Posted on 09/01/2015 10:11:25 AM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
The Washington Post’s token “conservative” columnist, Jennifer Rubin, was adamant.
Writing at the Washington Post in early 2013, Rubin demanded that the Republican Party, if they wish to remain viable, embrace the new realities of modern conservatism, including “celebrity candidates” in a piece titled”
Wrote Rubin, among other things:
The unfailing reverence on the American right for Ronald Reagan is understandable. He was the only exemplar of modern conservatism to win the White House, and unlike liberal icons such as Roosevelt or Johnson or Obama, he presided over an economic boom and became beloved by voters not normally drawn to his party. No wonder that Reagan, long before his death in 2004, attained mythical status in the conservative movement and the Republican Party. But that myth has become a burden for the modern GOP. It has bound Reagan’s followers on the right to policies and positions that were time-specific. The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism — not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era. …The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them. The public face of the GOP can no longer be aging, ill-tempered Reaganites such as John McCain and Jim DeMint but must give way to a diverse, media-savvy generation that understands the America we actually live in. Only then can the essence of conservatism — the promotion of personal liberty — survive, and the GOP along with it.
And then? Wait for it…because then Jennifer Rubin suggested this:
Conservatives have come to deplore the role of personality in politics, scoffing at celebrity candidates. This is deeply misguided. …A successful political party must not just acknowledge new realities but adjust to them, even embrace them.
As the old saying goes, not being careful, Ms. Rubin and all those “we need to get beyond Reagan” types have now gotten exactly what they wished for.
It’s “misguided” to be “scoffing at celebrity candidates”? Weep no more. Donald Trump is a 100 on a celebrity scale of 1 to 10. “Acknowledge new realities…adjust to them…even embrace them”? Say no more. The Republican grass roots has acknowledged the “new reality” that is a GOP Establishment that effectively is supporting Obama’s Open Borders while campaigning on a vow to stop Obama’s executive amnesty. They have acknowledged the “new reality” that the GOP leadership in Washington campaigned on defunding Obamacare but refused to do it. They have adjusted to and embraced the hard reality that their leadership is engaged in a double-game, saying one thing but never carrying through, pitching to Main Street while quietly letting K Street call the shots.
Thus, having followed Rubin’s advice to a “T” (so to speak), you would expect Ms. Rubin and her likeminded to be thrilled, yes?
Wrong. Instead, she is…appalled.
Abruptly, Rubin does a 180, headlining this:
She states of the celebrity candidate she precisely demanded who appeals overwhelmingly to just what Rubin said must be appealed to – not “ill-tempered Reaganites” but rather “a diverse, media-savvy generation that understands the America we actually live in.” Now, suddenly, according to Rubin, these very same folks who in fact understand all too well “the America we actually live in” are supporting “not a bully but a crybaby.” And they have that “ugly side” thing going.
Typically, having scorned Reagan, she now misrepresents Trump. His attacks on illegal immigration are transformed by Rubin into attacks on “Mexican immigrants.” Not true, but hey.
When you demand a post-Reagan world and get it only to find out the crowd has left you behind too, suddenly Americans are the “angry right wing” “unhinged” with their favorite candidate exhibiting “immature and bizarre political thinking.”
Snaps Rubin: “Americans are not prepared to undertake mass roundups and destroy family units.” Does the name “Dwight Eisenhower” ring a bell with Rubin? You know, that angry right- wing Republican president who – as detailed here deported – initiated a program of mass deportation of illegals in June of 1954, resulting in the departure involuntarily or voluntarily of over a million in the first year of the program alone. Yes, by bus, buy train, by plane, and by ship.
All of this, as noted here cheered on repeatedly in the day by positive coverage from - yes - The New York Times. The Times was so enraged by the presence of illegals and their employment by the farmers and growers of the day that the farmers and growers were accused of “peonage” –that being a first cousin of slavery. Which is to say the use of illegals by the farmers and growers was not only an outrageous example of “ethics cast aside” in the view of the Times, it was racist to boot.
What’s really at play here in all of this “get over Reagan” business is not Jennifer Rubin. Rubin is merely a symbol of the problem that lies behind the collective numbers for Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz.
