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The Anger Games
The Trump bump tells us something about the state of American politics. Progressives are panting to interpret his surge as evidence of Republicans’ black hearts. Some Donald Trump supporters have suggested that his success, such as it is/was (this is being written after the McCain flap and before polls have gauged its impact), is an indictment of the limp “Republican establishment.” It’s neither.
There are 116 candidates for the Republican nomination (I exaggerate slightly). In recent polls, Trump got 24 percent — more than any other candidate. But Scott Walker and Jeb Bush together got 25 percent of the total, and there are so many others that assigning a frontrunner is like trying to catch one guppy with a net. Besides, 54 percent say his views do not represent the values of the Republican Party. He’s been a big donor to Hillary Clinton, Terry McAuliffe and other Democrats. He was pro-choice until about 6:30 this morning. He was for a single-payer health care system, and he’s been remarkably uncharitable for a wealthy man.
Ah, they say, but Republicans are seething with hatred for Hispanics, especially illegal immigrants, and this accounts for Trump’s hot-air liftoff. Illegal immigration does enrage some portions of the base, but only some. In a recent Pew poll, fully 66 percent of Republicans said illegal Mexican immigrants are “mostly honest,” while only 19 percent said they are “mainly undesirable.”
There is a talk-radio drumbeat about illegal-immigrant criminals. Still, most Republican voters are not strongly anti-immigration. They’re ambivalent, with 56 percent favoring a path to legal status for aliens living here, according to a Pew poll, but 63 percent viewing immigrants as a burden.
Whatever one’s views about immigration, the very worst way to broach the topic is to smear all Mexican illegals as “rapists” and criminals. It’s obviously false. It’s not even true that illegal immigrants commit a disproportionate share of crimes. Honest anti-immigration groups like the Center for Immigration Studies agree that first-generation immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-borns. (And immigration rates are falling.)
Well, we’re told, people are choking on political correctness, and Trump is a breath of fresh air. So the best way to discredit political correctness is to embody the worst stereotype of an aggressive bigot?
Trump’s moment is probably fading, but his little balloon ride is disturbing nonetheless. It’s evidence that political intemperance is not limited to the left.
Thanks to the execrable leadership of the Democratic Party and its allies in the press, we have witnessed several years of stoked racial hatred in America. From the Trayvon Martin episode and Michael Brown’s death, to the tragic cases of Eric Garner and the Charleston massacre, the country has been bathed in mendacious incitement. Opinion leaders insist it’s still Selma in 1965. “Black lives matter” has become a movement — as if any decent person disagreed; as if the country had not spent half a century sedulously scrubbing racism from our polity; as if affirmative action were not a feature of educational, corporate and government policy; as if we hadn’t elected and reelected a black president. Democratic candidates for president have been reduced to apologizing simply for saying “all lives matter.”
The civil pieties that were once taken for granted in the political sphere — “all men are created equal” — are now controversial. The triumph of identity politics is complete on the left.
Barack Obama rose on a promise of harmony, but has used power to rend the nation along all of its weakest seams. This brand of leadership has not left his followers happier, but more bitter. As for his opponents, they are by turns grieving and disbelieving at the damage he’s been able to inflict.
The only answer to division and hatred on the left is inclusion and unity on the right. A number of Republican candidates for president have been seeking to recast the Republican Party as the party of reform and outreach. They recognize that a party that lost not just the Hispanic vote, the black vote, the women’s vote and the youth vote, but also the Asian vote has an image problem. As any number of successful Republican senators and governors have shown, it isn’t necessary to adopt any particular policy (e.g., amnesty) to attract the votes of more Hispanics or Asians. It is necessary for the party to convey a welcoming spirit. Such a tone may even attract fence-sitting white voters who are left cold by a party that appears uninterested in the plight of the poor.
That is the Republican challenge and opportunity. Success beckons — but only post-Trump.
Published in General
I’ve realized this too, and its so discouraging. And they’re angry AT US for wanting to rock their little boat.
LA Confidential. The Night Owl. Rolls Tomasi.
So Trump is or has recently been a Democrat, a donor to Hillary Clinton (who, by the way, he doesn’t criticize), a supporter of single payer health care, and pro-choice on abortion, among other things, and I’m a RINO for pointing this out? Okay. Got it.
I care about those things. What do you care about?
Yup. This party needs to be punished or replaced. It’s not as though we didn’t exhaust positive options first. We got taken for granted and discarded in no uncertain terms.
So they’re not entitled to our support, but were not going quietly.
@ Mona.
I don’t remember anyone calling you a RINO, and I know I didn’t.
But what I object to is the condescension directed against anyone who supports the candidate who’s finally articulating our concerns about the border in a way that’s having an impact.
No worries about me calling you a RINO. Like Manny said, I’m the RINO. I’m beginning to accept that.
