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Conrad Black Exactly Right: Trump the GOP Nominee
Conrad Black is a bit of a curmudgeon and definitely a contrarian but his analysis this morning of the March 15 primaries is very accurate in all regards and I endorse what he is saying in this NRO article. Here’s a sample:
Those who initially saw the Trump candidacy as an exercise in buffoonery and exhibitionism, and gradually accepted it as an insurgency, now see it as an attempt to hijack and ravish the Republican party and even to hoodwink the entire electorate. The alternative interpretation has been that Donald Trump, though a billionaire, had the genius of expressing public grievances in an Archie Bunker style that mocked political correctness and was popularly seen as plain talk from the only candidate not in any way complicit in the terrible blunders of America’s political class since the end of the Cold War.
And all he did was address the 900-pound gorilla that everyone else studiously avoids (except for Cruz, of course):
Trump alone recognized the significance of a few basic numbers, such as the percentage of Americans who think government officials are largely crooked – which increased between 2000 and 2015 from 30-something percent to 50 to 60 per cent, depending on whether they are Democrats, independents, or Republicans. In the same period, the percentage of Americans who thought the federal government was run by a few big interests increased from about 50 percent to about 70 percent.
And here’s the money quote:
Those collectively responsible for governing the country through the last 20 years, as these ominous levels of public discontent accumulated, showed no apparent recognition of the gathering storm. Marco Rubio, as he graciously departed the race, called it a “tsunami none of us saw coming.” Future historians of American politics will probably be astounded that the political system ignored the 900-pound gorilla of illegal migrants in the country and imagined that such an immense number of unskilled entrants could be tacitly accepted.
And Trump is simply doing an Archie Bunker routine. It’s really that simple:
One of Trump’s talents is to harness the rage and fear of the low-income and marginal groups by his Archie Bunker routine, while maintaining contact with the party’s moderates and the vast center of American politics by having relatively uncontroversial views of most issues except illegal and Muslim immigration.
And here’s how he will clinch the deal:
There is no reason to doubt that Trump can get 54 percent of the remaining delegates now that he has been polling over 40 percent regularly before it even became a three-candidate race. If Cruz withdrew in favor of Kasich, it would, as I wrote last week, be possible to give Trump a run for it, but even that would not work, and none of it will happen. If he runs into problems, Trump can trade the vice-presidential nomination for a final push of delegates.
And here’s the finale:
He’s not complicit in the failures of the last 20 years and he is new to politics, yet has huger name recognition. There is no more mud to throw at Trump and Clinton has not begun to answer for her long record of untruthfulness, evasion, cynical speech-making for exorbitant fees, and influence-peddling through the Clinton Foundation while she was secretary of state, even if she avoids indictment on Emailgate.
It is a bizarre turn and a startling gamble, but the great office is seeking Donald J. Trump, and will probably find him; he’s hard to miss.
It’s over: Trump has the nomination. I’m for Cruz but I’m ready to face the fact that Trump has it in the bag.
Published in Politics
Ya dead ta me, Koluh! ya dead ta me! ya heyuh me! dead, I tell ya!
Spin, not my fault, man. Face reality.
“President Trump.” Get used to the sound of it.
I can understand not voting for Trump because of his boorish behavior (I don’t intend to in the primary because of it), but what in heaven’s name has he proposed that would have you reach for such analogies? What is this threat to our country and way of life? Please be specific.
Did you vote for Romney? McCain? Bush 43? Dole? Bush 41? None of them really supported what you seem to consider fundamental values and principles. I would argue that Reagan, even though he rhetorically supported those principles, never truly made an effort when in office for a good portion of them. Reagan was pro-abortion when he was elected. Reagan allowed amnesty.
Hardly:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
Carter was supposed to beat Reagan in a landslide and win a second term. How’d that work out?
I’m going to take advantage of my age here for a second and say that there is another interpretation of the Trump Storm Event.
