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Why I’ve Changed My Mind On Trump
Early on, I was a bit seduced by Donald Trump, mostly because he has exquisite taste in enemies and because my political instincts incline me toward populist upstarts and against arrogant establishments. In the early 1990s, for example, I was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Reform Party of Canada. At the time, the Canadian political establishment was at its most corrupt, arrogant, and insular and the Reform Party was the right antidote.
So when the incompetent GOP establishment went ballistic against the real estate mogul, I naturally felt sympathetic toward him. My sympathy, moreover, seemed validated by how ham-fisted the attacks against him turned out to be. But while today’s American political establishment is equally corrupt, arrogant, and insular as the one Manning toppled two decades ago, Donald Trump is not the answer Americans should be seeking. Donald Trump, you are no Preston Manning.
The moment when serious doubts about Trump’s competence first entered my head was over a seemingly minor point. Railing against unfair trade from the Far East in a speech last December, Trump lumped China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea all together. So let me get this straight Donald: you want to start a confrontation with China and you want to push Japan onto China’s side? Apparently so.
How important is the alliance with Japan for America? Let me put it like this: In 2014, China produced almost 24 million cars. The US came in second at 12 million, with Japan at third at 9.3 million, and South Korea at fifth at 4.5 million. Since the American Civil War, the US has enjoyed an overwhelming material advantage over its adversaries through it manufacturing might. With Japan and South Korea at America’s side, it still holds that advantage. But if Blunderbuss Trump thoughtlessly alienates these allies, leaving the United States to fend against China in a hypothetical one-on-one Pacific War, America could find itself outgunned.
And then I realized — like I was shot with a diamond bullet — that there is no “there” there. Trump has no ideas, no philosophy, and no governing principles. He is little more than a salesman selling himself. He is a hollow man, a stuffed man, headpiece filled with straw.
Not only doesn’t he know much, he doesn’t care to find out, which is much worse to my mind. Read this article from Spengler about how Trump doesn’t read. (“What I noticed immediately in my first visit was that there were no books,” says D’Antonio. “A huge palace and not a single book.”) If somebody like this were to run the foreign policy of the world’s most powerful country, it would be an unmitigated disaster. In a narcissistic fit, he may start World War III without a clue as to what to do after it begins. Only then will it dawn on him that not everything in the world is a transactional deal.
Once I realized this, other examples became evident. There are Trump’s extensive ties with top Democrats, like Senator Harry Reid and the Clinton family, as well as establishment Republican figures like Senator Mitch McConnell. There is also his (very recent) past support of left-wing causes, including illegal immigration. Most tastelessly, he has personally attacked conservatives who have been fighting the good fight for a lot longer than Donald Trump has, and with much fewer resources. Take his disgraceful feud with Michelle Malkin. Donald, Michelle was pulling her weight back when you were cutting checks to Anthony Weiner and employing illegal aliens.
Of course, people can change. Roger L. Simon, David Horowitz, and Whittaker Chambers all came to the Right from from the hard Left and even Ronald Reagan used to be a Democrat. Normally though, when somebody has had a genuine change of heart, it only comes after a protracted inner struggle — often detailed in their writings — or as the result of some dramatic event, like the way that the death of Betty van Patter changed David Horowitz. It has been said that converts make the best zealots. The reason why is because their soul-searching has given them an in-depth understanding of the issues. Absent a dramatic turn of events, or an eloquent ability to explain basic principles, it is entirely appropriate to doubt the sincerity of the convert. Particularly, if the timing is convenient.
But what about Mexican immigration and Trump’s promise to build The Wall? Look, when it comes to building a wall to secure the southern border, rounding up illegal aliens the way Dwight Eisenhower did with Operation Wetback (its actual name), instituting exit controls to monitor visa overstays, and cutting back legal immigration to manageable levels, I am on your side. One hundred percent. But here’s a newsflash for you: Trump isn’t going to do any of this. He’s just shining you.
How do I know this?
One of the best ways to divine a man’s true intentions is to examine his past actions, particularly under stress; i.e. does he favour the hard right over the easy wrong? One of the reasons I think Senator Ted Cruz is a rare sincere politician was his opposition to ethanol subsidies during the Iowa Caucus. Iowa was a must-win state for Cruz, but Cruz didn’t budge on the issue and wasn’t silent about it either. Watch his confrontation with an Iowa farmer angry over the ethanol issue; Cruz’s ability to win him over is one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen. In contrast, Trump embraced ethanol subsidies with gusto.
Suffice it to say, there is no comparable instance where Trump took an unpopular position that was personally disadvantageous to him. He was for Senator Chuck Schumer and the New York Democrats because he needed to please them to run his pay-to-play empire. Then, he adopted Republican principles when he saw a better opportunity in the GOP. And he saw immigration opposition as the untapped issue to exploit (though I credit him for seeing that opportunity before anybody else).
