Sure, Democrats lost political ground in rural, agricultural areas of the Midwest during the Trump era. But it’s the losses in many smaller and mid-size cities that the party should worry about.
That’s the takeaway, anyway, from a new report written by the liberal groups American Family Voices and 21st Century Democrats, which details huge Republican gains in what the group deems “factory towns” in the Midwest and the Rust Belt that rely on manufacturing as a key industry. These areas hold a significant number of voters, enough in some places to outweigh Democrats’ improved performance in major suburbs and big cities.
“The changes and the struggles (of Democrats) tend to be focused on urban vs the rural,” said John Pouland, an advisory board member for the 21st Century group. “But I think the report showed — that leaves out a large chunk of Americans. Many, many towns are neither urban or rural.”
The report looks at 853 counties across 10 states, including Minnesota, in an effort to highlight a weak spot for Democrats — and a strength for Republicans. The top example of a “factory town” county the organization identified in Minnesota was Stearns County, home to much of St. Cloud.
The report described “factory town” voters leaving for the GOP in droves as “the biggest electoral earthquake of the last decade.” In those 853 counties — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and upstate New York — Democratic vote losses between 2012 and 2020 “swamped” the party’s gains in big cities and suburbs by a two-to-one-margin.
Democrats made some gains outside major metro areas, picking up votes in counties dominated by colleges or universities. But they’re not enough to offset some losses in truly rural areas and an enormous defection of voters in small and midsize manufacturing counties. “The central story our report tells is that the hit we took in small and midsized manufacturing counties was the biggest reason Trump won the presidency in 2016 and almost did it again in 2020,” the report says.
[image_credit]Richard J. Martin[/image_credit]
While the reasons for those shifts are many and complex, the report pins some of the losses on declining union rates and health outcomes. It also found that the decline in support for Democrats was often worse in areas that lost more manufacturing jobs. The result is that even if Democrats keep suburban voters in their fold, the party won’t be able to protect its majorities in Congress while hemorrhaging voters in “factory town” counties, the report says.
The report authors say mid-size manufacturing counties are places in which manufacturing makes up at least 13 percent of employment — the U.S. average is about 9 percent — and include a city of 35,000. A small manufacturing county is defined as a place with 13 percent manufacturing employment but no cities of 35,000 or more people, which the report says are often “mischaracterized” as rural.
Large metropolitan counties are defined as counties that include cities with at least 200,000 people and diversified economies, and suburban counties include “bedroom communities” but also counties that border large cities with a high concentration of service industry jobs and relatively few manufacturing jobs.
Republicans have won over huge swaths of voters in Greater Minnesota since 2012. The GOP now controls most state Senate seats outside of the Twin Cities metro, with the exception of a few larger outstate urban centers like Duluth, Mankato, St. Cloud and Moorhead. Biden won 13 of Minnesota’s 87 counties compared to Obama’s 42 in 2008 and 28 in 2012. Clinton won just nine.
The 21st Century Democrats said Stearns County in central Minnesota was their top example of a “factory town” county where Democrats had their biggest vote loss in presidential elections. Stearns County certainly has a history of manufacturing. Electrolux closed its St. Cloud plant, where workers made freezers, in 2019.
Current employment statistics show manufacturing employs about 14 percent of people in the St. Cloud metro area — which includes two counties.
Stearns County is generally conservative, but it appears to have swung further toward Republicans in recent election cycles. In 2012, Romney got 54.8 percent of the vote in the county and beat Obama by more than 9,000 votes. In 2016, Trump won nearly 60 percent of the vote and beat Clinton by about 22,000 votes. Four years later, Trump won again, by roughly 19,000 votes.
“Minnesota is doing a better job of maintaining Democratic support, yet there’s still opportunity in places like Stearns County to not just improve our positions but obviously cut our losses,” said Pouland, the 21st Century Democrats’ advisory board member. “If you can be more competitive in all counties like Stearns County it will help you win races statewide as well as regional, district-wide.”
