Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Gehenna: : A Party Agrift: "How did someone who looks so much like a cheap con man bulldoze right through the G.O.P. nomination process?...
...Why didn’t... primary opponents manage to make an issue of his sleazy business career?... Is there something structural about the modern Republican Party that makes it unable to confront grifters?...
Rick Perlstein... points out that there has always been a close association between the movement and the operations of snake-oil salesmen--people who use lists of campaign contributors, right-wing websites and so on to sell get-rich-quick schemes and miracle health cures. Sometimes the political link is direct: dire warnings about the coming depression/hyperinflation, from which you can only protect yourself by buying Ron Paul’s DVDs (the ‘Ron Paul curriculum’) or gold shares hawked by Glenn Beck. Sometimes it just seems to reflect a judgment... that people who can be persuaded that President Obama is Muslim can also be persuaded that there are easy money-making opportunities the establishment doesn’t want you to know about.... Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC gives only a few percent of what it raises on candidates, while spending heavily on consultants and Mrs. Palin’s travels.
Then there’s the issue of ideology. If ... you treat any suggestion that, say, some bankers misbehaved in the run-up to the financial crisis as proof that the speaker is anti-business if not a full-blown socialist, how can you condemn anyone’s business practices?... Republicans in Congress are going all-out in efforts to repeal the so-called ‘fiduciary rule’ for retirement advisers, a new rule requiring that they serve the interests of their clients, and not receive kickbacks for steering them into bad investments. Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, has even made repealing that rule part of his ‘anti-poverty plan.’ So the G.O.P. is in effect defending the right of the financial industry to mislead its customers....
Marco Rubio actually did try to make Trump University an issue, but he did it too late, after... his broken-record routine. And... the groove Mr. Rubio got stuck in--innuendo that the president is deliberately weakening America--was a typical example of the political snake-oil the right sells along with free money and three-minute cures for high blood pressure.... Rubio was just as much a con artist... just not as good at it.... So he, like all the G.O.P. contenders, didn’t have what it would have taken to make... grifting an issue.... They’ll... claim... [it] doesn’t reflect their party’s values. But the truth is that in a very deep sense [it] does. And that’s why they couldn’t stop him.