I predict Trump will continue to oppose immigration in order to win the nomination, but will soften his stance if he makes it to the general election. Should he make it to the White House, he will do what he has always done: cut a deal with the likes of Schumer and McConnell. And all those Trump supporters who think he is being sincere? You are his saps, just like those unfortunate students who were duped by Trump University.
There is an old adage that if you look around the card table and don’t see who the mark is, you’re the mark.
Published in General
While I disagree with it, I think that’s a defensible judgement.
Given that there’s still an opportunity, I recommend we save ourselves the trouble of putting people in that position.
I would ask for a “defensible judgement” of how a Hillarypocalypse could possibly be preferable. But I won’t since I couldn’t stomach reading a single word of it.
I’ll oblige you regardless.
Basically, I think there’s a 100% chance that Hillary will do terrible damage to the Republic through her lawlessness and leftism. I expect it to be roughly on the scale of Obama’s, though probably not quite as terrible on foreign policy.
With Trump, I think there’s roughly a 60% chance he’ll be similarly (though differently) awful, as well as 20% chances that he’ll 1) actually be okay and 2) that’ll be catastrophically disastrous by sparking a real shooting war with the Chinese or Russians. There is, moreover, a 100% chance that Trump will do significant damage to the conservative movement.
Given all that, I find it impossible to support either of them. So long as there is another, better option — however remote its chances — I will support it. I will not vote for either of them, however.
I am now in the “coughing up all the crud” phase of recovery. This, I have heard goes on for somewhere around a month.
I’m not a former Canadian, but as a resident of a border state and someone who followed Canadian politics pretty closely (unusual illness for an American, I know), your contrast of Mr. Manning with Mr. Trump is apt.
Preston Manning was a the forefront of a political movement with intellectual and policy grievances. He had engaged the issues, and eventually when Reform & the PCs reunited, Reform had largely won the policy battles (they got rid of the “P” in PC, for one).
Mr. Trump doesn’t know what he thinks, and he doesn’t read enough to discover what he doesn’t know. Ignorance is inevitable; no one knows everything. But parading ignorance as autodidactic brilliance is just foolishness.
Until they find another way to send the money back home.
And I’m bit confused as to why we would expect Mexico to give in and pay for something that has the potential to hurt it economically. Wouldn’t that be like cutting off its nose to spite its face?
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Out of a sincere curiosity, why do feel this way about him? I ask because it seems to me that if he were inclined to do this, he would have taken a different tack with the ethanol subsidies in Iowa.
Jimmy Carter endorsed Donald Trump because Trump is ‘malleable’. Politicians like ‘malleable’. Your thought that Cruz ‘shifts with the wind’ is wrong, so it is clear why so many other politicians don’t feel warm and fuzzy about Cruz. This is a positive feature.
Oh, no, Carter endorsed Trump?! I stand corrected – the sky is falling!
I thought about that some Mr/Ms Weeping because, as in all taxes, the higher they are, the less you collect. For example, they could send the cash back home with mules the same way they personally get into this country. But how much cash are these mules going to cipher off the top? That’s why the fee has to be small enough that using extraordinary means to avoid it would be counterproductive. Mexico would “pay” by receiving less remittance.
Gotcha. I see where you’re coming from a bit better now. Thanks for taking the time to explain it.
I was thinking they might choose to simply mail the money back home. Seems a lot cheaper and much less of a hassle to me – which would mean the government would have to take much less than you originally suggested.
My question about Mexico paying was aimed at the idea of expecting Mexico to outright pay for building a wall between our two countries as Trump has suggested in the past. (At least that’s what I’ve understood him to say.)
I have a couple questions or points to make here. About using mules to cross the border with cash, most of those are criminals already so not very trustworthy and we are pulling the use of currency to make these things more difficult. The use of the mail into Mexico, how much cash would get delivered before stolen? One question about exacting fees on remittances, that seems to mean the illegals are staying or are we going to charge more for citizens and green card holders to send money? If the fees on remittances is the financing for the wall, seems the Mexican government is not paying, the remitter will have to remit more in order for the intended recipient to get the same.
Great post! Glad to have you back on our side, and to paraphrase Victor Laszlo “now I know our side will win.”
What has Cruz done, substantively, to make you conclude that he has no fixed principles?
Beautifully stated, Cincinnatus. I just joined Ricochet, and I’m super-impressed.
If I understand this correctly, they get less in remittances, but we don’t get any money for the wall.
I would predict that various businesses, probably not legal, would sprout up to create a mechanism for Mexicans to transfer money safely back to Mexico outside the view of the US government, at a price of about half of what the tax would be.
