Codevilla: The 2016 Election is Not Reversible (Republican Self-Governance is over)

[INVAR]

Once again, when this Professor of Conservatism speaks, I listen to what he has to say, because he often recognizes the pattern, trends and zeitgeists of where history teaches this all goes, usually long before anyone else does.

The 2016 Election is Not Reversible

By Angelo Codevilla

Today, the bipartisan ruling class, which the electorate was trying to shed by supporting anti-establishment candidates of both parties in 2016, feels as if it has dodged the proverbial bullet. The Trump administration has not managed to staff itself—certainly not with anti-establishment people—and may never do so. Because the prospect of that happening brought the ruling class’s several elements together and energized them as never before, today, prospects of more power with fewer limits than ever eclipse the establishment’s fears of November 2016.

...As I explained a year ago, by 2016 the ruling class’s dysfunctions and the rest of the country’s resentment had pushed America over the threshold of a revolution; one in which the only certainty is the near impossibility of returning to the republican self-government of the previous two centuries. The 2016 election is not reversible, because it was but the first stage of a process that no one can control and the end of which no one can foresee.

...the cultural division between privileged, government-connected elites and the rest of the country has turned twenty-first century politics in America into a cold civil war between hostile socio-political identities....This impossibility of socio-political peace is the reason why the revolution in which we are living is just getting started.

...Let us be clear: the 2016 electorate chose Trump and they saw Trump as the vehicle by which to challenge the ruling class. During the first half of 2017, the Republican Party finished discrediting itself as a possible vehicle for that job.

...Regardless of what Trump does or does not do, America’s cold civil war is likely to be waged between three or four sets of constituencies, each with its own identity.

[TomSea]

Codevilla's one of those fiscal conservatives, social liberals. Because he's liberal on social issues, he doesn't understand Trump.

The fellow has been scolded on his treatment of Henry Kissinger. These editorials are posted in the politics section as if he has something exceptional to offer.