Well that’s not really the point now is it? What about all of us racist haters? Surely you should want to drive us from the party rather than keep us around. Hygiene, after all.
Trump gets a pass for now. Think of it as passing a non-binding resolution, or 37 bills that will all be rejected by the Senate.
Or as close an analogy as we troglodyte hateful racist mouth-breathers can muster.
Thad Cochran for President!
Real-estate magnate and presidential candidate Donald Trump just released another colorful statement on illegal immigration and Hillary Clinton. The Republican businessman’s latest missive slams the former Secretary of State Clinton for her recent “desperate” and “sad” criticism of him.
“Hillary should spend more time producing her illegally hidden emails and less time trying to obfuscate a statement by me that is totally clear and obviously very much accepted by the public as true. I am honored, however, that she is attacking me, instead of Jeb Bush,” Trump concluded. “Obviously she knows that JEB is no longer her real competition. The last person she wants to face is Donald Trump.”
— Donald Trump hits Hillary, as googled by mother’s basement dweller and stump toothed inbred, Pseudodionysius, source: Business Insider July 14th, 2015
I am disgusted with the whole situation. The liberals are snickering with glee over Trump’s ascendancy because they know he’s not going to win over Hillary, and they know if he goes third party Hillary will win thanks to a divided electorate. I was reading comments on a Politico article about Trump on Facebook and these sentiments constituted a large majority of the comments. Gee, I wonder why he’s getting so much coverage from the mainstream press?
Trump is a narcissistic blowhard. The Republicans have a better field than they’ve had in a long time, but covering Trump gives them an excuse not to cover the others. Meanwhile, Boehner and his ilk pulls their punches and spends too much time wondering how watered down they can make their message while still getting re-elected. A couple of my very conservative friends find Trump’s lack of PC tip-toeing refreshing and are glad he’s stirring the pot. Lack of PC is one thing, lack of tact is another, and I find him demonstrating more of the latter than the former.
Honestly, unless and until the immigration laws currently on the books are enforced, new legislation is kind of moot. Lately I find that the Republicans are not a whole lot more worthy of support than the Dems, but until another party rises to prominence, I’m afraid we’re kind of stuck. The only bright spots I see so far are Walker and Fiorina.
pro-choice on abortion
I can’t comment on the RINO charge as I understand they’re an endangered species and we’re not allowed to hunt them to extinction, but if you expect to be taken seriously by us inbred, beer drinking, daytime tv and talk radio watching, cousin intermarrying conservatives perhaps you could take a break from the New York Media Inconvenient Vermouth Hissy Fits to do a little more careful research on the charges you level against someone purported to be running on the Republican ticket.
Its fine to say Trump is really lying and he’s some kind of stalking horse wearing an Ethan Hunt Mission Impossible Rubber Mask which he’ll rip off at the appropriate time to show that he’s really Jon Huntsman in a fat suit, but Trump isn’t exactly media shy and some basic research on his large war chest of award winning carnival barker Tr[i]ump[h]The Insult Dog insults that he’s paying a great deal of money for would at least make your argument look half way serious.
Not that I’m complaining or anything.
I’m no Trump fan – he’d be a terrible president. But instead of insulting people – why don’t you try offering them a better (real) alternative. I don’t mean Jeb! Or Rubio, or any of the usual suspects, who are business-as-usual.
If you want to understand, turn off your “Great Courses”, open your mind, and read what people are writing and talking about.
Or listen to Bill Kristol – he’s lately been speaking as if he understands why this is happening.
@ LilyBart
No, no, no. Don’t you understand how condescendingly insulting a phenomenon in your party without understanding it fosters party unity?
I’m trying to learn how not to be the RINO Manny says I am.
Yeah but I think under the agreement in 10 years we both get to build nuclear bombs.
Let’s not overstate it – I think we are playing on a little league field on this issue.
Agreed but I think in keeping with the non New Yawk nature of our upbringing to agree that its pronounced Nucular.
And its inclusive. Don’t forget inclusive.
59% from Mexico and 74% total from 5 countries below our southern border.
I don’t think the 26% sent to us by the other 190+ countries is the issue to concentrate on right now.
EDIT: BUT I COMPLETELY CONCEDE YOUR POINT ABOUT BEING ON THE LOOKOUT FOR PRAYER RUGS.
I don’t mean to demean The Great Courses here. I’m glad to have discovered Great Courses through their support of this site’s (and Weekly Standard’s) podcasts. I’ve picked out a couple I want to order, and I’m eager to get started!
I just mean to encourage Mona to come down from her ivory tower I’m concerned by her last comment that she’s only interested in being understood, but not interested in understanding other people’s point of view
I’m so sorry. Please forgive me: I’m new at being a Republican in more than name.
Obviously, the only way for our party to be inclusive is if we purge the right people from it. Kind of like how the left promotes tolerance by destroying the livelihoods of anyone they find intolerant.
