Posted on 08/17/2015 7:17:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
TRUMP’S TRUMPERY
I’m feeling better about Trump mania. It’s obviously too soon to tell for sure, but I think we’ve reached Peak Trump.
Still, vigilance is required. And on that note, I’d like to raise a gripe about what is supposed to be Donald Trump’s greatest strength: his vaunted un-PCness. There’s a consensus out there — among friends and foes alike — that Donald Trump’s success stems from his willingness not to abide by political correctness (that and his willingness to build a wall the Mexicans will pay for). This alleged bravery has managed to convince a great many people that Donald Trump is a conservative. And not just a conservative, but the sort of conservative that one must admire and support if one is to be permitted membership in conservative ranks. Only “RINOs” and worse have problems with the man, I hear hourly.
Let me just say I have exactly zero sympathy or tolerance for this claim. To me this isn’t a matter of opinion, but one of simple fact. I have little patience for people who tell me I have to support Ted Cruz if I’m going to call myself a “real conservative.” But I at least understand that argument. I think it’s wrong. But I get it. It has an internal logic and consistency to it. I feel the same way about intellectual figures as well. William F. Buckley is a hero to me, but I don’t think you have to be a fan to be a conservative. Ditto Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, or for that matter George Will or Charles Krauthammer. But when you try the “RINO!!!!!!!!!” argument out on Donald Trump’s behalf, I have to assume your digestive and respiratory system works backwards, because I think you’re talking out your ass. By any reasonable or objective metric I am more conservative than Donald Trump and I have a vastly more consistent record of my conservatism (ditto Kevin Williamson, Rich Lowry, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Charlie Cooke, etc.). You of course are free to say that this is open to debate. You are also free to say that turtles crap glow-in-the-dark yoyos made of marzipan. That doesn’t make it so. And I’m not much interested in debating the proposition.
WHO’S UN-PC AGAIN?
There’s still this bit about Trump being un-PC and how he’s worth giving the nuclear codes to because he challenges the “establishment.” I was on Bill Bennett’s radio show the other morning and a caller said something to the effect of “You know why I like Donald Trump? Because he befuddles people like Jonah Goldberg . . . Political correctness has been destroying this country and blah blah blah.” (Obviously, I’m quoting from memory).
So first let me say, as I said to the caller, that I agree that political correctness is a huge problem, one I’ve written about many times (often punctuated with many un-PC jokes). Second, as I also said to him, maybe I’m not the one who is befuddled. Perchance Trump fans are the ones who are confused, while I see the man more clearly.
Third, and this I wish I had said on air: What the kind of screwed up standard for picking a president is that? Let’s choose the candidate who most annoys Jonah Goldberg! By that standard, Mt. Rushmore would be lined up with the visages of Carrot Top, Alec Baldwin, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Tom Friedman.
It is a lie that Donald Trump stands athwart political correctness, yelling Stop. But here’s the important point: It is a lie that Donald Trump stands athwart political correctness, yelling Stop.
For example, you may recall that Donald Trump and I got into a Twitter fight a few months back. At one point I wrote that he was “relentlessly tweeting like a 14-year-old girl.”
How did Trump respond? If you guessed with Churchillian statesmanship, you guessed wrong. If you guessed with anti-PC fearlessness, you guessed wrong again.
Instead, he played the political-correctness card. He said my tweet was a “horrible insult to women. Resign now or later!”
I still love the “or later.”
He followed up with more demands that I lose my job because of my insult to women:
"People have been forced to resign positions for far less than @JonahNRO’s “tweeting like a 14 year old girl”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2015
In words Donald Trump could never say sincerely, I know this isn’t all about me. So recall that Trump — the man whose best selling point for some people is that he’s inarticulate when discussing Mexicans — bashed Mitt Romney for being too “mean-spirited” about immigrants. In response to the backlash against his immigration remarks, he’s been slowly revising his position. He’s now for a convoluted kind of amnesty that involves rounding up illegal immigrants and then re-admitting them on an expedited basis if they are “terrific.”
All this week, he’s been defending himself against the charge he’s piggish towards women by attacking Jeb Bush for his gaffe on women’s health. Meanwhile, on the actual issue of Planned Parenthood he’s been all over the place, saying it does great work one moment, saying he’d shut it down another. All the while he says Ivanka Trump is his guide on women’s health issues and he wants everyone to know what a “big heart” he has. What could go wrong there?
Trump’s defenders — and Trump himself — say his liberal record shouldn’t be held against him. He’s “evolved.” The while you find inconsistency on the issues if you go back and look at his record — hence the “he’s evolved” defense — you also find a remarkable consistency on his approach to the issues. He makes things up as he goes along. What informs that process? Liberal conventional wisdom (particularly prior to 2010), reality-show pandering, advice of yes-men, Ivanka Trump, and, of course, whatever direction his mouth is wandering off to at any given moment.
It’s totally worth making that kind of guy the nominee. I mean, after all, he bothers me — and that’s all that really matters.
Ewww, I actually read this entire hissy fit! What a whiny little baby Goldberg is.
Goldberg pleasing his masters.
Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. Eat a snickers.
Give it up Jonah! The GOP has failed it’s base and worse, it’s failed America. It’s time for a change...a seismic change. Get on board or get out of the way...pick one or get run over!
Jonah has sand in his vagina again.
It doesn’t matter. He’s our only chance to stop the establishment, i.e. Bush or Kasich. There’s not another candidate who doesn’t need their money and in the end its always about money.
There’s a reason why pox was created, Jonah.
On all your houses!
You know, after a while you’d think these guys would find something else to do. It’s clear whatever their intentions were, it hasn’t worked. They are still stuck in the first two stages of the “Seven Stages of Grief.”
Whiny and not the least bit funny. The joke attempts were cringeworthy
Translation: What the eff is the matter with you people!!! Trump sucks, he is so beneath we, the Washington elite. He is unworthy of our elite praise and worship. Now get on the bus and support Jebby!!! He is electable or something.
ROFL!!!!!
Why would ANYONE listen to Jonah Goldberg, who only emerged from his Mommy’s basement after her involvement with Linda Tripp? He is a NOBODY, just like Eric Erickson. A nothing. Of zero significance. Yet there he is in the once-vaunting pages of NRO. This is why we need Trump. To purge all these losers from our terminally-ill party.
Gravitas?
Jebby is finished.
But who is? Bush will just betray us, like the previous two Bushes. Rubio wants to cuddle with Schumer--he wasn't even into his office before he joined the Gang of Eight.
JONAH. GET WITH THE PROGRAM. YOU'RE NOT AS SMART AS YOU TELL YOURSELF YOU ARE. All your mommies who played Mah Johng at the Partisan Review can't help you now. Get out of the city! See America!
Awesome. A reminder again of why we need a LIKE button on FR.
I skimmed it for the usual Cultural Marxist talking points (racist, sexist, and homophobic) and surprisingly Goldberg has enough sense to omit them.
But remember you sensitive compassionate moderate conservatives that Goldberg once took a trip from the West coast back to his home in NYC and he made sure to tell us in lurid terms how the white men of Montana scared him. Has he ever written anything like that but mentioning Democratic voters?
“...but I think we’ve reached Peak Trump. “
What? AGAIN?
Any more peaks and you will have to start calling him Donald of the Himalayas.
I think Jonah needs to go back and read his book Liberal Fascism. It seems like he’s forgotten what he wrote.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.