There are those who simply want to break MAGA. And they are not shy about saying as much.
Imagine running a major marathon. A multinational shoe maker offers you $5 million if you come in first. You realize that you need to run the race of your life, but you’re willing to train like never before in order to get such a big payoff. While out running, you bump into a friend who is training for the same race. You tell him of your potential windfall. “Oh, that’s nothing. I have been offered $10 million if I just cross the finish line.” You can’t believe how much your buddy gets for a much easier goal.
In the political world, victory is usually a complex undertaking. Donald Trump’s success a year ago was the product of years of defining, strengthening, enlarging and holding together MAGA. We don’t think much of the president having won both the popular and Electoral vote, but Republican victors almost never win the popular vote. Donald Trump got a lot of people to vote for him from a wildly diverse conglomerate of Amish, orthodox Jews, Hispanics, Blacks, Evangelicals, young men, and other demographics. These groups do not necessarily all get along and generally have different goals, but all of them looked at Donald Trump and his program and said that he was their guy. Putting together such success is difficult and as the recent losses by Republicans show, losing is a lot easier than winning. A weak candidate, a poor argument, bad background economics and other factors can derail a campaign, even if all of the other factors—money, messaging, advertising, etc.--are on target.
The Republicans have a new problem, one that is hard to gauge as to its size or potential threat. There are different groups ostensibly on the right who have stated that they want MAGA to lose. Some have claimed to be personally opposed to Donald Trump. Some have badmouthed Charlie Kirk. Nobody has a patent on “Republican,” and no one has a trademark on what a conservative is supposed to be. The “America First” wing argues that Donald Trump is too much in the center in his support for Israel, association with blacks, and overall refusal to make the Republican Party an America-Only party focused on whites. They are open in their disdain for the president and in their desire that MAGA should lose and be replaced with a Groyper-style party. Such people do not have ideas that would be broadly popular to allow for electoral victory, but are they big enough to guarantee MAGA defeat? Let’s imagine that all of the Groypers voted for Donald Trump in 2024 but would not vote for his successor unless the latter promised to eject all Jews and lock up all blacks. Would their refusal to support a mainstream MAGA candidate be like a little fly or would it be the death knell for Republicans in trying to hold onto power in Washington? The “woke right” would appear to be smaller than it portrays itself to be, but again—like our runner above—if the goal is to cause MAGA to lose without any thought of the Democrats who would gain power—then they don’t need to work so hard to achieve their poisonous aims.
Ultimately, the “woke right” is engaged in the politics of chutzpah. Unlike Donald Trump, it does not have to worry about victories. It wants to keep a pure message, one that resonates with young conservatives. If by doing so, they bring about President AOC, they would say that it is not their problem. Donald Trump understands that politics involves compromise; these fellows do not, because they have less interest in winning than in being right in their own eyes. They very much remind me of other practitioners of chutzpah, like James Comey, who wrote in his notes that he was gearing up to work with “president-elect HRC” (Hillary Rodham Clinton). He and his anti-Trump buddies never thought that the orange man from New York would win and thus let their chutzpah show. When the incriminating documents were found at FBI Central, they could not believe what had happened. A grand jury in Florida has sent out a bevy of subpoenas to Comey’s friends and former colleagues. Chutzpah has its price.
One of my favorite scenes from a Laurel and Hardy movie involved the two stuck between German and American lines. How can they cross to the other side? Simple. They make a flag showing one side a German flag and the other side an American. They boldly move between the soldiers and nobody fires a shot. And then they make a fatal mistake; they turn around and show the enemy’s colors to each side. Shooting ensues. There are those who do not want to choose or judge between what we’ll call “Standard MAGA” and the “woke right”. They claim to have friends on both sides; who are they to judge, each to his own, etc? But in behaving this way, they have made their positions clear. There has never been a single woman in history who was 1/3 pregnant. MAGA includes support for an ally, Israel. It includes efforts to make the lives of black Americans better. It sees women as a key constituency and not as “waiting around to get raped” as the lead Groyper has claimed. An honest person cannot claim to support both movements or not have an opinion on the subject. I can understand that one does not want to lose friends and/or ratings. But in the end, there are times in life when one has to make a choice. Jimmy Carter approached the American Olympic Committee and put before them the behavior of Russia in Afghanistan. The Olympians chose not to attend the Moscow Olympics. For elite athletes, their sports are their lives, and for many, they have a very small window during which they are internationally competitive. But they took a stand. Will those on the right who waffle and deflect also make a stand against the anti-American America First rhetoric? Can they get over their personal allegiances to say that any movement that suggests killing all Jews and arresting all blacks is repugnant and unworthy of any airtime?
Political chutzpah is by no means limited to Washington. A few weeks ago, we bumped into the mayor of Jerusalem in the Old City. My wife, who has lived her entire life here, begged him not to turn Jerusalem into a monstrosity of towers (40 are being built at this time at the entrance to the city). His response was extraordinary: “You don’t understand a thing.” This is not a good way to address any voter, but it was truly chutzpah to make such a statement, especially as he is not a Jerusalemite. He is trying to make up for lost income from the poor Arab and ultra-orthodox communities by increasing property tax income, but in the process, he is losing the texture of Jerusalem. It is becoming another Tel Aviv. The #1 tourist attraction in Israel is the Western Wall. After that are religious sites for all major religions. The world does not need more towers, but it needs an authentic and beautiful Jerusalem.
Chutzpah results when one thinks that he is better than those around him. Whether it is a Groyper demanding a Jew-free America or a local mayor destroying old neighborhoods to fill his coffers, chutzpah is chutzpah. There is a time for it, like when the American General answered his German counterpart, “Nuts!” when the latter demanded an American surrender. The problem we have today is that the political chutzpah of our time is always at the expense of the regular citizens. And about that, they don’t care.