Megan McArdle: Trump disproves liberal, conservative myths

Tuesday night’s Republican debate was the first one from which no clear winner emerged in the media postgame.

My opinion is that the only clear winner was moderator Hugh Hewitt, who stared down Donald Trump when the front-runner tried to use his normal schoolyard bullying tactics.

But that doesn’t mean that Trump won’t eventually emerge the winner from this debate anyway.

Sure, he may not be able to describe what the nuclear triad is, articulate a workable plan for containing the Islamic State, or formulate a cyberstrategy that doesn’t rely on conjuring up some wizards from a 1990s-era hacker film, prepared to “penetrate the Internet and find out exactly where ISIS is and everything about ISIS” with a few dramatic keystrokes. But strong, well-grounded policy is obviously not what appeals to people about Trump.

People like him because he cocks a snook at an establishment they think has too much power.

What’s interesting about Trump’s rise is that it reveals how little power that establishment actually has.

Consider the two great villains of the populist mind. The left thinks that politics is controlled by the vast fortunes spent on elections by corporations and right-wing billionaires. The right thinks that similar influence is exerted by liberal media and economic elites. Trump’s poll numbers belie both theories.

But isn’t Trump a billionaire? Ah, but Trump is spending very little money on this campaign. The reason he’s doing so well is that he’s getting a ton of media coverage.

While other candidates have to spend money to hire staffers and air ads to get their message out, Trump merely says something outrageous and waits for the media to swoop down and give him free airtime.

The other billionaires, meanwhile, hate him. Virtually everyone in the professional Republican establishment hates him because they would like their party to nominate a candidate with some chance of winning the general election.

Yet the establishment, and the billionaires with all their money, can’t seem to do a darn thing to stop Trump. So much for money buying elections. Media matter much more than money.

And yet the media are also curiously powerless here. If the news media actually operated like the tacit conspiracy that many conservatives imagine, we would have all quietly gotten together and agreed to bury Trump. He could rant in the privacy of his own home, as reporters graciously declined to broadcast his latest pronouncements. Instead, every time he says something, everyone in the media rushes to condemn, fact-check, analyze, highlight, mutilate, fold and spindle it.

All this media outrage, of course, only improves his ratings with people who believe in the conspiracy.

As for the conspiracy that the media are trying to help Trump win the nomination because it will ensure a Hillary Clinton victory: Get real. Journalists are covering Trump because he’s newsworthy. It’s an unintended side effect that coverage of Trump might help Clinton.

There’s the great irony in Trump’s rise. Trump supporters think they’re striking a blow against the liberal establishment. In fact they’re nudging it more firmly into place.

This story was originally published December 17, 2015 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Megan McArdle: Trump disproves liberal, conservative myths."