Bush: Obama Created Trump

I agree with Jeb Bush.   Obama created Trump.

Obama opened a hidden compartment in the GOP base.   Obama awoke something that had been dormant.

Jeb Bush remains the classic member of the Republican "establishment", or what is now called the "establishment wing."  He hasn't given up yet, and his PAC is going to spend the money they raised to make a point, but the point of electing Bush is probably beyond them.   Now the money is spent to warn the GOP. 

Bush is Cassandra, the unheard prophet.   

His warning is worth looking at closely because it shows how the people who used to control the GOP think about what has happened.   

They blame Obama.  Obama made it OK for Republicans to voice contempt.

"But for Barack Obama, Donald Trump's effect would not be nearly as strong as it is," Bush said to an NPR reporter. 

"The point is that we're living in this reality TV political environment, where [Trump] fills the space by saying outrageous things [and] then people based on their emotions will express support for the sentiment, not necessarily the specifics, because there's none and then he'll backtrack.   And he'll move on to the next thing and he fills the space." 

I demonstrated the Trump technique for controlling the argument and manipulating the media in my parody article "Apology" two days ago.  But the caged beast that Bush says Obama unleashed isn't the media/entertainment industry.   

It is contempt for Obama.  I use the word "contempt" rather than "racism" because the audiences who feel the contempt would object to being described as racist. And black candidates in certain roles do not trigger the contempt: black athletes, black actors, black neurosurgeons.   

But a big group of people see Obama as fundamentally illegitimate.  He is "other".  He was a bridge too far, elected because Obama inspired Democrats more than did Hillary, barely,  and then in the debacle of the financial crisis of 2008 any Democrat would win, even Obama, even in red state Indiana.   So Obama won.  But Obama was over-reach.

Republican contempt shows in candidates and audiences, in doubts that Obama was born in Hawaii, that he is not a Muslim.   Raul Cruz (Ted's father) claims--to great applause-- Obama refuses to say "under God" when he says the Pledge of Allegiance.  (Demonstrably untrue--not that it matters, because what is important is that audiences want to believe it and do.)    Obama makes a significant percentage of Americans feel uncomfortable.  So they want to "Take America Back", a notion that only makes sense if America has been taken from them.  

And Muslims make Americans even more uncomfortable that do Spanish speaking Catholics from Latin America, so the events in Paris and San Bernardino fit perfectly into Trump's appeal.  

Prior Republican presidents and nominees were careful about open discrimination.  McCain corrected the questioner who asserted that Obama was an Arab.   Romney, the archetypal business establishment person was sensitive to the legal and business environment of 2012.   Some things you just don't say, i.e. allusions to a woman's menstruation, or discrimination against women, Muslims, Asians, Mexicans, immigrants, or the disabled.   You think them, sure, but you don't say them.  And you never, ever write them or say them on camera.   Otherwise you get sued or fired.

But Trump says what cannot be said.   Contempt for Obama conjoins policy and white identity politics.    Trump is saying aloud the kinds of things David Duke things said, the "outrageous things", the "emotions", the "sentiment."  He can do it because contempt for Obama is so widespread that Trump is free to say aloud what could not be said.   Many people feel liberated.  Vindicated.   Joy in the freedom to say what was unsayable.

Trump can say things and get away with it.  He is so popular he cannot be shunned. Therefore, Obama created Trump.

Contempt is personal, not policy.  Obama cannot be credited with doing anything good.   He is not credited with having presided over a recovery in real estate markets, saving tens of millions of people from bankruptcy.   Nor with a 250% increase in the stock market, restoring 401k balances.  Nor with a 7 year period during which Islamic terror attacks, including the ones at the Boston Marathon, Fort Hood, and San Bernardino have been a fraction of the 2,900 deaths during 9-11 in the Bush presidency, and a fraction of the non-Islam related mass shootings such as the ones at Sandy Hook, Charleston, or Roseburg. 

Facts like these are irrelevant.   Not wrong.   Irrelevant.

In some 25 Republican events I have never, ever heard one sentence of praise for anything whatever done by Obama in any matter,   Not for getting Bin Laden, not for having cute kids, not anything. (Google it yourself.   Try to find words of praise for Obama from Republican candidate on anything.)   Obama does not engender disagreement in Republican audiences.  He generates contempt.

You don't disagree with contempt or compromise with it or work with it.   You reject it out of hand.

Obama is the first target of contempt, but not the last.  It spread to the Republican establishment.   Trump assails people who attempted compromise with Obama, which means establishment Republicans and Congresses who pass bills that get signed, budgets that get implemented, the actual work of governing. 

Take a moment to reflect on Trump's criticism of Bush.  He does not criticize Bush's positions or policy.  The criticism is personal, said with a dismissive sneer.  Bush is "weak", "a loser".   It's not disagreement.   It's contempt.

Obama made it acceptable for Republican audiences to express their contempt aloud, and to pollsters, and presumably soon at the ballot box.   The genie got out of the bottle and its current victims are establishment Republicans.