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Against Trump
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Ubiquitous
Jan 22, 2016, 9:29:53 AM1/22/16
to
Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the
race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are
understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive
gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of
conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a
philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the
broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of
a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.
Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-
estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun
control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on
the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky
outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a
more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it.
His signature issue is concern over immigration — from Latin America
but also, after Paris and San Bernardino, from the Middle East. He
has exploited the yawning gap between elite opinion in both parties
and the public on the issue, and feasted on the discontent over a
government that can’t be bothered to enforce its own laws no matter
how many times it says it will (President Obama has dispensed even
with the pretense). But even on immigration, Trump often makes no
sense and can’t be relied upon. A few short years ago, he was
criticizing Mitt Romney for having the temerity to propose “self-
deportation,” or the entirely reasonable policy of reducing the
illegal population through attrition while enforcing the nation’s
laws. Now, Trump is a hawk’s hawk.
He pledges to build a wall along the southern border and to make
Mexico pay for it. We need more fencing at the border, but the
promise to make Mexico pay for it is silly bluster. Trump says he
will put a big door in his beautiful wall, an implicit endorsement
of the dismayingly conventional view that current levels of legal
immigration are fine. Trump seems unaware that a major contribution
of his own written immigration plan is to question the economic
impact of legal immigration and to call for reform of the H-1B–visa
program. Indeed, in one Republican debate he clearly had no idea
what’s in that plan and advocated increased legal immigration, which
is completely at odds with it. These are not the meanderings of
someone with well-informed, deeply held views on the topic.
As for illegal immigration, Trump pledges to deport the 11 million
illegals here in the United States, a herculean administrative and
logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government. Trump
piles on the absurdity by saying he would re-import many of the
illegal immigrants once they had been deported, which makes his
policy a poorly disguised amnesty (and a version of a similarly
idiotic idea that appeared in one of Washington’s periodic
“comprehensive” immigration reforms). This plan wouldn’t survive its
first contact with reality.
RELATED: Conservatives Should Ask: ‘Does Trump Walk with Us?’
On foreign policy, Trump is a nationalist at sea. Sometimes he wants
to let Russia fight ISIS, and at others he wants to “bomb the sh**”
out of it. He is fixated on stealing Iraq’s oil and casually
suggested a few weeks ago a war crime — killing terrorists’ families
— as a tactic in the war on terror. For someone who wants to project
strength, he has an astonishing weakness for flattery, falling for
Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the
Russian thug. All in all, Trump knows approximately as much about
national security as he does about the nuclear triad — which is to
say, almost nothing.
Indeed, Trump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed
businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver;
let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant
details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide
you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you
are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed
politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest
in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the
Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported
goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much
manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with
“winning,” regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to
the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends
for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party
represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in
these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best
and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the
administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new
dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.
It is unpopular to say in the year of the “outsider,” but it is not
a recommendation that Trump has never held public office. Since
1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other
than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by
candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level
position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture.
The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in
other fields is not transferable. That is why all American
presidents have been politicians, or generals.
Any candidate can promise the moon. But politicians have records of
success, failure, or plain backsliding by which their promises may
be judged. Trump can try to make his blankness a virtue by calling
it a kind of innocence. But he is like a man with no credit history
applying for a mortgage — or, in this case, applying to manage a
$3.8 trillion budget and the most fearsome military on earth.
RELATED: When Conservatives Needed Allies, Donald Trump Sided with
Obama
Trump’s record as a businessman is hardly a recommendation for the
highest office in the land. For all his success, Trump inherited a
real-estate fortune from his father. Few of us will ever have the
experience, as Trump did, of having Daddy-O bail out our struggling
enterprise with an illegal loan in the form of casino chips. Trump’s
primary work long ago became less about building anything than about
branding himself and tending to his celebrity through a variety of
entertainment ventures, from WWE to his reality-TV show, The
Apprentice. His business record reflects the often dubious norms of
the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others;
buying the good graces of politicians — including many Democrats —
with donations.
