Thread by @TheLastRefuge2

I'm going to reemphasize x infinity, because it's the greatest thing I have seen on Twitter in years. @ellencarmichael deserves a follow, because her earnest political outlook is so authentic (it saves a million words). THIS is the authentic outlook of the republican party.

https://twitter.com/ellencarmichael/status/1559277283654963202

Please do not disparage her or ridicule the perspective. Instead, absorb -genuinely- what Carmichael is saying, along with the replies to her suggestion from the professionally republican followers she maintains.

It is the greatest visible example of the GOP disconnect in years.

The only other moment that comes close to just sitting there as a representative example of the professional political disconnect, was the 2016 South Carolina republican primary debate; and the audience reaction to MAGA Trump as presented.

In 2016, President Trump first introduced the professional republican class (the GOP betters) to the concept of America-First economic nationalism.

They were clueless. The audiences sat puzzling their puzzlers wondering what was this jibberish.. what was this odd policy.

In New Hampshire, then Candidate Trump introduced China as a geopolitical and economic threat.

Jeb's infamous and incredulous "c'mon man'... represented the GOP audience view. WTF are you talking about, they said... China? What is this nonsense.

Until Trump, the catchphrase from the GOP "betters", this is generations of outlook talking points, included the acceptance of:

..."The United States is a service driven economy"...

Bush Sr.
Clinton
Bush Jr.
Obama

30+ years of the same mantra. Until Trump.

It's funny in retrospect, but even today the professional political class of Republicans do not understand the basic inflection point that Trump represented.

That incredulous disconnect is still so brutally visible as to surface in the Carmichael tweet.

That's the value of it.

Bush, McCain, Romney, Jeb, et al,... none of them connected to the issue of, or even the concept of, "economic nationalism."

The entire apparatus of the GOP as a professional political party couldn't fathom what was at the nucleus of middle-class voter pain. Trump did.

What is this attraction?... said dozens of the best paid political consultants and Wall Street cocktail party invitees.

It must be because Trump's a TV reality media star they reconciled in their echo-chamber. Yeah, yeah, that's it, the rubes know him from TV.

Gottabe...

That disconnect I am describing, still permeates the professional GOP apparatus to this very day.

Hedge funders, Donors, Wall Street, Multinationals, the apparatus that supports the architecture of one wing of the 2-party club dynamic, just can't fathom the appeal of Trump.

Sacrilegious words like "tariffs", "reciprocity", "trade equity", "protectionism" had long been banned from better conservative circles.

Books burned. Mention amid Wharton School lesson plans strictly forbidden. By the time of Trump, an economic code of Omerta existed.

But like the flickering flame of liberty, the embers of economic nationalism still existed.... barely alight, but smoldering.

Here's comes Trump with the bellows, and BOOM, just like that, YES, it reignites.... America-First is introduced. Worse yet, it comes without apology.

Trillions, on a global level, suddenly at stake. Billions on a corporate and even personal level suddenly at risk, for the professional political class.

Wait, he,.... what,... tariffs?

Oh, hell no, they thought. Hell no. This system he speaks of is unimaginable. The horror.

Peel all the skin off the onion, and even though they (like Carmichael) might not be able to understand it, that's the core of the disconnect.

Economic nationalism is the unifying theme of MAGA.

Economic nationalism is what creates the largest populist tent in the history of republican politics.

Blacks, whites, latinos, asians, all colors all creeds, all races, all united.... because the "working-class" is the unifying element.

MAGA is the voice of the working class.

The working class is what keeps all the shit working. We are the binding of our patchwork quilt of a constitutional republic.

The working class that had been beaten, put down, isolated, disconnected from policy, ridiculed for not having pedigree, all of it. United in MAGA.

It's a massive political tent. The biggest political coalition in the history of American politics.

However, you have to be in the working-class in order to understand the working class. That's the GOP problem.

Candidate Trump introduced the professional GOPe to economic nationalism.

President Trump then initiated economic nationalism.

The MAGA working class immediately felt the benefits of economic nationalism.

This is what unifies the MAGA base and attaches to President Donald Trump.

This is what the GOP professional political class just do not understand, and even more dislike. DeSantis, Noem, Haley, Pence, Cheney et al.

None of them carry a multiracial working-class coalition.

/END