyal to Trump and Ted Cruz will be jockeying for supremacy.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/republican-convention-fights-225327#ixzz4E1WjDd8X

That everything comes down to a battle between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump forces says it all about the GOP in 2016.

Speaking of the future of the GOP, Jonathan Chait:

"Like Hitler, Trump is a radical, authoritarian figure who lies outside the normal parameters of his country’s conservative governing class. Thus, there is a parallel between the two men's unexpected rise to power that is worth considering: Why would traditional conservatives willingly hand power to a figure so dangerous that he threatened their own political and economic interests? Why, having failed in their halfhearted efforts to nominate an alternative candidate during the primaries, don’t they throw themselves behind a convention coup, a third-party candidacy, or defect outright to Hillary Clinton? Why do so many of them consider Trump the lesser rather than the greater evil?"

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/donald-trump-and-hitlers-rise-to-power.html?mid=twitter_nymag

Mostly because they are partisan fools.

But I also think that we shouldn't oversell the real divisions between Trump and Paul Ryan.

Sure, some of the things Trump stands for Ryan opposes:

1. Most sincerely he's against Trump's demonization of trade.

2. He also doesn't approve of Trump's Muslim ban. Still don't over do it. What we saw in teh primary is that no one, not even Jeb Bush-who was as close to a 'liberal' as you can find on the matter-repudiated Trump in an unambiguous way.

He criticized the ban but then he also called for only allowing Christian refugees into the country. This was the problem with Trump the entire primary. Jeb and Marco, et al, never really showed that there was all that much principled daylight with Trump on these issues.

The only area might be trade.

3. Ryan doesn't approve of Trump's plan to deport 12 million people. But, again, see number 2. No Establishment GOPer in the primary nor Ryan himself, has really come out strongly in principle against Trump's deportation scheme.

On the other hand there are a number of things Ryan agrees with Trump on. Trump wants to cut taxes on the rich to the tune of $12 trillion dollars, he wants to eliminate the federal minimum wage, and his adviser mocked people who are schizophrenic as faking-and so, not being in need of SSDI.

https://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/05/but-at-least-donald-trump-wont-cut.html?showComment=1463419162337#c6201741043827131680

On most fiscal matters you actually see a lot of agreement.

The GOP can't admit to agreeing with Trump on many things as the association sullies. But that's one reason that the conservative governing class has turned Vichy so easily.

This sure sounds familiar:

"Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, by the historian Henry Ashby Turner, describes the political machinations that allowed Hitler to seize the chancellorship of Germany. (I stole the idea to read it fromMatthew Yglesias, via Twitter.) In January 1933, the Nazi party’s vote share had begun to decline, and its party was undergoing a serious internal crisis, with dues falling, members drifting off, and other leaders questioning Hitler’s direction. A widely shared belief across the political spectrum at the time held that Hitler would not and could not win the chancellorship, because Germany’s revered conservative president, Paul von Hindenburg, had long vowed to deny such a position to Hitler."

"Hindenburg and the German right viewed Hitler in strikingly similar terms to how Republican elites view Trump. Yes, they badly underestimated his fanaticism, which Hitler had downplayed in public. While they failed to anticipate that Hitler would launch a total war and industrial-scale genocide, they did consider him a buffoon. Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the German-Nationals, deemed the Nazis “little better than a rabble, with dangerously radical social and economic notions,” writes Turner. Hindenburg considered Hitler qualified to head the postal ministry at best. Hitler, in their eyes, was not a serious man, unfit to govern, a classless buffoon. His appeal, the German elite believed, came from his outsider status, which allowed him to posture against the political system and make extravagant promises to his followers that would never be tested against reality. What’s more, Hitler’s explicit contempt for democracy made even the authoritarian German right nervous about entrusting him with power."

"All this is to say that German conservatives did not see Hitler as Hitler — they saw Hitler as Trump. And the reasons they devised to overcome their qualms and accept him as the head of the government would ring familiar to followers of the 2016 campaign. They believed the responsibility of governing would tame Hitler, and that his beliefs were amorphous and could be shaped by advisers once in office. They respected his populist appeal and believed it could serve their own ends. (Hugenberg, writes Turner, “recognized that [the Nazis] were far more successful than his party in mobilizing mass support and hoped to harness their movement to destroy the republic and establish a rightist authoritarian regime.”) Their myopic concern with specifics of their policy agenda overcame their general sense of unease. (One right-wing landowner was “hopeful of relief measures by a Hitler cabinet for the depressed agriculture of the east,” and thus concluded “the army and the forces of conservatism would suffice to prevent a one-party Nazi dictatorship.”) Think of the supply-siders supporting Trump in the hope he can enact major tax cuts, or the social conservatives enthused about his list of potential judges, and you’ll have a picture of the thought process."

In the same vein, we've had Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell assure us that separation of powers will hold Trump in check.

"There is one more parallel between the events of 1933 and the events of 2016: Most of the complicit parties (the main exception being the scheming Franz von Papen) did not fully apprehend the extent of their actions until it was too late. In Germany, Hitler’s ascent required complicated intrigue, the upshot of which was that conservatives believed they had parliamentary leverage that would restrain Hitler. They placed enormous faith in the power of this leverage, until the final two days, when the rumor of an impending military coup rushed their timetable, and the once-crucial terms of Hitler’s chancellorship became forgotten details, discarded in a mad rush."

The one thing you never want to say is it can't happen here.