The people who are being very vocal and influential right now like Conrad Black are all in an age cohort of which I am at younger end–they were in college when I was in high school. There’s a bunch of them: Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., NYT, James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly, John Kerry (who went but didn’t serve), Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, for starters. They are all guys who skipped out on the Vietnam War. They have spent their lives defending that decision.
Mitt Romney and George Bush, the last great objective Republicans, are in a psychologically healthy minority.
Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 stirred them up against George Bush because Bush challenged everything they have thought throughout their adult lives. They hated George Bush for doing this to them, making them have to take another look at themselves.
Because of their incessant antiwar diatribes against President Bush, the Republican Party went down in flames.
So although Conrad Black is correct in his analysis of the problems that led to a Trump outsider candidacy, he was part of what caused it.
So he is off my reading list officially starting now.
Carter’s negatives weren’t nearly as high as Trump’s.
If Trump had a clear alternative vision that I didn’t like as much as conservatism, but preferred over the Democrats (e.g. Rand Paul), I would be content to support him. But I really don’t know what he would do as president. He might be better than Hillary He might be worse. There’s really no way to know for sure, since nothing he says means anything. To me, his admiration for tyrants and the strong possibility that he would be more incompetent than Hillary cancel out the dim chance that he would be better than Hillary. Our votes have value, and what we’d get for voting for Trump wouldn’t be worth it.
The current trajectory of the Republican nominating process puts Trump in Cleveland with almost, but not quite, the delegates he needs to win on the first ballot. Then one of the following happen (in what I think is decreasing order of likelihood):
1. Trump puts together the delegates he needs and wins the nomination, at which point the GOP nomenklatura and their apparatchiks in the “conservative” media slink off and pout, undermining him at every turn and hoping for a Clinton win (starting a 3rd party would be too much bother and burn too many bridges, better to wait it out because they’re allrightniks and don’t give a flip anyway as long as they can get their preferred tee time, go on their junkets, and have their prime rib and martinis just the way they like them at their favorite restaurants). Probability 80%. Clinton probably wins the White House as a result of the nomenklatura sabotaging their party’s candidate.
2. The GOP nomenklatura figures out how to juggle the nomination away from him by nefarious means and hand it to Paul Ryan or someone acceptable to them. At which point Trump justifiably screams “foul” and stomps off to form a third party taking his millions of supporters with him. Probability 19.9999%. This hands the White House to Clinton.
3. An fair, open, and transparent process, without backroom deals where the nomenklatura put their thumb on the scale manipulating arcane rules to get the result they want, results in someone besides Trump getting the nomination (which apparently is what the #NeverTrump camp currently hopes happens for Cruz). Probability (of a fair, open, transparent process) 0.0001%. Hard to predict result, probably depends on whether Trump gets behind the nominee and with what degree of enthusiasm.
As angry as it seems to make people, I will keep posting that in November the winner will be either the Republican nominee or Hillary Clinton. Anyone who seriously believes Trump would be worse (however you define worse) than Clinton should get out and support and vote for Clinton (as it looks like Claire Berlinski will) to avoid the horrors of a Trump presidency. Voting 3rd party or leaving that space blank amounts to declaring you really don’t care one way or the other [which you should do only if you are totally indifferent to the result].
It will be a close race between Trump and Clinton.
I predict that Trump-the-gentleman is about to emerge so as to not give fodder to Clinton’s supporters and her media machine. He will come across as Mr. Nice Guy in the debates.
Turnout on the Democratic side is 45 percent down from when Obama ran, and of the 55 percent voting, half are more interested in Sanders. And there is great concern among working-class Democrats about H1Bs and immigration generally, people who want us to assume a stronger and more protective stance against the Muslim world.
Trump could squeak by Clinton and win.
If it’s Trump vs. Clinton, we are playing Russian Roulette. Trump is a revolver, Clinton is an automatic. Which trigger will you pull?
I am not sure, that if Trump gets the nomination he will lose to Hillary
She has high negatives herself, and whatever Trump is, he does offer a choice for a “conservative Democrat” that would be more conservative than Hillary, and may look attractive to them, since there own party has completely ignored them since BC left office.