Trump has gotten far in the GOP race on a brash manner, buffed over
decades in New York tabloid culture. His refusal to back down from
any gaffe, no matter how grotesque, suggests a healthy impertinence
in the face of postmodern PC (although the insults he hurls at
anyone who crosses him also speak to a pettiness and lack of basic
civility). His promise to make America great again recalls the
populism of Andrew Jackson. But Jackson was an actual warrior; and
President Jackson made many mistakes. Without Jackson’s scars, what
is Trump’s rhetoric but show and strut?
If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or
even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would
that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the
Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism
would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with
such “permanent things” as constitutional government, marriage, and
the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.
Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican
party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important
as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot
explain their Beltway maneuvers — worse, if their maneuvering is
indefensible — they will be rejected by their own voters. If they
cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate
anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by
demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump
supporters about the GOP, but that doesn’t make the mogul any less
flawed a vessel for them.
Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for
Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald
Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work
of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as
heedless and crude as the Donald himself.
--
What's the difference between a Socialist & a Democrat? When Hillary
& Bernie are on the debate stage, you'll see it's about 2" in
height.
race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are
understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive
gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of
conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a
philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the
broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of
a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.
Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-
estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun
control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on
the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky
outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a
more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it.
His signature issue is concern over immigration — from Latin America
but also, after Paris and San Bernardino, from the Middle East. He
has exploited the yawning gap between elite opinion in both parties
and the public on the issue, and feasted on the discontent over a
government that can’t be bothered to enforce its own laws no matter
how many times it says it will (President Obama has dispensed even
with the pretense). But even on immigration, Trump often makes no
sense and can’t be relied upon. A few short years ago, he was
criticizing Mitt Romney for having the temerity to propose “self-
deportation,” or the entirely reasonable policy of reducing the
illegal population through attrition while enforcing the nation’s
laws. Now, Trump is a hawk’s hawk.
He pledges to build a wall along the southern border and to make
Mexico pay for it. We need more fencing at the border, but the
promise to make Mexico pay for it is silly bluster. Trump says he
will put a big door in his beautiful wall, an implicit endorsement
of the dismayingly conventional view that current levels of legal
immigration are fine. Trump seems unaware that a major contribution
of his own written immigration plan is to question the economic
impact of legal immigration and to call for reform of the H-1B–visa
program. Indeed, in one Republican debate he clearly had no idea
what’s in that plan and advocated increased legal immigration, which
is completely at odds with it. These are not the meanderings of
someone with well-informed, deeply held views on the topic.
As for illegal immigration, Trump pledges to deport the 11 million
illegals here in the United States, a herculean administrative and
logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government. Trump
piles on the absurdity by saying he would re-import many of the
illegal immigrants once they had been deported, which makes his
policy a poorly disguised amnesty (and a version of a similarly
idiotic idea that appeared in one of Washington’s periodic
“comprehensive” immigration reforms). This plan wouldn’t survive its
first contact with reality.
RELATED: Conservatives Should Ask: ‘Does Trump Walk with Us?’
On foreign policy, Trump is a nationalist at sea. Sometimes he wants
to let Russia fight ISIS, and at others he wants to “bomb the sh**”
out of it. He is fixated on stealing Iraq’s oil and casually
suggested a few weeks ago a war crime — killing terrorists’ families
— as a tactic in the war on terror. For someone who wants to project
strength, he has an astonishing weakness for flattery, falling for
Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the
Russian thug. All in all, Trump knows approximately as much about
national security as he does about the nuclear triad — which is to
say, almost nothing.
Indeed, Trump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed
businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver;
let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant
details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide
you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you
are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed
politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest
in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the
Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported
goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much
manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with
“winning,” regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to
the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends
for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party
represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in
these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best
and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the
administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new
dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.
It is unpopular to say in the year of the “outsider,” but it is not
a recommendation that Trump has never held public office. Since
1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other
than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by
candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level
position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture.
The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in
other fields is not transferable. That is why all American
presidents have been politicians, or generals.
Any candidate can promise the moon. But politicians have records of
success, failure, or plain backsliding by which their promises may
be judged. Trump can try to make his blankness a virtue by calling
it a kind of innocence. But he is like a man with no credit history
applying for a mortgage — or, in this case, applying to manage a
$3.8 trillion budget and the most fearsome military on earth.
