Trump and His Political Pedigree

From an earlier post on my blog (samwebb.org) on the rise of Trump:

Which brings me back to Trump. If he isn’t a fascist, where does he sit on the political spectrum? Trump in my view is a right wing extremist and demagogue. He’s not alone however. He occupies that space with Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and nearly all of the Republican Party leadership. Each is a product of the rise and combustible brew of right wing extremism, Christian evangelism, and neoliberalism. But what distinguishes Trump from his other mates is his reckless, unreliable, and unpredictable behavior. He is of the right, but he doesn’t answer to its beck and call. A team player he isn’t. To make matters worse, he embraces, unlike the other rebels and malcontents on the right, a less than consistent class and political ideology, at the level of rhetoric. None of these traits is held in high regard in the elite circles of the Republican Party or capitalist class. In short, he’s the Republican Party’s worst nightmare.

While a degree of autonomy usually operates in the relations between those who rule and those who govern, it is limited and relative. But the fear is that a Trump presidency could rupture that dynamic altogether, that he could become completely untethered from elite circles and destabilize capitalist hegemony and rule. But more immediately for the Republican Party leadership and the entire right wing movement, a Trump candidacy could result in massive defeat up and down the ticket in November and irreparably damage their future and the right wing political project.