Actually, maybe “purge” is too strong a word. Maybe just get them to vote Republican but otherwise just keep their damn mouths shut (votes are votes, after all).
Am I doing better?
Perhaps to support your point Mona, Reagan in all fairness was a new deal Democrat, enabled California for abortion and gave amnesty to illegal aliens (I’m aware of all the contextual issues that perhaps mitigate those matters, so no need for anyone to jack thread and school me on it).
His conversion to conservatism was something that seemed to come with years of thought and experience, which made it believable. I never trust the guys whose conversation to conservatism occurs simultaneously with their entrance in the Republican primaries, like Giuliani and Romney.
The definition of conservative, and Republican, is not only elusive, but our failure to decide on it has allowed the left to define it for us in unflattering terms. My one and only conversation with George Will was about that, but it wasn’t a long one, as he repeatedly reminded me he was in a hurry to get to dinner. No help there.
I have yet to vet Trump’s positions in detail. But as Prof. Rehe pointed out yesterday, his popularity is a result of filling the void of issues the rest of the pack has been ignoring. That’s why he’s got my attention.
My only criticism of your comment above is that I’ve heard Trump this week repeatedly call Hillary the worst SofS in American history, and a disaster. That’s some very heavy criticism.
Wait a second. The party as a whole is far more conservative than the comprehensive Republican electorate. So you get far more than you think. It’s the extreme right (for lack of a better phrase) that insists on every issue at every moment to go their way. And to go their way in an all or nothing scenario. And to go their way in a confrontational approach where you have to bury the opposition with red meat rhetoric. Here is Mona Charen, a solid conservative, and you’re calling her a RINO. Get real. Not only don’t the extreme ever want to comprimise, but it’s an act of apostasy if the politicians do. Your perception of what you get and where the politicians stand relative to the overall Republican electorate is off kilter.
I’m not sure what you intended your point about numbers and stances to be. Meanwhile, you obviously aren’t catching the hate vibe coming off the column. Finally, more fight, fewer excuses.
In a way, everyone who calls him/herself a Republican is a Republican in name only – because there is no longer any ideological boundaries that define “Republican’. It is a name, a label and that’s all it really is. Anyone can be a Republican, even Trump. You can be a pro-choice Republican you can be a big spending Republican, you can be isolationist or an open-borders Republican.You can be for or against anything – a socialist even – and still call yourself a Republican.
But no one called you a RINO. You’d like to use that shorthand to discredit your critics apparently, but it’s not accurate.
Some of us are calling you out for attacking Trump unfairly and choosing to side with the progressive narrative.
Trump the businessman gave money to Democrats. How many donors to Republican candidates also give money to Democrats? It’s protection money. But did Trump give Hillary the Liberty Medal? No. Jeb gave her the Liberty Medal, along with a nice speech singing her praises. I don’t remember your complaints. Romney was nominated by Republicans in 2012 after he already crafted the precursor to Obamacare.
As cited previously on this thread, Trump has been criticizing Hillary. More strongly than any other Republican too.
Here we have a case where the elite Republicans find Trump too far left (or centrist) in his positions. (Rob Long on a recent podcast too) Really? Schadenfreude for me! Now you know what it’s like to see your party hijacked by political ‘moderates’. I remember the Huntsman campaign. The elites were fine with him. And look, how angry! How does it feel to suddenly find yourself a right-wing crazy?
Yes, Trump can’t be trusted. McCain can’t be trusted, not Lindsay Graham either, Jeb Bush too. I don’t trust any of them, regardless of their previous or current party registration.
I’m taking what Trump is saying seriously, because these are important issues and we need to get them out in the open. I’m not taking his campaign seriously though. We have pointed this out repeatedly here and elsewhere.
I just re-read it and yes I agree there’s an anger toward Trump and a frustration with conservatives that have built his poll numbers. Now if you strongly identify with Trump I can see how you see the hate directed at you. But it’s directed at Trump. Trump has caused this split inside the party not with what he’s saying (we all want to stop illegal immigration) but it’s the uncouth, ungentlemanly manner and tone that has divided Republicans. And his insults to other candidates and Republicans is outrageous. Questioning Rick Perry’s IQ? Jeb a loser? Saying McCain is not a hero? Trump has become a proxy means of belittling Republicans the extremes don’t like.
The blowhard huffed and he puffed and he blew down their House of Cards.
Establishment republicans never think they’re the problem. Never. They always think we’re the problem; that we don’t don’t ‘get it’. But we do get it – we’ve figured out that they don’t represent us and our interests.
Trump is not the guy – trust me. But neither are the establishment-approved candidates. I just cannot line up to support another candidate who’ll stab me in the back and throw my kid to the curb.
I have ZERO interest in supporting Jeb, Rubio, Christie, Kashich (sp? who cares!), etc. ZERO.