RELATED: When Conservatives Needed Allies, Donald Trump Sided with
Obama
Trump’s record as a businessman is hardly a recommendation for the
highest office in the land. For all his success, Trump inherited a
real-estate fortune from his father. Few of us will ever have the
experience, as Trump did, of having Daddy-O bail out our struggling
enterprise with an illegal loan in the form of casino chips. Trump’s
primary work long ago became less about building anything than about
branding himself and tending to his celebrity through a variety of
entertainment ventures, from WWE to his reality-TV show, The
Apprentice. His business record reflects the often dubious norms of
the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others;
buying the good graces of politicians — including many Democrats —
with donations.
Trump has gotten far in the GOP race on a brash manner, buffed over
decades in New York tabloid culture. His refusal to back down from
any gaffe, no matter how grotesque, suggests a healthy impertinence
in the face of postmodern PC (although the insults he hurls at
anyone who crosses him also speak to a pettiness and lack of basic
civility). His promise to make America great again recalls the
populism of Andrew Jackson. But Jackson was an actual warrior; and
President Jackson made many mistakes. Without Jackson’s scars, what
is Trump’s rhetoric but show and strut?
If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or
even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would
that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the
Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism
would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with
such “permanent things” as constitutional government, marriage, and
the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.
Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican
party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important
as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot
explain their Beltway maneuvers — worse, if their maneuvering is
indefensible — they will be rejected by their own voters. If they
cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate
anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by
demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump
supporters about the GOP, but that doesn’t make the mogul any less
flawed a vessel for them.
Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for
Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald
Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work
of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as
heedless and crude as the Donald himself.
--
What's the difference between a Socialist & a Democrat? When Hillary
& Bernie are on the debate stage, you'll see it's about 2" in
height.
Fred Oinka
Jan 22, 2016, 11:48:27 AM1/22/16
to
On Friday, January 22, 2016 at 9:29:53 AM UTC-5, Ubiquitous wrote:
> Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the
> race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are
> understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive
> gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of
> conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a
> philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the
> broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of
> a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.
>
> Trump's political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-
> estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun
> control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on
> the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky
> outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a
> more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it.
>
> His signature issue is concern over immigration -- from Latin America
> Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the
> race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are
> understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive
> gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of
> conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a
> philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the
> broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of
> a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.
>
> Trump's political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-
> estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun
> control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on
> the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky
> outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a
> more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it.
>
> but also, after Paris and San Bernardino, from the Middle East. He
> has exploited the yawning gap between elite opinion in both parties
> and the public on the issue, and feasted on the discontent over a
> government that can't be bothered to enforce its own laws no matter
> how many times it says it will (President Obama has dispensed even
> with the pretense). But even on immigration, Trump often makes no
> sense and can't be relied upon. A few short years ago, he was
> criticizing Mitt Romney for having the temerity to propose "self-
> deportation," or the entirely reasonable policy of reducing the
> illegal population through attrition while enforcing the nation's
> laws. Now, Trump is a hawk's hawk.
>
> He pledges to build a wall along the southern border and to make
> Mexico pay for it. We need more fencing at the border, but the
> promise to make Mexico pay for it is silly bluster. Trump says he
> will put a big door in his beautiful wall, an implicit endorsement
> of the dismayingly conventional view that current levels of legal
> immigration are fine. Trump seems unaware that a major contribution
> of his own written immigration plan is to question the economic
> impact of legal immigration and to call for reform of the H-1B-visa
> has exploited the yawning gap between elite opinion in both parties
> and the public on the issue, and feasted on the discontent over a
> government that can't be bothered to enforce its own laws no matter
> how many times it says it will (President Obama has dispensed even
> with the pretense). But even on immigration, Trump often makes no
> sense and can't be relied upon. A few short years ago, he was
> criticizing Mitt Romney for having the temerity to propose "self-
> deportation," or the entirely reasonable policy of reducing the
> illegal population through attrition while enforcing the nation's
> laws. Now, Trump is a hawk's hawk.
>
> He pledges to build a wall along the southern border and to make
> Mexico pay for it. We need more fencing at the border, but the
> promise to make Mexico pay for it is silly bluster. Trump says he
> will put a big door in his beautiful wall, an implicit endorsement
> of the dismayingly conventional view that current levels of legal
> immigration are fine. Trump seems unaware that a major contribution
> of his own written immigration plan is to question the economic
> program. Indeed, in one Republican debate he clearly had no idea
> what's in that plan and advocated increased legal immigration, which
> is completely at odds with it. These are not the meanderings of
> someone with well-informed, deeply held views on the topic.
