Splitsville IT AIN'T WHAT THEY SAY, IT'S THE WAY THAT THEY SAY IT

The Decrepit, Doddering Newsletter for Fans of THE SPLIT

For twenty weeks, now (yes, twenty; time flies when you’re cringing in terror at the prospect of political catastrophe and societal collapse) we’ve been banging on and gassing off about how the US is Splitsville, which we define as that state of affairs in which two opposing “nations” co-exist within a single geo-political boundary. And yes, we know we define it in every posting, because even if you’ve already seen it (twenty times), what if a new reader has somehow stumbled upon this installment and heard the term for the first time? Did you ever think of that? Well, maybe you should.

The two-“nation” dichotomies have appeared pretty much as you’d expect: blue states/red states; intelligent/stupid; Democrat/Republican; those who will die unnecessarily due to RFK, Jr.’s and DOGE’s depredations/those who won’t, and so on. Note, here, that we (sometimes) have tried not to be too reductive. We’ve often acknowledged that this A/B dyad doesn’t cover everybody in the US. For example, for every idiot that voted for Trump, there was a lovely individual who voted for Harris and a third jerk who stayed home and didn’t vote for anybody. This third person contributed, in his or her own special way, to the pre-fascist nightmare of today, so if you happen to encounter him or her—at the market, on a bus, at the ball game—do offer him or her a heartfelt punch in the nose and our sincerest wishes that he or she go fuck him- or herself.

But now—instead of discussing a split on the national level—for something completely slightly different. What if there were to arise a split in one of the cohorts of voters just cited? What if one of the two contending groups itself is experiencing a split? Because there seems to be one a’comin’. It looks like there’s a rift developing within MAGA! Or, no, wait. That strains credulity. MAGA is a cult, and cultists usually don’t split off from the main body; they just end up dying. So let’s say, there seems to be a rift developing among the more general category of disgraceful fools known as Trumpists.

We get this impression from a Substack (with the delightful title, “It’s the Stupid, Stupid”) written by Will Saletan for The Bulwark, a media organization founded by anti-Trump Republicans who have been pretty good, and relentless, about deploring Trump. Yes, yes, we know: Republicans? Ugh. But that knee-jerk reaction, so dependably appropriate in years past, is no longer helpful. Say what you will about Bill I-Was-Hilariously-Wrong-About-Everything-During-The-W-Administration Kristol, who was hilariously wrong about everything during the W administration—he’s been more than okay at The Bulwark, opposing Trump. (Better than more than okay is Jen Rubin, who was once a conservative columnist for the Failing Washington Post. She quit after Bezos fucked it up, and she’s been superb in opposing Trump. She co-founded The Contrarian, which features a similar collection of anti-Trumpers. We’re not crazy about that name—it suggests a whiny, oppositional toddler—but they’re definitely worth a look.)

But back to trouble in right-wing paradise. It turns out, based on various polls recently conducted about prominent topics, that the problem for many people is not so much that Trump’s policies and ideas are terrible, cruel, destructive, and loathsome—they’re fine with that—but, rather, that he’s not implementing them well enough. Thus, Saletan:

The result, politically, is a gap between public support for his goals and public support for his methods.

Tariffs are a clear example. Trump could have marshaled our allies in a united front against China’s worst trade practices. Instead, he launched a preposterous trade war against the whole world. He crashed the financial markets and had to back down.

You can see the results in two polls taken earlier this month, a few days after he announced his tariffs. In a CBS News/YouGov survey, 51 percent of Americans said they liked Trump’s goals in pursuing tariffs, but 63 percent didn’t like “the way he is going about it.” In a Harvard-Harris poll, voters split three ways. Forty-eight percent said Trump’s tariffs were “the right idea” but “required more patience.” On the other side, 31 percent said the tariffs were “the wrong idea regardless of execution.” The pivotal group, 21 percent, said the tariffs were “the right idea but it has been executed badly.”

The same thing happened when a Harvard-Harris poll asked voters about their opinions concerning Elon Musk and DOGE:

The poll asked: “To reduce the budget deficits, do you think we mostly need to reduce government expenditures or to increase taxes?” Overwhelmingly, 78 percent to 22 percent, voters preferred to reduce spending.

Then the poll asked: “Do you think that the government expenditures are basically fair and reasonable, or do you think they are filled with waste, fraud and inefficiency?” Again, voters agreed with DOGE: 62 percent said the expenses were full of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.

But when the question turned to methods, the balance shifted: 55 percent of voters said Musk and DOGE were cutting government expenses “the wrong way.” Among independents, the shift was even bigger: Two-thirds agreed that government expenditures were full of waste, fraud, and inefficiency, but 60 percent said Musk and DOGE were cutting them the wrong way.

There are similar results when the subject is deportations or national security: Trump is “under water” on those issues (more respondents disapprove than approve of his methods, if not his goals), which Saletan calls “a key to unlocking the Trump coalition.” He finds all this to be good news but not great news. And we agree. It reminds us of the old football homily, that playing to a tie “is like kissing your sister.”

The fact is, most of government isn’t rife with waste, fraud, and inefficiency. People who think it is (but are now cross with Trump for not cutting it right) do so because they’ve been brainwashed and gaslighted by the GOP since Reagan. (The one institution that arguably is a cesspool of waste is, of course, the Pentagon, which will not only go untouched, but will get a boost in its budget.) It is also a fact that the overwhelming percentage of immigrants in the US—here legally or not—are law-abiding and (in that Puritan-ethic cliché) “hard-working” citizens whose presence brings benefits to all. People who want them deported, but in a nice way, have been misled by Trump’s demagoguery.

Saletan, while wistfully granting that the world would be better off if all people rejected those lousy policy goals outright, decides that half a loaf is better than none: “We need to reach beyond the audience that shares our values. We need to reach people who don’t agree with us on much but who recognize stupidity when they see it—and are willing to throw the bums out.”

Of course, what he doesn’t mention is the possibility that those people, plus the MAGA orc army, might coalesce around someone even worse than Trump—that is, someone just as malevolent, demagogic, and fascistic, but not as stupid or impulsive, who will get those hideous jobs done right. Offhand we can’t think of anyone who fits that description, but give the Republican Party time. They’ll find someone. Until then, this is one split we can applaud. Yay, more or less.