I actually, think if conservatives managed to keep their dinners down, and voted for Trump, he could win in a historic landslide. That is not what I want, since Cruz is my selection, and is a conservative, whereas Trump is not.
If Trump wins the nomination, however, that is the best we can hope for.
The postings here at Ricochet in about 30-45 days will be anger at how all of the Republican Party is rallying around Trump. They have WAY too much invested in a Republican nominee to stand up to them.
The #NeverTrump cohort will increasingly be limited to ideological conservatives, and a shrinking number of them. The party will rally. It’s going to happen. The idea that a party that has let so many down for being power-driven lugs without principles in the past few years isn’t going to bolt the conservative groups and saddle up to Trump is silly.
These are the death throws we are in. It’s happening folks. Fact of the matter is that the group of conservatives who are principled enough to sit out the election is significantly smaller than the group of middle class, disaffected voters who sat out the last few elections and will happily join in to the Trump-capades.
The only real question in my mind is whether the more upper-income middle class will be able to stomach Trump enough to split votes with him and Hillary. It’s not like they like her either. And that is why any analysis that predicts a Trump loss now is useless. We need to see what he does in the general to bring enough of those voters over.
The only problem with Black’s thesis is there will never be a President of the United States named Trump because as the Left knows best from their opposition research for the general election: Trump, even as a pretend “Outsider”, was complicit with the failures of the last twenty years but especially the moral rot.
Presidential nominee Trump in the end will be a leper bereft of all support except the White Supremacist loons who ache for their man on horseback.
LOL. I very much enjoy your writing and your historical perspectives. Your political predictions, however…
So we’re looking at a Republican landslide led by Trump in November, if you’re true to form?
Zzzz….
Carter lost. It’s in the history books.
Not quite sure how that’s relevant, though.
Agree. Even within Ricochet this is evident.
Yes, Archie Bunker was meant to be the cantankerous racist who was always shown the error of his ways; but a funny thing happened on the way to a smash hit: Archie proved to be the guy most of America basically agreed with. Which is to say, his prejudices reflected a certain reality, even if the writers and producers of the show couldn’t see it or didn’t want to recognize it.
So Donald Trump says criminal Mexicans are coming into this country and that lots and lots of Muslims hate and want to destroy America, and the respectable people wail and gnash their teeth and tear their garments asunder. But people agree with Trump more than they agree with the respectable people.
Trump could have been stopped. All it took was for the respectable types to live a little bit in the real world.
My feeling is that Rubio was correct when he said that a president can’t just say whatever they want; but the flip side is that they need to say what they want at least sometimes!
If the other candidates would have said a few completely un-pc things about some of these issues, they may have had a shot.
Wow, Am I wrong about this! Trump has already come out swinging against Clinton.
This is really getting interesting.
Romney is a moderate and pro business, not a conservative. McCain’s a military hardliner so appears conservative, he lacks understanding of economics, or what conservatism is, so he thinks Cruz is an extremest. Moreover McCain appears easily manipulated by the media.
At the risk of being cuckolded, I never thought “Trump-the-gentlemen” existed so I’m less than surprised by this.
My bet is, the media will react very differently to Trump bashing Hillary than they did to Trump bashing other Republicans, whom they already believed were truly “horrible people.” so his $2 billion worth of free advertising will quickly go the other way.
:) :)
Right you are. :)
All Trump has to do is pick Ted Cruz (or someone like him) for VP, and most of the conservatives will come on board. The ones that don’t are the ones that insist on self-flagellation. They will give us Hillary no matter how much it hurts.
How do you define “pro business”?
I wouldn’t vote for Trump even with Ted Cruz at VP.
This fall I was a big fan of Trump, then I realized it was an all an act. The thing is, once you realize that everything out of Trump’s mouth is a lie you will never vote for him. He isn’t looking out for the little guy, his only purpose is to be elected president and he will say and do anything to get it.
I am voting for Cruz in the Montana primary in June, likely voting Gary Johnson in November, and dreading the Hillary presidency.
Nice.