What all of this “get over Reagan”- and -“pick a celebrity” -who-is-media-savvy-and -can- energize- the-base-but-OMG-not-that-celebrity-or-that-ugly-base business is about is nothing more than Rubin giving lip service to the same-old-same-old Inside The Beltway GOP Insiderdom that is so out of touch with Outside The Beltway Republicans and conservatives it is by now almost a caricature of itself.
Just in the last day the Des Moines Register released a new poll that has Trump at 23% and Carson at 18%, with his support since January having surged by a whopping 22%. Not to mention his favorables, the numbers soaring from 27% to 61% positive.
Are these Iowans the “ugly right” as Rubin insists? Of course not. Between Trump, Carson, Fiorina and Ted Cruz the Outsiders one and all have a stunning 53% of the vote in that poll.
A week ago the New York Times actually took the time to investigate the Trump rise, reporting that Trump “has built a broad, demographically and ideologically diverse coalition”, “bridges demographic and political divides” and leads among evangelical Christians, moderates and the college-educated, less-affluent voters and “the most frequent, likely voters” - while “his appeal is greatest among those with little history of voting.”
Is there a message here? Yes, of course.
The base of the GOP has taken Jennifer Rubin’s 2013 advice to heart. They still love Reagan – they will always love Reagan. But they are moving forward. There is a new reality dawning in America. And the only people who are, irony of ironies, unwilling if not unable to “not just acknowledge new realities but adjust to them, even embrace them” – are Ms. Rubin and the entire GOP Establishment.
Sometimes you just can’t make this up.
Jeffery Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeffjlpa1
She’s a liberal / GOPe in all but name. There’s nothing conservative that she’d actually stand up for. Whatever the topic, Rubin can be counted on the be the “conservative voice that feels a moral compulsion to agree with the liberals”
Rubin is not a conservative
neither is Trump
People forget that the GOP won a landslide in the Senate in ‘80, throwing out several Lefty giants. It was indeed a conservative tidal wave.
Then, Reagan surrounded himself with Bushies and by ‘84 it was back to business as usual. :(
More proof that Rubin is bought and paid for just like always. She gets her candidate and only writes in their defense. The article is right, and I mentioned this last week, Trump should be perfect for Rubin. He’s half as conservative as the average RINO and twice as vocal as Chris Christie used to be. He is an outsider which she had claimed she wanted in the past.
My memory is precise. Ronald Reagan did not win his first term on conservative philosophy. He won because Jimmy Carter was awful.
Carter lost because his voters went silent and stayed home. That allowed Reagan’s republican base to emerge and win the election for RR.
If Carter hadn’t screwed up so badly, Reagan’s conservatism would have been treated the same as Goldwater’s.
Conservatism was not the mainstream in the 70s. Because Nixon was not a conservative and neither was Ford. So republicans had not experienced an actual Goldwater-Reagan brand of conservatism before Reagan. Conservatism was a ‘?’ in terms of running the government.
What propelled Reagan into the White House was his ‘hawkishness’. There was no conservative tidal wave. What you appear to have experienced was a field left empty by disappointed and embarrassed liberals, leaving the field for republicans to take over. It was not a tidal wave, it was a vacuum.
Conservatism did not become popular until Reagan had been in office for 2 years and people could visibly see that his leadership was exceptional. He was not elected because people believed in conservatism.
And I am referring to the general electorate in a statistical sense. Conservatives were a part of the republicans in 1979 but the branding of republicans was more moderate like Nixon or Ford except that Reagan talked tough and talked of rebuilding our military. Conservatives were a subset of republicans and not a large one. As Reagan’s term unfolded and his popularity increased, the subset of conservatives in the GOP became larger as people adopted it as their brand.
What I am saying about Rubin is that she is touting and associating herself with Reagan as a great refined conservative that the American people elected and fully embraced in 1980. No, the American people did not embrace conservatism in 1980 because it was a wildcard, something without general experience. What was embraced was a vision to fix our military and our economy, and to stop the decline of prestige around the world.
