Trump and Tony Soprano

I guess that—without knowing it—I’m just a weathervane of “the neocon establishment.”

I think I’ve done it more elegantly before, but the National Review, PJ Media, Ted Cruz, and even George Will have now likened Trump to a tin pot Mussolini. Cruz suggests he won ‘t release his tax returns because (to mix metaphors) he was in bed with Tony Soprano before the series’ creators sent Tony to sleep with the fishes. It has also been pointed out that in 1990, in of all places Playboy, Trump faulted Gorbachev for being “weak” and pointed to the Tiananmen Square massacre as an example of “strong” political leadership.

More speculation about the consequences of a Trump nomination may be in order. If—God hopes—he loses big to Hillary, the result may be the crackup and collapse of the two party system. While many Americans may be disgusted with “politics as usual,” history suggests that the collapse or near-collapse of the two-party system is usually bad.

The so-called “Era of Good Feelings” under President Monroe following the collapse of the Federalists after their opposition to the War of 1812 was anything but “good.” Vicious political infighting and factionalism was rife. Out of this rose out first savior on a white horse, General Andy Jackson, whom Democrats used to lionize, but sent the Cherokees on “The Trail of Tears,” appointed to the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney, author of the notorious Dred Scott decision declaring African Americans were not citizens, and presided over and many say precipitated the first U.S. depression.

The Whig Party, which succeeded the Federalists, collapsed in the 1850s, and out of it came the Civil War.

The Democrats shrunk as a national party, first after the War—the result: the era of GOP Gilded Age corruption—and then again after the 1890s as the result of another “Democratic depression” and the party split precipitated by “Cross of Gold” orator William Jennings Bryan. The result: 30 years of GOP infighting and corruption, punctuated only by two problematic terms by Woodrow Wilson (the Democrat who resegregated the federal government), and then—after Harding’s Teapot Dome Scandal and Hoover’s Wall Street Crash—another Great Depression followed by the Second World War.

Democratic dominance from 1932 through 1952 was predicitable and probably necessary. Yet it produced autocratic tendencies (FDR’s fortunately abortive Supreme Court packing plan) and quite a bit of political corruption under Truman, a feisty patriot but with ties to Missouri’s corrupt Pendergast machine.

If Trump is elected, Philip Roth should perhaps write a sequel to The Plot Against America. With Joe McCarthy deposing President Eisenhower c. 1953 and instituting one-party rule. If Hillary crushes Trump, that will dispose of him. But a one or one-and-a-half party system with the GOP reduced to a rump will not bode well for the country.