After reading the article below, can you understand why a Reagan conservative like myself has a problem with Donald Trump, who may sound conservative about illegal immigration today but has never been a consistent conservative in his life. Can you not see why BBJ and myself would rather support Cruz who has a history of consistent conservatism than someone like Trump?
Donald Trump Is No Conservative
His early support in the GOP reflects an inability to distinguish between plausible champions and charlatans.
There is an Ivy League grad who has spent most of his life in Manhattan, where he is chauffeured around in limousines. He frequently brags to strangers about his massive personal wealth. In public statements, he has advocated government healthcare, a woman’s right to an abortion, an assault weapons ban, and paying off the national debt by forcing rich people to forfeit 14.25 percent of their total wealth. When the man married his third wife, he invited Bill and Hillary Clinton to the wedding, and he has given many thousands to their political campaigns and their foundation. He’s donated many thousands more that helped elect Democrats to the Senate and the House. And George W. Bush was “maybe the worst president in the history of this country,” the man said in 2008. “He was so incompetent, so bad, so evil.”
On paper, this is not someone you’d expect to excel in the 2016 Republican Party primary. But Donald Trump is excelling. Thanks to his celebrity, a few epic flip-flops, and his willingness to pander to the most xenophobic element of the GOP’s base, the real-estate developer and reality-TV star is polling near the top of the field. While he is unlikely to win the nomination, he may well appear at the presidential debates and continue to tarnish the GOP brand in the eyes of Hispanic voters. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said during his official announcement. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems. And they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
As execrable as those highly misleading beliefs would be if earnestly held, it is arguably worse for a man to disingenuously stoke xenophobia to advance his political prospects.
Thus it is worth noting that, after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss, Donald Trump told the website Newsmax that Republicans would continue to lose elections if they came across as mean-spirited and unwelcoming to people of color. Democrats were kind toward illegal immigrants, Trump said, whereas Romney “had a crazy policy of self deportation which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.” He added that the GOP needs a comprehensive solution to “this incredible problem that we have with respect to immigration, with respect to people wanting to be wonderful, productive citizens of this country.”
These discordant statements praising and savaging immigrants are not entirely unlike one another—they’re both framed as bold efforts to tell it like it is. Donald Trump is a master at that affectation. He seems as if he is fearlessly stating his core convictions, consequences be damned, even when he is being a shameless poseur.
Some conservatives understand this.
At National Review, where Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Herman Cain, the populist poseurs of the last election cycle, were treated with as much respect as contempt, the rise of Donald Trump has been met with a mix of horror and open disdain.“I truly, honestly, and with all my heart and mind think Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are making a yuuuuuuge mistake. I think they are being conned and played,” Jonah Goldberg, the author of Liberal Fascism, wrote. “I feel like a guy whose brother is being taken advantage of by a grifter. I’m watching helplessly as the con artist congratulates him for taking out a third mortgage.”
Other National Review writers concurred. “Donald Trump has been a conservative for about ten minutes,” Jim Geraghty wrote. Ramesh Ponnurunoted Trump’s bygone support for legal late-term abortion. Rich Lowry, who wrote an ill-considered Politico column using Trump’s remarks as if they were a good peg to persuade people to cut back on legal immigration, has criticized him for failing to adequately learn about the subject matter he is discussing, calling some of his remarks on immigration “completely absurd.”
Says Mona Charen, not to be outdone:
It seems that Trump is the answer only if the question is: Why can’t we get more oafish egomaniacs into politics? Just when the Republican party needs finesse and sensitivity when discussing immigration; just when it needs to focus on issues that unite all sectors of the electorate, including Hispanic and Asian voters; it gets a blowhard with all the nuance of a grenade.
And even that biting criticism cannot compete with the derisive takedowns of Kevin Williamson, who has recently published the following remarks about The Donald:
(click web address below for the full article)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/donald-trump-running-for-president/398345/
Donald Trump Is No Conservative
His early support in the GOP reflects an inability to distinguish between plausible champions and charlatans.
