The Decline of the Establishment

Yuval Levin analyzed the stump speeches of four GOP candidates: Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.

“The most striking thing that emerges from listening to these speeches one after another is that the theme of this election year so far for Republicans is the question of the establishment and the public. That’s not surprising. But how candidates are taking up the question did surprise me. The natural way to think about the subject — a kind of generic populist template — is that our governing elite in general and the Republican establishment in particular are awfully strong and are oppressing the public in some way.”

“But that’s not really how most Republican contenders are talking about the issue. More often, at least implicitly, their subject is not the strength but the weakness of the establishment, even if they don’t quite put it that way. All of them describe the hollowing out and decay of America’s elite, its core institutions, and its political leadership. And some of the key differences between the candidates become a little clearer when we see them as differences in how they would approach that serious problem.”