James Campbell on US president-elect Donald Trump: Relax and enjoy the ride

TRUMP hasn’t just stuck it right up all the Leftoids and progressive elites who thought he couldn’t win. He’s also stuck it right up the Republican Party bigwigs, writes James Campbell.

James Campbell

2 min read

November 10, 2016 - 12:00AM

James Campbell

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DONALD Trump hasn’t just stuck it right up all the Leftoids and progressive elites who thought he couldn’t win.

He’s also stuck it right up the Republican Party bigwigs who didn’t even want him to get their party’s nomination.

His victory is similar in many ways to Ronald Reagan’s triumph in 1980.

Though he is now a Republican icon, Ronald Reagan was once feared and loathed by the Republican Party’s powerbrokers as Trump is today.

US President Ronald Reagan gestures while speaking at the White House in 1988. Picture: File

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In 1980, George Bush Sr was the establishment’s guy, just as his son, Jeb, was this year. And just like Reagan, Trump has won by winning the votes of the white working class who feel that the Democratic Party hasn’t much to offer them.

By winning Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, Trump has won states that haven’t gone to the Republican Party since the 1980s.

Remarkably, it also seems that despite early concerns that someone as profane as Trump could not get the evangelical Christian vote, they turned out for him in the end — inspired no doubt by the importance they place on the power to choose who gets to sit on the Supreme Court.

There are big differences between Trump and Reagan’s wins, however.

President-elect Donald Trump waves as he arrives at his election night rally. Picture: AP Photo/John Locher

The Trump coalition is not Reagan’s coalition. Reagan had the support of a large chunk of the Republican foreign policy establishment — the original “neo-cons”, many of them ex-Democrats worried their old party had become soft on the Soviet menace.

In this election very few credible security and foreign policy professionals have backed Trump publicly. His isolationism and hostility to the world’s trade system — a system that America, more than any other country, built — scares them. And it’s not just Americans who think foreign policy is the most important part of being president. Whatever they say in public there aren’t many in Canberra who wanted this to happen, if for no other reason than their worry that Trump is too erratic.

The Left are, of course, going to go bananas. Having assumed Trump couldn’t win, their shock will soon give way to the paranoid fantasies of a fascist takeover.

Their fears are, of course, baseless. Even if you believe Trump will be a Berlusconi or, at worst, a Mussolini, the American political system was designed to prevent such an outcome.

Nearly 50 years ago, Americans elected Richard Nixon, a man who wiretapped, burgled and illegally sabotaged his political opponents. He didn’t get away with it. In an age that was much more deferential than our own, the system found him out.

US President Richard Nixon announcing his resignation in 1974.

Trump will not have the advantage of the prestige of the office Nixon had — in part in consequence of Nixon’s disgrace. That should give comfort to anyone worried that Trump represents a threat to American democracy.

In the meantime, let’s sit back and watch.