I would predict that various businesses, probably not legal, would sprout up to create a mechanism for Mexicans to transfer money safely back to Mexico outside the view of the US government, at a price of about half of what the tax would be.
Almost certainly true. Yet increasing the friction is the feature. Not a bug.
A “diamond bullet”? Please don’t follow COL Kurtz down that road.
Have you seen Lindsey Graham’s Daily Show interview? Graham may be one of two Senators to have endorsed Cruz, and he may turn up to fundraising events, but he’s still incapable of saying anything nice about Cruz whatsoever that is not “he’s not Trump” or “he’s not Clinton”. I guess if pushed, he could say he wasn’t Sanders. Seriously, watch this interview, where he’s begged to support his endorsee, and instead repeatedly insults him.
I think less of Graham for this; there are plenty of positive things one can say about Cruz. I don’t think less of Cruz for it; the post- SC Graham endorsement (he really came out for Cruz at the beginning of March) isn’t one that carries a lot of weight for me. I’m not suggesting that this shameful video should affect your support for Cruz.
I do think, though, that you shouldn’t claim that Graham is being particularly supportive. Other Senators, who have not endorsed him, are mostly more supportive, although most are still uncommitted even now.
Fantastic post. A couple of quibbles.
Cruz flip flopped on ethanol harder than any other candidate in the cycle. Back in 2013, he wanted to change the law to immediately end the subsidy. Now he wants to retain current law. A much smaller flip flop to the same position from a more moderate position was a key problem for Walker. You’ll find links provided by various people in the comments after page three on this post.
I agree that Trump embraced ethanol subsidies, and that this was a mark against him. Cruz’s decision to look that farmer directly in the eye and lie to his face, though, remains a chilling image. He promises the farmer that there are no trade-offs, that ending the subsidies will result in more money for the subsidized industry because they’re tied to a blend wall.
Do you believe Cruz’s key claim there to be true, or do you think that it was an acceptable white lie to win someone over to capitalism?
F0r some reason my iPad’s quote function seems to have stopped working; anyway, my third quibble would be about the Trump Operation Wetback claim, which gives Trump too much credit. You cite to wiki, which tells a very partial story. The Mexicans who got deported were already in the system; they were arrested shortly after arriving and sent to work on, mostly, border state farms. Ike didn’t find a million illegals because the Federal bureaucracy had amazing data analytics in the 1950s. He found them because they were living in the accommodation that a government program had put them in.
Today, we don’t have massive criminal guest worker programs that would allow us to change our minds and deport ’em all. We could deport fairly large numbers, and, more importantly, we could expand e-verify and some other mechanisms that have been driving self-deportation for the last decade, but we don’t have the capacity to imitate Ike.
I think you give Trump insufficient credit on exit controls; I’m not sure if Trump could get an immigration bill passed, but if he did, US VISIT would certainly be a part of it. It’s a program with more bipartisan support than just about anything else on the issue. What would be his motive for objecting to it?
Again, I’d like to commend the piece. My having quibbles is not to suggest that this isn’t one of the best pieces on this subject so far.
My understanding is that he would use this and other means to shake down the Mexican government until they paid up. I don’t think that the Mexican government would pay even when if it became economically rational for them to do so (which is pretty fast), in part for Danegeld reasons, in part because to do so would be utterly humiliating, and I suspect that their electorate would prefer to take the economic hit. It’s a stupid and immoral threat (it’s not like he could get it through Congress), but it is a mechanism whereby Mexico could theoretically be coerced into paying tribute.
What I haven’t heard anyone discuss is why it’s so important (to Trump) for Mexico, our neighbor, ally, and trading partner, to be humiliated by this extortion.
The remittances have nothing to do with the cost of the wall, which Trump insists can be built for a mere $5 billion or so. If Mexico refuses will that mean that the wall won’t be built? Or is Trump going to claim that they are paying for it through taxes on remittances? That would be false, as the people paying those taxes are not “Mexico” any more than we are “The United States.”
If I believed that Trump was that smart, I would think that he had deliberately entered this race with the goal of destroying the Republican Party. Clearly, Trump is not that smart. But some of the Dems who urged him to run (including Bill Clinton) are that smart, and if that was their goal then they have certainly been successful.
I believe this is exactly what is going on, and why the indictment of Hillary would be the best poetic justice ever.
Except for the risk of our ending up with a Trump presidency.
It seems to me that cutting off the remittances would be a more effective immigration enforcement method than the wall itself. I have long believed that anyone who tries to wire money out of the country should have to prove their legal right to be here in the first place. A lot of illegal aliens come here to earn money to support their families back home. And while my heart goes out to them, we should not be complicit in creating that incentive for the violation of our laws.
Or a Sanders Presidency.