Jim Cottrill, who chairs the political science department at St. Cloud State University, said Trump was able to tap into anger in voters who may have lost a job, including by advocating for anti-immigrant policies and promoting the idea that other countries were taking advantage of the U.S. in trade. Cottrill said it can be tough for people in manufacturing to find new work in the St. Cloud area outside of the service industry.
He also said Stearns County and the St. Cloud area has become more polarized — between voters in more conservative areas outside of the city and those in town.
[image_credit]Richard J. Martin[/image_credit]
Democrats have improved their performance in St. Cloud lately. DFL state Sen. Aric Putnam, a college professor, narrowly defeated Republican Jerry Relph in 2020 in a district that includes St. Cloud and chunks of Stearns County.
Another top “factory town” county cited by the 21st Century group was Kandiyohi, which relies on food manufacturing and where Romney won by 1,435 votes in 2012 and Trump won by a 5,997-vote margin in 2020. St. Louis County was another “factory town” county. Romney lost the northern Minnesotan county by 34,247 votes in 2012 while Trump lost by 18,687 in 2020.
The report says Minnesota is an outlier in some ways. Along with Illinois, it was the only state that shifted overall toward Democrats, who made gains in the Twin Cities and its suburbs, which make up a large and growing share of the electorate.
The report says of the 10 states they studied, only Minnesota had a net gain in union members from 2010 to 2020, which they took as one evidence point for why Democrats in the state are outpacing counterparts in states like Wisconsin and Ohio. It’s not that Minnesota Democrats aren’t losing ground to the GOP outside of the Twin Cities metro, noted Pouland, “they’re not losing (voters) by the same margin that they are in Iowa.”
Yes, let’s hear it for factory towns, source of so much quaint good sense in the Eisenhower years and now the training ground for contentious Trump talent on Capitol steps Jan. 6.
What did Trump do for manufacturing and agricultural workers? Not clear. His appeal to them is not economic, but cultural. Despite a pandemic that should have subsided by now, this economy is once again starting to have shared prosperity, in large part because Democrats unlike don’t want the rich to squeeze the poor and middle class. Republicans will just continue to gin up new cultural issues to keep Trump voters distracted while their pocket is picked.
Mostly, this article proves that the “politics of distraction” works best in areas of low education, falling opportunity, and racist, xenophobic rural environments. These people have been shooting themselves in the foot since Eisenhower’s regime. They vote for the people who reduce taxes on the uber-rich and the unearned income folks and encourage disinvestment in facilities, plant, and employment and, then, wonder why the Democrats don’t cater to their foolishness. As Larry McMurtry wrote about rural Texas in the 60s, “The kids who stayed in the country tended to be dull, lazy, cautious, or all three; those with brains, zip, and daring were soon off to Dallas or Houston.” In Minnesota, the “kids” with those three attributes are mostly in the Cities or leaving the state for a less timid/conservative state government and general population, better education and career opportunities, and to be with like-minded people. There was some wild hope that the work-from-home movement, inspired by COVID and office obsolescence, might stimulate rural economic growth but those rural areas squashed that hope all by themselves.
You and the previous two commentators really don’t get it. I was reading this report from David Schor over a week ago and similar writers (Carville, Lind) years ago. I am almost ashamed to be on the same page as you guys are……I think the author did a good job with the limited number of paragraphs, so I will make my own observations and would enjoy some decent, non polarized responses. I think there are two areas that fit this classic mode, the Iron Range and the Big 8 towns in SE MN. I think the Range is solid Republican and Pete Stauber is a good fit rep and candidate for the area…. I think the big 8 has benefited from the influence of Mayo and its proximity to the Cities also. I think there is a lot of warehouse utilization and local based mfg. for MN consumers. I am unable to understand how the area has fallen away from Walz and into the GOP. That is my failing and is better left to journalists or politicos with resources. I do know from personal experience in casual talks with strangers there is a lot of anti Mpls sentiment. I mean it just keeps coming up you mention you live near the State Fairgrounds and often the first statement well be glad you don’t live in Mpls!
A swing of 2% can be very significant and the GOP use of grass parties can often tip the balance.
