27 Sep 2017 10:20 pm
Alabama tide portends another angry voter wave.
The resounding defeat of Sen. Luther Strange, President Trump's preferred candidate in Tuesday's primary election, carries with it an important lesson about the true motive force that has roiled politics for a decade.
When the Tea Party took over the GOP in 2010 and propelled Republicans to a majority in the House, the wave was easily mistaken as one driven by ideological, free-market, libertarian, or conservative ideas.
The same wave seemed to be rolling in 2014.
But the wave that crashed over the political landscape in 2016 swamped Tea Party candidates whom the previous Tea Party wave had swept into Washington only six years earlier.
These were politicians such as Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who could do nothing to prevent the incoming tide of Trumpism.
Donald Trump, the least conservative and least ideological Republican nominee of our generation, was borne into the Oval Office.
Many of us concluded that this wave was about Trump, the man.
But in Alabama Tuesday night, that idea was in its turn swept away.
The latest wave crashed on Trump or, more accurately, on his candidate, and instead swept Roy Moore into the general election at the end of which he will, presumably, be a senator.
What's going on?
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of the most anti-establishment politicians in Washington, explained this very dynamic to us a few months ago:
"I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans," Massie said of the Republican voters who had delivered the Tea Party victories.
"But after some soul-searching, I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas.
They were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race.
And Donald Trump won best in class."
