Trumpery, a neglected word, may be coming back into vogue. Meaning “showy but worthless”, it accurately sums up the pouting petulance of the American property tycoon Donald Trump in last week’s Republican presidential debate. Although some in the conservative audience were amused by his incoherent, shoot-from-the-hip style, Trump is no joke. It would be a mistake to dismiss him as a buffoon, egomaniac or political aberration, although there is an element of all three about him.
Given a nationally televised platform alongside nine other White House hopefuls, Trump and his sharp-suited brand of hate politics gained a faux respectability. Hatred and fear of immigrants, of Muslims, of elected politicians of all stripes, of the pro-choice movement and women in general spewed from him like a ruptured sewer.
Most Americans, including Republican leaders, recoiled in disgust and dismay. Commentators such as Robert Reich see in Trump a wrecking ball aimed at America’s ruling class. Some in Britain draw parallels with Jeremy Corbyn.
Such explanations are too flattering to Trump by far. In terms of real-life, mainstream voting intentions, as opposed to snap polls among rightwing activists, his appeal is limited. His constituency is ignorance, which like Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, he both shares and exploits. In this, he is heir to a long, inglorious American tradition, as Huffington Post columnist Geoffrey Dunn noted: “Like the late Huey Long and Joe McCarthy, both Trump and Palin have tapped into the deep anger and fear of a small but volatile slice of the American body politic. It’s a real and complicated demographic, largely misunderstood.” Like the worst elements of Germany’s neo-Nazi National Democrats, Greece’s Golden Dawn or France’s Front National, Trumpery thrives in the alienated margins.
Trump’s post-debate attack on Fox News’s Megyn Kelly exposed this darker side. He appeared to threaten her when she challenged his description of women as dogs, fat pigs and slobs, and suggested afterwards that she was a menstruating bimbo. This was too much for even the more rabid Republicans, who disowned him.
Trump will not win the party nomination. His campaign will remain an unsavoury sideshow. The threat he poses is more indirect, yet potentially dangerous. Already, other candidates have shifted rightwards on issues such as immigration and abortion. Jeb Bush, the presumed front runner, ducked his chance to confront Trump.
Sooner or later, Bush and fellow candidates will need to show more guts. If a spurned Trump runs as an independent, like Ross Perot in 1992, he could dash Republican hopes of recapturing the White House.