I don’t know what to make of it all. It does seem that trumpism has a powerful emotional appeal that tends to override any sense of voting one’s interests.
the follow-up story is in the details, as we say. small-manufacturing towns (mostly rural) could not say No to Make America Great Again Trump. from women-in-the-workplace (taking men’s jobs, you know) to making God and guns the headline — MAGA sounded like God had actually come down to rescue small-manufacturing towns. except that didn’t happen. Trump had no intention of MAGA’ing small, rural towns — it just sounded so darn good nobody could avoid its perfectly black/white problem-solving approach. if Democrats in small, rural districts had one ounce of sense, they’d all create a populist message and sell it like Trump did. there’s no reason why Democrats shouldn’t win every Iowa county in 2024. it’s the economy, stupid.
In rural areas where Democrats have run populists in congressional areas, the populists get absolutely obliterated. The only rural seats that the Democrats ever win are moderate/conservative Democrats. Like Colin Peterson for so many years before he finally lost.
It really isn’t the economy. Its racism. Its the politics of resentment.
“Rocks and cows” country, as Walz called it, is purple becoming red.
They look at the DFL as the party that both wanted to put more gun laws on law abiding people AND defund the police AND play the no bail, no jail, catch and release prosecuting. As well as the party of Omar and Thompson. Next years election will be interesting.
Interesting, to be sure, as none of those issues have have the slightest bit to do with them, or their rapidly evaporating towns and lives. Perhaps nihilism has taken hold as they finally realize that nothing can save them, and they seek to drag everyone else into their sinkhole of futility on their way to oblivion?
It really is about God, guns and babies … three things the urban liberals hate while also ridiculing the normal decent folks who embrace them. And it’s not that they love Trump, it’s that they despise those who hate Trump.
Michael Moore had it right when he told those blue collar workers in Detroit … “They see that the elites who ruined their lives, hate Trump. Corporate America hates Trump. Wall Street hates Trump. The career politicians hate Trump. The media hates Trump. The enemy of my enemy is who I’m voting for on November 8th.”
“Yes, on November 8th, you, Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Billy Blow, Billy Bob Blow, all the Blows get to go and blow up the whole goddamn system because it’s your right. Trump’s election will be the biggest “F-You” ever recorded in human history. And it will feel … good.”
And on November 8th, 2016, Trump received 63 million votes. On November 3rd, 2020, Trump received 11 million more votes (74 million votes) – the most votes ever recorded for a sitting president.
It is weird that so many people voted for a guy who has been a failure all his life. But he did lose his re-election decisively.
“On November 3rd, 2020, Trump received 11 million more votes (74 million votes) – the most votes ever recorded for a sitting president.”
And yet, he lost the election. His opponent received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, breaking the previous record held by Barack Obama. Not only that, Trump lost in the electoral college by, ironically enough, the same margin that put him in the White House in the first place.
First of all, anyone who adopts that “enemy of my enemy” as a voting strategy is a failed citizen. But that’s just more “elitism”, I guess.
Second, the idea that corporate America and Wall Street hated Trump is preposterous, no matter how many times it is repeated. And if the Repub “political elites” actually hate Trump, they have a very strange way of showing it. A perverse and humiliating way, actually.
Anyone who believes these things has difficulty understanding reality. Doh! More elitism!
Except there’s nothing “normal and decent” about any of those people, or their beliefs. Nostalgic, under prepared for modern society, sure, but nothing normal. They are a dying out minority, who believe themselves far more powerful than they are.
It Minneapolis defunds the police, these places will vote Republican for the next few decades.
Republicans don’t campaign for a platform. They can’t, the don’t have one. They campaign against Democrats and they campaign against cities and what they entail. Republican candidates for reelection to announce plans or programs, they announce lists of grievances and complaints. They wail about all that’s wrong in the world and blame the Democrats for it.
Republcians have discovered that this all grievanance all the time works remarkably well for them. It complements news media’s focus on bad news, and the Democratic world view, that if something is wrong in the world, an attempt should be made to make it right.