There is an Ivy League grad who has spent most of his life in Manhattan, where he is chauffeured around in limousines. He frequently brags to strangers about his massive personal wealth. In public statements, he has advocated government healthcare, a woman’s right to an abortion, an assault weapons ban, and paying off the national debt by forcing rich people to forfeit 14.25 percent of their total wealth. When the man married his third wife, he invited Bill and Hillary Clinton to the wedding, and he has given many thousands to their political campaigns and their foundation. He’s donated many thousands more that helped elect Democrats to the Senate and the House. And George W. Bush was “maybe the worst president in the history of this country,” the man said in 2008. “He was so incompetent, so bad, so evil.”
On paper, this is not someone you’d expect to excel in the 2016 Republican Party primary. But Donald Trump is excelling. Thanks to his celebrity, a few epic flip-flops, and his willingness to pander to the most xenophobic element of the GOP’s base, the real-estate developer and reality-TV star is polling near the top of the field. While he is unlikely to win the nomination, he may well appear at the presidential debates and continue to tarnish the GOP brand in the eyes of Hispanic voters. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said during his official announcement. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems. And they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
As execrable as those highly misleading beliefs would be if earnestly held, it is arguably worse for a man to disingenuously stoke xenophobia to advance his political prospects.
Thus it is worth noting that, after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss, Donald Trump told the website Newsmax that Republicans would continue to lose elections if they came across as mean-spirited and unwelcoming to people of color. Democrats were kind toward illegal immigrants, Trump said, whereas Romney “had a crazy policy of self deportation which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.” He added that the GOP needs a comprehensive solution to “this incredible problem that we have with respect to immigration, with respect to people wanting to be wonderful, productive citizens of this country.”
These discordant statements praising and savaging immigrants are not entirely unlike one another—they’re both framed as bold efforts to tell it like it is. Donald Trump is a master at that affectation. He seems as if he is fearlessly stating his core convictions, consequences be damned, even when he is being a shameless poseur.
Some conservatives understand this.
At National Review, where Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Herman Cain, the populist poseurs of the last election cycle, were treated with as much respect as contempt, the rise of Donald Trump has been met with a mix of horror and open disdain.“I truly, honestly, and with all my heart and mind think Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are making a yuuuuuuge mistake. I think they are being conned and played,” Jonah Goldberg, the author of Liberal Fascism, wrote. “I feel like a guy whose brother is being taken advantage of by a grifter. I’m watching helplessly as the con artist congratulates him for taking out a third mortgage.”
Other National Review writers concurred. “Donald Trump has been a conservative for about ten minutes,” Jim Geraghty wrote. Ramesh Ponnurunoted Trump’s bygone support for legal late-term abortion. Rich Lowry, who wrote an ill-considered Politico column using Trump’s remarks as if they were a good peg to persuade people to cut back on legal immigration, has criticized him for failing to adequately learn about the subject matter he is discussing, calling some of his remarks on immigration “completely absurd.”
Says Mona Charen, not to be outdone:
It seems that Trump is the answer only if the question is: Why can’t we get more oafish egomaniacs into politics? Just when the Republican party needs finesse and sensitivity when discussing immigration; just when it needs to focus on issues that unite all sectors of the electorate, including Hispanic and Asian voters; it gets a blowhard with all the nuance of a grenade.
And even that biting criticism cannot compete with the derisive takedowns of Kevin Williamson, who has recently published the following remarks about The Donald:
- “Donald Trump may be the man America needs. Having been through four bankruptcies, the ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula is uniquely positioned to lead the most indebted organization in the history of the human race.”
- “...the self-made man who started with nothing but a modest portfolio of 27,000 New York City properties acquired by his millionaire slumlord father, barely out of his latest bankruptcy and possibly headed for another one as the casino/jiggle-joint bearing his name sinks into the filthy mire of the one U.S. city that makes Las Vegas look respectable, a reality-television grotesque with his plastic-surgery-disaster wife, grunting like a baboon about our country’s ‘brand’...”
- “His announcement speech was like Finnegans Wake as reimagined by an unlettered person with a short attention span.”
- “The value of speaking one’s mind depends heavily on the mind in question, and Trump’s is second-rate.”
- “Trump’s performance-art character is butch in the sense that certain gay icons are butch — bikers, cowboys, and the rest of the Village People — and appealing to certain men for similar reasons, one of which is overcompensation for threats against their virility.”
- “The problem with messiah complexes is that there’s no way to know whether you are going to rise on the third day unless somebody crucifies you. Trump has announced, and I say we get started on that.”
(click web address below for the full article)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/donald-trump-running-for-president/398345/
