Trump Victory May Forecast Creative Destruction
Chaos may lead to renewal
“Creative destruction,” the term coined by Joseph Schumpeter to describe the power of capitalism to create something greater from the destruction of something lesser, is an optimistic forecast of the outcome of Monday’s vote in the Iowa Caucuses.
Former President Donald Trump resoundingly won the contest, setting himself up for a triumphant return as the GOP nominee who will confront whomever the Democrats nominate this year, whether it is an ailing and unpopular President Joe Biden or a late-game substitute.
Within the Republican contest, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whom I favored, couldn’t overcome the wellspring of support for Trump that came from unfair, undemocratic prosecutions by the Biden administration and local hick prosecutors in New York City and Atlanta. Those prosecutors and officials in Colorado, Maine and elsewhere who have sought illegally and outrageously to deny voters the option of voting for Trump—supposedly in the name of democracy—helped propel his ascent.
Trump still faces former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, but the former president seems likely to prevail. Haley is a happy warrior like Trump, but will be cast as a globalist, neoconservative, establishment Republican for the simple reason that she is one. Few on the Right beyond the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Chamber of Commerce long for uncontrolled immigration, exporting manufacturing to Asia, or funding the defense of wealthy European moochers.
But Iowa was about more than the prosecutions. Trump is right on policy and right on the image of America, which appealed to Iowa voters. They want the Three Fat Years of economic growth that Trump and his economic team achieved before China inflicted the COVID-19 pandemic on the world. Through those years, Trump had ended the decade of economic malaise that created the populist wave that brought him to power. He made everyone willing to work hard better off—especially minorities.
Iowa Republicans have demonstrated they have faith that he can do it again. They see the Biden administration and Congress turning America into California—a place where those who work hard and smart, who follow the rules, who want to raise families—are hounded relentlessly by an overbearing, preachy, woke leviathan that cannot do basic things expected of government, but which stacks the deck for the elite and favors bums, criminals, and grifters. That is California and that is today’s Left.
As the presidential contest proceeds from Iowa, there should be no doubt of a chaotic year ahead.
The old Republican establishment is effete and incompetent at implementing conservative governance or confronting the institutions that have been seized by woke progressives, but it excels at venality. It will be joined by Democrats in holding nothing back to thwart Trump. For example, if you think the Russia hoax is a dead horse beaten beyond all decorum even by Washington standards, think again. That fiction will be back, along with all of the other hysterical and deranged claims against Trump. His first presidential term and long business career proved he wasn’t racist, pro-dictator, anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-Semitic, or any of the other claims thrown against him. No matter, the media will party like it’s 2017. They will be aided without hesitation by Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
The establishment will back Haley, and she may exceed expectations in the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday. But she is still likely to lose there, and then lose her own home state in the South Carolina Primary on February 24.
The real fun will begin this summer when the campaign accelerates into the conventions—the Republicans go first in July in Milwaukee and the Democrats go second in August in Chicago. The months ahead will reveal if Democrats really will stick with the senile Biden, who polls poorly on every important issue, as demonstrated by RealClearPolitics averages of polls. Democrats have to decide whether a new strain of COVID, called mailinfluenza-2 and due out this summer, along with their renowned ballot-harvesting machine and the abortion issue will overcome Biden’s faults. They will know they can surpass the GOP on big-donor fundraising and organization, but have to ask whether that is enough. On abortion, Trump has proved flexible to a degree that may worry them. He appointed the Supreme Court majority that allowed states reasonably to regulate abortion but has been fuzzy on what specifically he would like to see at the federal level. On the economy, tariffs, the border, and keeping us out of other people’s wars, his record is excellent.
What can change this dynamic? Trump is known by 100 percent of the public and currently leads polls that indicate both an electoral college and popular vote victory. That can change, but will it? Debates have become profoundly stupid and uninformative, and worse—they make for bad TV. If they occur, they are unlikely to change much. When Biden hits the campaign trail, his support often declines—one reason his staff kept him mostly secluded in 2020.
Whether or not Democrats dump Biden, the choice of Chicago for their convention is, um, interesting. Aside from economic decay and appalling black-on-black violence there that progressives ignore, it was in that city in 1968 that the Democrats at their convention tore themselves apart over a foreign policy issue (Vietnam) and the old establishment versus the new radicals. The police gave hippie protesters a good beating on TV. It was the end of the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy and the beginning of the woke, progressive party we see today (excepting the aberration of moderate Bubba Clinton).
Liberal historians have long told us the nation was shocked at police brutality and Democrat old guard machinations in Chicago in 1968. In reality, the public was shocked by the disorder instigated by hippies and beatniks. It was no coincidence that Richard Nixon held an early event of his post-nomination presidential campaign in Chicago. Voters wanted law and order and they didn’t like people rooting against the USA.
Will the Democrats run a sequel? Surely they are smart enough to avoid total chaos, and quite unlike 1968, today’s institutions are in the pocket of the progressive Left. But they do have a problem, and it again centers on foreign policy: congressional Democrats and the party’s elite still favor Israel in its war with Hamas but the rank-and-file activists on which the party depends favor the end of Israel. Then there is the woke agenda, perhaps best personified by transgender radical aficionados chanting, “We’re coming for your children” last summer in New York.
Biden has been a device for the Democrats to paper over differences in the party—to keep the crazy under cover beneath an old white man figurehead whom Vice President Kamala Harris once accused of being a segregationist. How long does the uneasy peace last?
After tonight’s verdict in Iowa, the best forecast for the campaign and a possible second Trump term is more chaos. The Republican establishment and the progressive Left were stunned by Trump’s success in 2016. This time, if he does succeed, the hysterical reaction and concerted effort to undermine him at every turn is already loaded in the chamber.
What is an average citizen who likes to tune out politics for most of the time to do? Take it as an episode of Schumpeter’s creative destruction. Progressive baby boomers have undermined every institution in America. The border is out of control. The nation is heading for fiscal crisis with massive national debt and huge annual deficits that drive inflation. Manufacturing has been in recession for fourteen months and we need higher tariffs. The military cannot win wars. The justice system is demonstrably corrupt. Our intelligence bureaucracy can’t wage political warfare against the Chinese but can take on Republican presidents. The shock of Trump may be just what is needed for this morass.
A less cerebral but more understandable explanation of Schumpeter’s concept came from Dan Aykroyd playing Ray Zalinsky in the movie “Tommy Boy.” He tells Chris Farley’s character: "America's in a state of renewal. We've gotta have the strength to tie a few factories to a tree and bash 'em with a shovel.”
Maybe the answer is to relax and be happy that Trump his here and that he brought his shovel. Though creative destruction, he may just make it back to the White House and end up restoring corrupted institutions that span the national landscape—including the presidency itself—and radically changing a government that currently does not reflect the outstanding nature of its people and their forbearers.
Simon and Whiton
Check out our latest edition, where we forecast what happened in Taiwan’s election and explain what good might come from a divided parliament.
I'm going to hope Trump finally puts the lunatic fringes in both parties to bed on abortion. There's almost universal support for a 15-week limit, with exceptions. Without a federal law, this game is recycled every election.
or brute-force method disruption?