I went throught two campaign with Trump, campaigns in which Republicans finally abandoned any pretence of integrity, decency, and for that matter reality. We had to deal with a candidate who was completely committed to promise anything to anyone. Despite winning the popular vote in two elections, Democrats never quite came up with an adequate response to that. Much as we would love, and much as we often get in trouble when we try, Democrats know that we cannot solve all the problems of the world. That being the case, Republicans argue, why not take a chance on the guy who at least says he can?
I think it is absurd the condescending nature of most of the comments on here in regards to people on the right side of the aisle. They are people too, their vote counts just like yours does, they work, they have families. You may not like their political leaning, but the world would truly be a better place if you would just accept it and move on. This constant bickering and pointing your nose down at others shows how horrible manners have taken over.
The problem is that the ignorance of these people does not come without consequences. While most of the people dying of Covid these days are not vaccinated, their insistence on keeping Covid around effects everyone. They hurt jobs and businesses. They hurt education. The full hospitals prevent other people from getting medical care.
And you’ve got it backwards on pointing noses down. The whole Republican message is based on resentment of the metro, even though the blue parts of the state are subsidizing the red parts.
Why does no one ever seem to say that to the right side of the aisle? Liberals are being portrayed as out of touch elitists, mocked as anti-American, and generally painted in ridiculous terms. Does anyone say conservatives need to reach out and understand where urban liberals are coming from?
It’s hard being on the right, harder than it used to be. Being on the right is to essentially being negative. Without programs or policies of their own, they are limited to criticizing the policies and programs of others. Their choice not to have a platform at all in 2020 was simply a formalization of where they had been for a long time. Without a policy of alone, they feel victimized and martyred even by those who point that out.
Hard to be on the right? Says who? If the election were held today, the republicans would win in a landslide. The democratic machine has shot their feet full of lead every chance they have gotten the last 8 months.
Initially what this article is about is how a party can run smarter and win more by appealing to the median voter. And then most of the comments trash each other …. Hidden in the original writings is “popularism” that is what the pragmatic think tanks are working on and how to score electoral and then eventually legislative victories. Yes we know McConnell’s and previously Gingrich’s policies are jamming the system. How do we repair it?….There will be some suburban yoga Mom’s and Dad’s at the upcoming Medical Freedom rally. They may be more concerned with health than insurrection but have gotten swept up well because maybe it feels good. Making medicaid sexy, like they have made insurrection somehow liberating will be a tall order but it can be done.
Sorry sir, but you don’t seem to fully grasp the problem. These people HATE you. They HATE me. They don’t care about policy, they never did. They keep telling us over and over and over exactly what they are, what they want, and what they intend to do (seen any black flags lately) yet you still insist on appealing to the “better angels” of their conscience, and expecting them to respond in kind. Did it ever occur to you that the “better angels” died a long time ago? Rationality will never appeal to the irrational, and in this case pursuing such will lead to great personal harm to you, me, and anyone else like us. Count me out.
“If the election were held today, the republicans would win in a landslide.:
And then what? What do Republicans stand for, apart from opposition to the Democrats? Anything they might advance (tax cuts for the wealthy, to take but one example) would be very unpopular with the electorate.
In the past 8 months since Trump’s Insurrection, the Repub party has passed partisan voting restriction legislation in almost every state they control, but you look out and see a “[D]emocratic machine”? Where, exactly?
Certainly no such machine exists in MN, a state with the only divided legislature in the nation. And the extensive foot shooting is not particularly obvious to me, so you’d have to be more specific.
We have to think about what is best for small d democracy as it currently exists. Policies do have an impact on people’s lives.
I’m glad the coaches of the Dem team are looking at the dynamics of the “factory town”. If the party could return to strength in these, the disastrous “conservative” movement would be politically annihilated.
The problem is that the voters in these areas are simply inundated with (plutocrat-funded) rightwing hate radio. Marinated in it. If a Dem sits at a working class bar in these towns, the amount of vitriolic rightwing lies and absurd “conservative” talking points being thrown about stupefies them. In some areas, of course, one simply cannot admit to being a Dem.