>
> As for illegal immigration, Trump pledges to deport the 11 million
> illegals here in the United States, a herculean administrative and
> logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government. Trump
> piles on the absurdity by saying he would re-import many of the
> illegal immigrants once they had been deported, which makes his
> policy a poorly disguised amnesty (and a version of a similarly
> idiotic idea that appeared in one of Washington's periodic
> "comprehensive" immigration reforms). This plan wouldn't survive its
> first contact with reality.
>
> RELATED: Conservatives Should Ask: 'Does Trump Walk with Us?'
>
> On foreign policy, Trump is a nationalist at sea. Sometimes he wants
> to let Russia fight ISIS, and at others he wants to "bomb the sh**"
> out of it. He is fixated on stealing Iraq's oil and casually
> suggested a few weeks ago a war crime -- killing terrorists' families
> what's in that plan and advocated increased legal immigration, which
> is completely at odds with it. These are not the meanderings of
> someone with well-informed, deeply held views on the topic.
>
> As for illegal immigration, Trump pledges to deport the 11 million
> illegals here in the United States, a herculean administrative and
> logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government. Trump
> piles on the absurdity by saying he would re-import many of the
> illegal immigrants once they had been deported, which makes his
> policy a poorly disguised amnesty (and a version of a similarly
> idiotic idea that appeared in one of Washington's periodic
> "comprehensive" immigration reforms). This plan wouldn't survive its
> first contact with reality.
>
> RELATED: Conservatives Should Ask: 'Does Trump Walk with Us?'
>
> On foreign policy, Trump is a nationalist at sea. Sometimes he wants
> to let Russia fight ISIS, and at others he wants to "bomb the sh**"
> out of it. He is fixated on stealing Iraq's oil and casually
> -- as a tactic in the war on terror. For someone who wants to project
> strength, he has an astonishing weakness for flattery, falling for
> Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the
> Russian thug. All in all, Trump knows approximately as much about
> national security as he does about the nuclear triad -- which is to
> Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the
> Russian thug. All in all, Trump knows approximately as much about
> say, almost nothing.
>
> Indeed, Trump's politics are those of an averagely well-informed
> businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver;
> let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant
> details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide
> you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you
> are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed
> politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest
> in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the
> Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported
> goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much
> manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with
> "winning," regardless of the means -- a spirit that is anathema to
>
> Indeed, Trump's politics are those of an averagely well-informed
> businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver;
> let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant
> details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide
> you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you
> are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed
> politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest
> in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the
> Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported
> goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much
> manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with
> the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends
> for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party
> represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in
> these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best
> and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the
> administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new
> dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.
>
> It is unpopular to say in the year of the "outsider," but it is not
> a recommendation that Trump has never held public office. Since
> 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other
> than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by
> candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level
> position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture.
> The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in
> other fields is not transferable. That is why all American
> presidents have been politicians, or generals.
>
> Any candidate can promise the moon. But politicians have records of
> success, failure, or plain backsliding by which their promises may
> be judged. Trump can try to make his blankness a virtue by calling
> it a kind of innocence. But he is like a man with no credit history
> applying for a mortgage -- or, in this case, applying to manage a
> for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party
> represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in
> these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best
> and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the
> administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new
> dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.
>
> It is unpopular to say in the year of the "outsider," but it is not
> a recommendation that Trump has never held public office. Since
> 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other
> than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by
> candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level
> position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture.
> The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in
> other fields is not transferable. That is why all American
> presidents have been politicians, or generals.
>
> Any candidate can promise the moon. But politicians have records of
> success, failure, or plain backsliding by which their promises may
> be judged. Trump can try to make his blankness a virtue by calling
> it a kind of innocence. But he is like a man with no credit history
> $3.8 trillion budget and the most fearsome military on earth.
