by WorldTribune Staff, December 5, 2017
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon shifted into high gear upon leaving the White House and believes that his campaign backing President Donald Trump’s populist movement against the GOP establishment is “on the right side of history.”
If that movement gets it right, “we will govern for 50 years,” he said according to the author of a new book on the Bannon phenomenon.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, has referred to Bannon’s movement as “this element” that will end up accidentally electing Democrats.
“But what McConnell and the rest of the establishment still can’t seem to come to terms with is that it is this very ‘element’ that successfully elected a president,” said Keith Koffler, author of the new book “Bannon: Always the Rebel”, in an op-ed for The Hill.
Bannon told Koffler that “All policy should be oriented toward making the working people in this country and the middle class in this country’s lives have a better shot at success. And we’ve gotten away from that. What we’ve done is brought in huge global competition for their jobs, for their schools.”
Bannon recently headlined a fundraiser for Black Americans for a Better Future (BABF) at which the BABF’s founder, Raynard Jackson, said “If you were Stevie Wonder, being blind, and you could sit and talk with Steve and didn’t know his color, you would swear he’s from the black community because of his understanding of the dynamic, the business and community dynamic.”
McConnell and the GOP establishment “fail to understand that Bannon is seeking a wholesale reordering of the Republican power structure in Washington that reflects the change that has already occurred within the GOP electorate,” Koffler wrote. “A revolution has taken place, he believes, but somehow the czar and his ministers remain in the Winter Palace.”
Bannon believes the Republican Party “has already been captured at its roots by Trump’s brand of nationalist populism, and that it’s only Washington’s political class and its house press corps that isn’t yet in on the secret,” Koffler wrote. “Trump, after all, decisively whipped a cadre of credible Washington establishment candidates who opposed him in the 2016 Republican primaries. If you want to get a sense of the tectonic plates that are moving beneath Washington, note that McConnell in an August poll had only an 18 percent approval rating in Kentucky – a state Trump won in 2016 by 30 points, with 62 percent of the vote.”
Bannon told Koffler that “Populist nationalism is the winner of what we’re doing now. It is on the right side of history. The only debate going forward will be: Will it be [British Labor Party leader] Jeremy Corbyn’s and Bernie Sanders’s views of populism or Donald Trump’s view and [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s view of populism – whether it will be a culturally right and economically conservative or whether it will be socialistic.”
Koffler noted that: “Even if his candidates are not perfect political specimens and don’t all have consistent political philosophies, most of them have sworn to Bannon that they will vote to replace McConnell as leader. This is the essential precursor to making the Senate reflect the populist views of the Republican base. Moreover, as newly elected senators, they will be beholden to Trump – and Bannon.”
Bannon is portrayed by Washington Republicans “as some kind of political pyromaniac getting his kicks by lighting the Republican Party up in flames,” Koffler wrote. “In fact, what I found is that he has a well-thought-out plan to make the GOP a working-class party.”
The populist movement’s policy “might not make perfect sense to economists and the corporate interests that animate the Republican establishment,” Koffler noted. “But the new GOP will work to preserve and expand the middle and working classes, which Bannon believes are the soul of the nation, the basis of our economic wealth, and the most critical voting bloc. And that means stanching illegal immigration, limiting unfettered legal immigration, and opposing multilateral trade deals, an approach rejected by many in the GOP establishment and its corporate masters – as well as many traditional conservatives – but which Bannon believes is backed by the base.”
“What’s amazing is, I took about 20 blacks and Hispanics to meet with Steve last month, and about one-third of them were Democrats. And every person, without exception, said I want to work with Steve Bannon,” Raynard Jackson told Breitbart News. “They heard him unfiltered by the liberal media. They asked him any question they wanted, sitting face-to-face with him for two hours, and not one person said they disagreed with anything he said.”
Jackson said Bannon looks at the black community, point blank, and says, “What has 40 years of liberalism gotten for you? A higher murder rate, higher black-on-black crime, higher unemployment, higher teen pregnancy rates.”
In a video conversation with Koffler about “Bannon: Always the Rebel”, Bannon said, “The deplorables are also the black and Hispanic working class. The whole purpose of this economic nationalism and populism is to give voice to the voiceless.”
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