And for what? The idea that ANY “conservative” proposal would advance their lives or smaller-city community in some way is simply comical. The capitalists and plutocrats that fund the “conservative” movement have no intention of advancing anything that would aid smaller-city manufacturing, since it would necessarily impose burdens and restrictions on the free movement of global capital. Mr Tester throws (unintentionally) throws out the very strategy that these voters have swallowed hook, line and sinker: “God, guns and babies”. Yes, indeed, the endless Culture War, America’s longest war by far now! (Leave aside that voters in even these “factory towns” favor increased gun restrictions.) But how a myopic focus on such things aids the economic predicament of their nice “factory town” is quite a mystery.
So these nice Minnesotans are ginned up by their “conservative” media to rage against Quixotic efforts at police reform in cities they hardly visit, or cities they never visit, like Portland, OR. Yes indeed, that’s where a “factory town” denizen should target their anger, at hapless urbanites trying to deal with their OWN community’s problems. But ginning up anger at something (or someone, ala Omar) that really has very little to do with MN Joe Sixpack’s real interests is now the tried-and-true tactic of “conservatism”.
And until the folks nationwide in these “factory towns” figure out the con being run, the country, whether urban, suburban, exurban, rural or none of the above, will continue in its political (and environmental) death spiral.
Hard to be on the right?
I start from an assumption which I mostly believe that Republicans are good and decent people. I think the two parties aren’t so much right or wrong as they are different and they often represent different constituencies whose interest can be in conflict.
Over the years, Republicans developed a certain self image for themselves. I think of it as a three part image, a three legged stool, if you will. First, Republicans think they are smarter than Democrats, that they are governed by logic and dispassionate analysis.
Second, Republicans are the moral party. They go to church more or at least say they do. They moralize more. They are more willing to enact their moral positions into law so that everyone can have the benefit of them.
Third, Republicans are the party of business and the economy. They believe government should be run like a business, and that businessmen should run the government. For them, this is a pathway to prosperity.
And then along came Trump who shattered all three of these carefully cultivated images that Republicans had of themselves. The candidate they found them supporting had none of the values they revered. First, he wasn’t bright, second, he was remarkably and publicly immoral, and third instead of a businessman, he was a parody of businessman, a satirist’s or an ironist’s view of a nightmare vision of how business in America operates.
How do Repulicans recover from this. A party full of insecure individuals, so sensitive to being condescended to, know that everyone now who isn’t one of them is now condescending to them. They so want to preach to the rest of us, but they it’s with an awareness that they are simply being laughed at, that the party of Trump can never have any real moral credibility at all.
That’s why I think it’s hard to be a Republican.
I certainly think that your take on the Repub party “image” was essentially correct, arguably even up to the nomination of pious Mormon Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate in 2012. He would have fallen into all three of your categories of self image.
But with Romney’s loss to the hated Obama, this long-cultivated self image (which had been showing cracks for well over a decade) shattered beyond repair. The rightwing extremist hoi-poloi, to whom Pinhead Palin famously pandered as the “True Americans”, felt that plutocrat Romney had been somehow “forced” upon them, and his (certain) loss to Obama ended their willingness to conform any longer to the traditional gentile image of the “Republican” that you sketch.
Trump, as an effective demagogue (I suppose we can grant him that), openly piled contempt and calumny upon the “Romney” model of Reagan Republican conservatism, and called for a new crusade of Know-Nothingism. This path had been foreshadowed by the (openly unqualified and utterly stupid) Palin, who is the True Mother of today’s Repub party. The unqualified demagogue Trump saw this opening, and also saw the power of stoking white nationalism to the besieged white working class, who were never all that comfortable with the patrician model of the Repub party you describe.
As the 2020 election made clear, large segments of rightwing white America had opted not to vote for many years of the Conservative Era. They obviously hated the pluralist multiracial make-up of today’s Dem party, but the Repub party’s Brooks Brothers conservatism didn’t go remotely as far right as they wanted, which was the re-establishment of the dominant white supremacy culture of, say, 1940. Trump was openly willing to go as far as they wanted, and thus with his non-white immigrant hatred he became their cult hero. This is the new self image of “conservatism”, one for which the New Right will obviously sacrifice democracy, under the theory that “We had to destroy the village in order to save it”. Thus Trump necessarily became Trumpolini.
