Posted on 08/22/2015 8:28:23 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Conservative American talk show host Glenn Beck has slammed frontrunner Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying he is a false conservative.
Beck, a former member of the Republican Party, said in an interview on Saturday, “I haven’t heard him talk about the Constitution or small government.”
“It’s hard to say you espouse conservative principles and small-government principles when you are saying that you think [the] Canadian health care system works and is wonderful,” he added.
“I look for a man of integrity, humility, who is rooted in the Constitution,” Beck stated, “because if you root yourself in the Constitution, we can’t go too far left or too far right.”
Trump has maintained a lead among GOP presidential contenders in national polling since he announced his candidacy in mid-July.
A Rasmussen poll released Friday found that a majority of Republican voters (57 percent) believe Trump will be their party’s nominee for president in 2016. Among all likely voters, 49 percent believe Trump is likely to win the GOP nomination, up from 23 percent two months ago.
“He is not a politician,” Beck declared. “He is saying the populist things right now.”
“I think what’s happening with Bernie Sanders with the left is the same thing that’s happening with Donald Trump,” he opined, referring to the independent presidential candidate seeking Democratic nomination.
“They want somebody to say it the way they think it – especially if they say it in a non-politically correct way,” the former Fox News pundit asserted.
Earlier this year, Beck announced to quit the Republican Party, saying he has become disillusioned with the Republicans in recent years over their failure to stand up to the Obama administration over a number of issues.
“All this stuff that they said and they ran and they said they were doing all of these great things and they were going to stand against ObamaCare and illegal immigration — they set us up,” Beck stated.
He accused the Republicans of “torpedoing the Constitution” and said that “they’re doing it knowingly.”
The founder of the Blaze said that he decided to leave the Republican Party because of its resistance to change.
As many as 17 Republicans are seeking their party’s nomination for president but only Trump, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker are considered serious contenders.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is competing against only three Democrats and Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party's nomination. Only Sanders is considered at all competitive in the early primaries.
Welcome aboard!
Been lurking long?
Yes, a long time.
First apologies for not responding earlier. Your question is very thoughtful because the first response is no, but with politicians it is always not so easy when dissecting what they really said. So I went back and replayed the interview.
My sense is that after listening to the interview again that Trump's brand of conservatism doesn't include federalism or smaller government. In his answer, conservative means fiscal conservative and I am afraid that all too often this is inferred to mean smaller government. But what we learned post Gingrich speaker, is that the GOPe feels that if you balance the budget that is fiscally conservative irregardless of the size of government and whether or not it is acting in its constitutional purview.
Also, Trump supports the Kelo decision which back in the Bush years was a litmus test for conservatives. Many states passed their own eminent domain laws to address Kelo.
Again, early in the process and I do not get emotional on any one candidate with so much time before the first primaries. Part of my caution is history and the other part is I live is a state in which the primary is so late it doesn't matter who I support.
And; after you do; you have to determine if they really MEANT it!
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