Friday, May 6, 2016
Saturday Politics : Donald Trump and the Political World That Was
Saturday Politics is sometimes about the hardcore political truth. ~~~~~ The GOP leadership, that prides itself on being a group of intellectual conservatives on a mission to find the Holy Grail, believed that 2016 was their year. They headed into the primary season with the greatest of hopes to nominate and elect a fellow member of the true conservative roundtable. But, for the umpteenth time, they got sidetracked. The party's faithful voters chose a moderate-conservative from New York. Conservatives had the near-perfect intellectual candidate -- Ted Cruz -- who towers over all of them in the scope and depth and eloquence of his conservatism. Cruz managed to survive almost to the end as the alternative to Donald Trump. But, we who watched knew, as I feel sure Ted Cruz himself knew, that he was standing in front of an avalanche that nobody could stop -- not with eloquence or money or sweet young daughters. ~~~~~ The irony is that Cruz was doomed from the start because he was and is despised by the very conservative leaders for whom he is the only viable voice. They smeared and belittled him long before he had to face Trump. They rejected his efforts to make them stand up for the conservative principles they endlessly and cynically chant as a mantra. They fretted that his filibuster against the bloated Progressive Obama budget and increased national debt would spoil their chances of being re-elected. They called him crazy to try to stop Obamacare. They publicly labeled him the most hated man in Washington. ~~~~~ And what did their rejection of the only principled conservative in the GOP get them? Donald Trump. A moderate conservative who cares little for flowery intellectualism, preferring to bring the ideals down to earth. If lofty conservatism champions personal liberties -- Trump knows that they can be secured only by providing a solid economy with jobs and a massive reduction in regulations and taxes. If lofty conservatism champions security -- Trump knows that it can be provided only by sealing the borders, eliminating illegal immigrants and restoring a reasonable immigration policy. If lofty conservatism champions free trade -- Trump knows from personal experience that conservatives are wrong to put the ideal of 'free trade' above the reality of a world that feeds on American largesse and on our foolishly naive belief that others share our goodheartedness. And, if lofty conservatism champions a strong military defense -- Trump knows that it will be affordable only when we stop providing free and open-ended military coverage for the entire world. ~~~~~ Dear readers, sometimes conservatives are their own worst enemies. They trashed Ted Cruz, their intellectually pure standardbearer. Now, they are trying to trash Donald Trump, the moderate conservative who has been able to take their ideals to a wider range of voters than they ever could have imagined. I have to suspect that the current GOP conservative leadership would reject Reagan -- too many compromises in order to get things through Congress; they would reject Lincoln -- too tall and ungainly and tells too many jokes; they would reject Washington -- too stern and demanding of morality and Christian values; they would even reject good old Ben Franklin -- enjoys life far too much. That is why Donald Trump and his truly patriotic conservative voter-followers beat the GOP's conservative insiders. And it is why Trump and his voters will overwhelm Hillary or Bernie or whoever the failing and desperate Democrat Progressives finally throw into the Trump Lion's Den. Pride goeth before a fall -- and Boy oh Boy, is the political-world-as-it-was, both left and right, about to trip on its own prideful shoelaces.
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The 'political world' as put so eloquently has been in changing cycle long before Donald Trump came onto the scene. Think about it for a minute – where you when you first noticed that politics was not what it was before?
ReplyDeleteWas it at the Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes’? Perhaps the bombing of the USS Cole, Maybe when the Pam American flight was brought down over Lockerbie, Scotland?
When the world had proof positive that the United States could win a war, but politically loose it’s strength at home over Viet Nam? Mogadishu perhaps? 9/11/2001? Or perhaps something much less front page news strength, something right in your small home town?
But yesterday’s election in favor of a sworn Muslim to be mayor of London, England was not the turning point. It was a giant leap for the Islamic fundamentalist movement to take over Europe and the Western World though.