And the old Romneyite Repubs? The old leaders of the party? They always had their democracy-hating leanings (remember the Stolen Election of 2000), and haven’t rejected the old James Baker self image. But they but have (mostly) understood that they now either conform to the new image of the True American “conservative” or they resign from office. (Plutocrat Romney himself is sort of an exception, but he has almost no influence in today’s Repub party.) Mostly these business Repubs are grudgingly complying with the new reality, as more and more Palinite Know-Nothings are put forward for office. The choice is vote for these barbarians or don’t vote. After all, the Romneyites still get their tax cuts and the deregulation of the capitalist economy, and that’s what those Repubs who fell within the old image you describe wanted anyway.
If the new rightwing barbarians will provide that, then the (admitedly ugly) suit of new clothes can be made to fit.
While your commentary was entertaining, it was totally fiction. Here’s the truth:
Trump ran against the establishment, which of course included the elite of the republican party and those within the conservative media (Bill Kristol et al) who made a comfortable living spouting conservative principles without ever bothering to deliver when given the reins of power. What has always amazed me is that Trump promised and delivered precisely what those establishment republicans allegedly wanted but never delivered. And they hate him for it.
Trump’s primary promise was to seal the Southern border. His argument was that the flood of illegal immigrants was hurting the job prospects of the working class. It used to be that roofing, for example, was a well-paying blue collar job that paid the bills and could support a family. Now virtually all the roofers in this country are from Guadalajara and they work for $20 an hour … about half what roofers used to get. This didn’t sit well with Corporate America, the Koch brothers and other Chamber of Commerce types who liked paying for cheap labor (“Corporate America hates Trump.”) but millions of blue collar workers who used to vote democrat thought it made sense. They had already been betrayed by the democrats who needed more voters so they had no problem whatsoever with an open borders policy.
Trump’s related promise to seal the deal with the blue collar vote was to use the tax code and tariffs to stop the outflow of jobs to China, Mexico, and the Far East. Factory jobs that paid a living wage would give people without a post-secondary education options other than fast food or the hospitality industry. Although manufacturers would pay lower taxes as an incentive to keep jobs here in the U.S., the investor class wasn’t thrilled with giving up the easy profits made from the cheap foreign production operations. (“Wall street hates Trump.”)
These policies ran counter to the traditional republican orthodoxy of supporting policies that enabled maximum profits regardless of who got hurt by it.
Ending the wars. Trump openly criticized George Bush’s Iraq war and suggested that we were paying for the world’s defense in blood and treasure when maybe we should end that practice and bring our troops home. Well, that didn’t go over well with the Neocons and others who had a vested interest in the U.S. war machine, but as a veteran myself, it was refreshing to hear a politician speak the truth for once in this foreign policy area. Why do we have to pay the cost of defending Germany from Russia when Germany buys their bleeping oil from Russia?, for example. Trump would say those things at his rallies and veterans and non-veterans alike would nod their heads in agreement.
I could go on and on about promising to pack the courts with conservative judges and actually do it … promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and actually do it … and other policies that the establishment republicans promised in their election campaigns but never delivered. (“The career politicians hate Trump.”)
Trump’s biggest sin was in actually delivering on the conservative principles that the professional conservatives had based their entire careers on … not producing any results mind you, just using them as talking points. He exposed them and destroyed their livelihood in the process. Trump’s allegiance was never to the republican party, but he was truer to republican principles than the establishment republicans ever were.
Hilarious.
Trump is a fool, but he knew building the wall was complete nonsense and would have no effect on immigration. When the Republicans controlled congress during the first half of Trump’s term, they didn’t do anything to build the wall. It was purely a political prop. It was nonsense spouted to people who don’t understand economics or immigration.
Have you ever heard Trump talk about tariffs? He has zero understanding of how they work. He doesn’t understand who pays tariffs. And his trade wars did nothing to help anyone. Well, except China.
