Friday, July 24, 2015

Faint Praise for Trump

A GREAT high voltage reference near the bottom:
Revenge of the Radical Middle
Column: Why Donald Trump Isn’t Going Away


"Well, here we are again, at the beginning of a presidential campaign in which the Republican Party, having lost its hold on the radical middle, is terrified of the electoral consequences. The supporters of Reagan and Perot, of Gingrich and Pat Buchanan, have found another aging billionaire in whom to place their fears and anxieties, their nostalgia and love of country, their disgust with the political and cultural elite, their trepidation at what our nation is becoming.

A brash showboat and celebrity, self-promoter and controversialist, silly and mocking, a caricature of a caricature, Donald Trump is no one’s idea of a serious presidential candidate. Which is exactly why the radical middle finds him refreshing. Not an iota of him is politically correct, he plays by no rules of comity or civility, he genuflects to no party or institution, he is unafraid of and antagonistic toward the media, and he challenges the conventional wisdom of both parties, which holds that there is no real cost to illegal immigration and to trade with China.

Trump’s foreign policy, such as it is, is like Perot’s directed not toward Eurasia but our southern border. Unlike Perot, whose campaign emphasized the twin deficits of budget and trade, Trump has taken on illegal immigration from Mexico, fighting with both the identity politics left and the cheap labor right, with both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Like Perot too he has seized the public imagination, masterfully exploiting the media’s craving for ratings and for negative portrayals of Republicans, turning CNN into TNN, the Trump News Network, the finest and most exclusive cable channel on air.

Trump would enjoy press coverage no matter what he ran on. But the fact that he has chosen, perhaps unwittingly, illegal immigration to be his cause makes the coverage all the more polarizing, visceral, contentious, spiteful. He dared say what no one of his wealth and prominence ever says—that illegal immigration is not limited to DREAMERs and laborers and aspirational Americans, that it is not always, as Jeb Bush put it, an “act of love,” that also traversing our southern border are criminals, rapists and narcotics traffickers and human smugglers, displaced souls from illiberal cultures who carry with them not only dreams but nightmares, bad habits, and other costly baggage. That his poor phrasing was sickeningly confirmed in early July, when an illegal immigrant who had been deported several times shot Kathryn Steinle dead in broad daylight on a San Francisco pier, only strengthened Trump’s connection to the radical middle. So did the drug lord El Chapo’s escape from prison soon after Mexico received an extradition request from the United States.

It is immigration—its universally celebrated benefits and its barely acknowledged costs—that is the third rail of U.S. politics, with repercussions from the border to Eric Cantor’s district in 2014 to courtrooms and the Republican debate stage today. Trump didn’t step on the third rail; he embraced it, he won’t let go of it, and in so doing he’s become electric"
Actually it is not immigration that is the issue; it is ILLEGAL immigration and the scofflaw attitude of most of the US government, which cares only about ILLEGALS and not about its own citizens.

In today's world, it will take a renegade multi-billionaire to break the Leftist-RINO stranglehold on the Republican Party. It could well take the near-destruction of the body to rid it of the obsequious, pusillanimous cancer that infests it.

4 comments:

World of Facts said...

Right, because Trump is so much more honest ;-)
http://www.rt.com/usa/310524-trump-invested-keystone-pipeline/

Stan said...

I never said Trump was honest; I never said he was anything but a powerful renegade who is joining the fight against the entrenched, tax-and-spend-and-foment-class-warfare-and-economic-destruction political class which encompasses both parties. The Democrats have always been a loss, from their very inception as racist slave-holders. The Republicans used to be the party of freedom, civil rights and the constitution, but have largely abandoned it.

Trump speaks the words that cannot be spoken: truth. Regardless of his motivations (I have no idea what those are), he is the only one to do so, and the Republicans en toto jumped him for it. He is merely the enemy of my enemy at this point; but he's the only one with power and media coverage.

He's like a jack, just strong enough to hold the car up long enough to change the tire, not a final tool for touring the country.

World of Facts said...

Haha, good analogy with the jack :)
But, you contradicted yourself here, you said "I never said Trump was honest" only to say, right after that "Trump speaks the words that cannot be spoken: truth." If he is not honest, he is not speaking the truth...

Stan said...

Are you saying that it is not possible for a dishonest person to make statements of truth for dishonest reasons? Please justify that claim.