If there are any truthful historical books written again the election of Sidiqi Khan as mayor of London will be the turning point for all of Europe? But London you had full and honest knowledge as to what Khan is all about – unlike how the United States was ‘duped’ by Barrack Obama politics.
For those who dream there is a tomorrow and for those that don’t, well they don’t really believe in tomorrow’s anyhow.
ReplyDeleteTake for instance the writings of Locke, Mill, Hobbs, Plato, Aristotle all great philosopher and all whose writings lend to the beliefs of tomorrow.
American presidents like Washington in his Farwell Address warning us about tomorrow. Jefferson Declaration of Independence based on continuation to tomorrow. Lincoln saving the Union for tomorrow. Reagan winning the Cold War to preserve tomorrow.
So just because the Political World has drastically changed over the past 16 years – our world of God, family, Freedoms, Rights, and Rule of law need not go the route of change for everyone. If you want to hold on to the past, do so. Ideas and thoughts cannot be taken away from you. They will not be taken from me.
As a lifelong conservative Republican who has watched his party become a vehicle for special interests and irrationality postured fundamentalists, I say ‘so what if the GOP is so splintered that it is effectively dead’. Build a new party that represents America’s 80%, not the gilded 20%.
ReplyDeleteI’m sick of reading the New York Times and watching national news casts sneer at ‘uneducated white male workers who support Trump.’ What about all the welfare recipients who are the core of Hilary Clinton’s supporters?
Trump vows to make the trains run on time. But at a deeper level, he threatens three of the nation’s most sacred cows: 1. imperial war-making, the American Empire, and the military industrial complex; 2. the vast power of Wall Street and its shameful tax breaks; and the undue influence of neocons over foreign policy. No wonder his candidacy has produced so much fierce opposition and cries of anguish. Trump is remarkably brave, or incredibly foolish, to gore all these sacred cows at the same time.
Still, Trump is answering a deep current in American politics, dating from the Founding Fathers, that wants to avoid foreign entanglements and wars. Foes call this isolationism. In the Trump view, the US has drained its resources and mental energy waging wars abroad that have brought it no benefit at all except a rickety empire.
In 2015, US warplanes dropped 23,144 heavy bombs on six Muslim nations. US forces are now fighting in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa. Trump and his supporters fail to understand this. Today, NATO does not defend the US or Europe. It is a control mechanism that keeps Europe under American strategic domination. It should have been ditched when the Soviet Union collapsed. Instead, we see the Washington neocons who control the Obama administration’s policy planning to send a full US armored brigade to Russia’s western border and intensifying air and naval patrols there. Madness, and likely stepping stones to a new war.
The Republicans opposing Trump are not, as they claim, conservatives. They are advocates of big, big government, foreign wars, welfare for favored industries, tax breaks for farmers and key supporters. And, of course, almost half of GOP voters call themselves fundamentalist Christians, making today’s party a semi-theocratic, far right political movement.
Real conservatives are for low taxes, small government, no foreign wars and states rights. Rather what Trump is preaching?
As Donald Trump said to a reporter’s question this past week … I haven’t inherited the GOP, I have only had a few millions of their staunchest members vote for me verses any of the other 16 possible candidates they had to choose from”.
ReplyDeleteThat is all true. The GOP & RNC (Republican National Committee) had all the time, all the monies, and all the candidates to line up behind to defeat one Donald Trump, an outsider of the GOP power structure. And they opted to sit on the sidelines for what is called an ‘open primary’.
Well out of the canyons of New York City rode a man with a white hat that was saying just what the base, the down home republican voters, the non-inside the Washington beltway power mongers of the GOP live and collect their come-up’ens from the down home folk.
Now the Neocons on the GOP side are crying foul. Has politics changed because of Donald Trump or has the base of the GOP finally spoke up again as it did for Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan?
The party may change drastically, even possible a name change. But it will again because of the Trump method of campaigning never be the same. It will again be the “Party of Lincoln” who was a candidate of America
The Washington GOP Neocons cannot steal what is not theirs to steal Casey Pops - do not worry.