Trump did end the war in Afghanistan, but got thoroughly rolled negotiating with the Taliban (the problem with electing someone with zero negotiating skills).
And the idea that Trump is a conservative is hilarious. He’s just a common grifter. An entitled baby who kept failing up.
I’m glad you got some enjoyment from my comments, Dennis, and thank you for your extensive counterargument. Mr Terry has pretty much handled any response I would’ve made on Trump’s immigration and “trade war” fronts, so I’ll focus on the idea you persist in asserting: that Trump is/was somehow “hated” by the traditional “conservative” base of plutocrats and by DC Repub “career politicians”.
I do agree with you that Trump’s half-baked immigration and tariff “policies” were dreamed up solely for the delectation of the white working class (which you call “blue collar”, without remembering that non-white blue collar voters overwhelmingly voted against Trump.) And I’ll even agree that these marginal policies were a mild pain for some plutocrats, mostly in the Ag sector. But Trump handled that by paying off those supposedly “sacrificing” corporate farmers with (unconstitutional) payments of funds not appropriated for such use by the Congress. So more lawbreaking, a Trump specialty!
The problem is that, even if I grant that Trump’s immigration and tariff policy were deviations from standard “conservative” doctrine, what you fail to recognize is that they posed no real headache for either Corporate America or Wall Street. What most plutocrats wanted after Trump’s 2016 “win” was their usual tax cuts (both personal and corporate), the continued deregulation of the economy, and the abandonment of agency enforcement of federal regulation. Trump and the Repub Congress gave them their inevitable tax cuts, and Trump gave them the deregulation and non-enforcement of regulations they wished. Indeed, he went farther and gutted every executive agency, as “conservatives” have always wished. So Trump (and his Wall Street Treasury Sec Mnuchin) very largely governed the economy as bog-standard Repubs. So of course Corporate America and Wall Street didn’t “hate Trump” because of his Quixotic “border wall” fantasy for the rubes, nor because of his phony Trade War (wherein he lost, retreated and declared victory.) The plutocrats didn’t care about this ephemeral nonsense, this window dressing for the rubes. They got what they cared about, as usual.
As for most Repub elites “hating Trump”, who knows what was in the hearts of some of them, and who cares? What matters was/is their public attitudes and actions vis-a-vis the anti-demcratic menace Trump, not their (imagined) emotions. And their actions were quite clear: virtually total support and approval of Trump policies and know-nothing nonsense, right up to this very day and right through Trump’s Insurrection! Both majority leaders McConnell and Ryan (and then whatever clown replaced Ryan) worked to pass Trump’s agenda (to the extent such a thing existed), and never expressed animosity (or even much disagreement) with Trump’s misrule when they controlled Congress, or when they didn’t. This sort of wholesale public fealty is does not demonstrate anything like universal “hatred”, at least not in English usage. And if you saw something else, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Sure, a (very few) number of semi-prominent Reagan/Romney “conservatives” publicly opposed and lambasted Trump, such as the Lincoln Project dudes and neocon failure Kristol, as well as some of the (many) “conservatives” Trump fired from his Crackpot Cabinet when they saw what a complete incompetent dumb*ss he was. But they had no effect on either the 2020 election or on very many elected Repubs, including those few who after making some minor statements of disapproval of Herr Trump opted to retire from politics. They hardly constitute the sort of critical mass that would allow you to make the blanket claim that Repub “career politicians hate Trump”. Their actions don’t show this by and large, and if they do hate him yet enable him, then they are even worse failures for it.
There is a scene in one of my favorite movies, “The Eagle Has Landed” currently on HBO Max which I have been thinking a lot about lately. Admiral Canaris comes back from a meeting with the leaders of the Third Reich. He tells his subordinate, played by Robert Duvall, that those leaders raved incoherently. He asked Duvall, “Are they mad or am I the one who is mad?”
I think of that when I see these, by all appearances, solid respectable men in suits and ties, enabling Donald Trump. I see Mitt Romney with carefully cultivated respectability with all of his carefully drafted reservations, supporting a process which might very well result in Trump’s return to office. And I wonder, are they the ones who are crazy or is it me?