>
> RELATED: When Conservatives Needed Allies, Donald Trump Sided with
> Obama
>
> Trump's record as a businessman is hardly a recommendation for the
> highest office in the land. For all his success, Trump inherited a
> real-estate fortune from his father. Few of us will ever have the
> experience, as Trump did, of having Daddy-O bail out our struggling
> enterprise with an illegal loan in the form of casino chips. Trump's
> primary work long ago became less about building anything than about
> branding himself and tending to his celebrity through a variety of
> entertainment ventures, from WWE to his reality-TV show, The
> Apprentice. His business record reflects the often dubious norms of
> the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others;
> buying the good graces of politicians -- including many Democrats --
>
> RELATED: When Conservatives Needed Allies, Donald Trump Sided with
> Obama
>
> Trump's record as a businessman is hardly a recommendation for the
> highest office in the land. For all his success, Trump inherited a
> real-estate fortune from his father. Few of us will ever have the
> experience, as Trump did, of having Daddy-O bail out our struggling
> enterprise with an illegal loan in the form of casino chips. Trump's
> primary work long ago became less about building anything than about
> branding himself and tending to his celebrity through a variety of
> entertainment ventures, from WWE to his reality-TV show, The
> Apprentice. His business record reflects the often dubious norms of
> the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others;
> with donations.
>
> Trump has gotten far in the GOP race on a brash manner, buffed over
> decades in New York tabloid culture. His refusal to back down from
> any gaffe, no matter how grotesque, suggests a healthy impertinence
> in the face of postmodern PC (although the insults he hurls at
> anyone who crosses him also speak to a pettiness and lack of basic
> civility). His promise to make America great again recalls the
> populism of Andrew Jackson. But Jackson was an actual warrior; and
> President Jackson made many mistakes. Without Jackson's scars, what
> is Trump's rhetoric but show and strut?
>
> If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or
> even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would
> that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the
> Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism
> would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with
> such "permanent things" as constitutional government, marriage, and
> the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.
>
> Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican
> party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important
> as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot
> explain their Beltway maneuvers -- worse, if their maneuvering is
>
> Trump has gotten far in the GOP race on a brash manner, buffed over
> decades in New York tabloid culture. His refusal to back down from
> any gaffe, no matter how grotesque, suggests a healthy impertinence
> in the face of postmodern PC (although the insults he hurls at
> anyone who crosses him also speak to a pettiness and lack of basic
> civility). His promise to make America great again recalls the
> populism of Andrew Jackson. But Jackson was an actual warrior; and
> President Jackson made many mistakes. Without Jackson's scars, what
> is Trump's rhetoric but show and strut?
>
> If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or
> even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would
> that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the
> Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism
> would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with
> such "permanent things" as constitutional government, marriage, and
> the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.
>
> Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican
> party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important
> as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot
> indefensible -- they will be rejected by their own voters. If they
> cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate
> anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by
> demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump
> supporters about the GOP, but that doesn't make the mogul any less
> flawed a vessel for them.
>
> Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for
> Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald
> Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work
> of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as
> heedless and crude as the Donald himself.
>
>
> --
> What's the difference between a Socialist & a Democrat? When Hillary
> & Bernie are on the debate stage, you'll see it's about 2" in
> height.
Captain, it is my opinion as science officer that this particular being feeds off the emotion of hate. It makes it even stronger. That's why our phaser beams have had no effect.
> anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by
> demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump
> supporters about the GOP, but that doesn't make the mogul any less
> flawed a vessel for them.
>
> Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for
> Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald
> Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work
> of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as
> heedless and crude as the Donald himself.
>
>
> --
> What's the difference between a Socialist & a Democrat? When Hillary
> & Bernie are on the debate stage, you'll see it's about 2" in
> height.
Brent Hasselback
Jan 22, 2016, 12:05:53 PM1/22/16
to
On Friday, January 22, 2016 at 10:48:27 AM UTC-6, Fred Oinka wrote:
> Captain, it is my opinion as science officer that this particular being feeds off the emotion of hate. It makes it even stronger. That's why our phaser beams have had no effect.
That's Ubi...when not copying/pasting bad media sources or posting as one of his 4 confirmed socks, he watches, and I'm not kidding here, HOURS AND HOURS of "Mama's Family".
> Captain, it is my opinion as science officer that this particular being feeds off the emotion of hate. It makes it even stronger. That's why our phaser beams have had no effect.
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