I will bet that if Rubin were alive and writing in 1979-1980 she would be slamming Reagan for his extreme ‘John Birch’ like views. Of course years later after Reagan won the hearts of the American voter, she would say she was for Reagan all along. And that is what she is doing with her garbage views referred to in Jeffrey Lord’s piece above. Rubin’s writing is a pig and she’s trying to put lipstick on it by associating herself with Reagan and twisting history while she does it.
What happened to President Ted Kennedy?
Why did Birch Bayh lose?
George McGovern?
Frank Church?
Gaylord Nelson?
No one expected these titans to lose. They didn’t lose because of Reagan’s personality. They lost because their ideology was rejected.
Remember Prop 13? Wasn’t that a conservative wildfire?
Why did the ERA fail?
Remember how broad the opposition to the Panama Canal treaty was?
It was a conservative wave. Led by brillaint, principled conservatives.
Jenifer Rubin would’ve been with Bill Bennett, Dr. Krauthammer and her fellow neocons in the Democrat party.
> “What happened to President Ted Kennedy?”
Kennedy ran against Carter in 1979 and came close. He was not defeated in the primary by a conservative. What is your point here?
> “Why did Birch Bayh lose?”
Again, Bayh was defeated by another democrat during his run for President in 1976. No conservative was involved.
> “George McGovern?”
George McGovern was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1972 in the presidential election. Nixon was not a conservative. So this does not help your argument.
> “Frank Church?”
Same story as for Bayh above. No conservative was involved in his defeat in the democrat primary for President.
> “Gaylord Nelson?”
I don’t know anything about him.
> “No one expected these titans to lose. They didn’t lose because of Reagan’s personality. They lost because their ideology was rejected.”
These ‘titans’ as you call them were never nominated by their democrat party to run as President except for McGovern who was defeated by Nixon who was not a conservative.
> “Remember Prop 13? Wasn’t that a conservative wildfire?”
I remember Prop 13 very well and was involved as a young man.It was led by Howard Jarvis who was pushing back on overreaching property tax increases led by very large increases in home valuations.
Jarvis was a fiscal conservative because he was a lobbyist for Apartment Owners who were going under because property taxes were going up and because there were rent controls that did not allow them to raise rents.
I got involved along with my neighbors because an elderly widow on our street who lived on Social Security alone and who had lived in her home for more than 50 years was going to be foreclosed on by the County because she could not pay the property taxes which had more than tripled because the home value had increased so much. She was 77 years old and she was comfortable with no desire to leave. She wanted to die right where she was, right where she had shared more than 50 years with her husband who had just died three years previous. She had known no other home after they were married.
When I found out what was happening to her, I could not believe the cavalier attitude I heard from the county tax assessor’s office which was she had had the option to sell her property.
So Jarvis won his anti-property tax initiative by a huge margin.
Yes this was a ‘conservative’ victory but the people who voted were not of the conservative philosophy, they were of the ‘what is fair and sensible?’ philosophy. For example, I was a student. I was neither liberal nor conservative. And most Californians were the same.
> “Why did the ERA fail?”
Not because of conservatism but because it made no sense on how it could be managed. It also seemed the people pushing it were more aligned with leftwing extremists. There was no conservative champion that defeated it.
> “Remember how broad the opposition to the Panama Canal treaty was?”
Just like the Iran Deal is today. The Panama Canal giveaway was Carter and people were disgusted with Carter’s incompetence.
> “It was a conservative wave. Led by brillaint, principled conservatives.”
No. It was not a ‘conservative’ wave. There were some conservative leaders but not so many as one might expect. Most leaders were moderates and listening to their constituents who were angry and concerned.
> “Jenifer Rubin would’ve been with Bill Bennett, Dr. Krauthammer and her fellow neocons in the Democrat party.”
I think she would been with Jane Fonda and the like against Reagan until Reagan had become so wildly popular and loved. Then I see her as switching over just as so many democrats did especially southern democrats. For example, Haley Barbour and Thad Cochran were democrats that switched parties for ‘convenience’ when they saw how everyone was enthralled with Reagan after getting to know his style after awhile as President. I see Rubin as a political golddigger who will chase whatever seems fashionable for the day. She’s not a conservative although she says she is. She is the ‘token’ conservative columnist.
Conservatism as a ‘brand name’ is relatively new. It is true that generations of Americans including immigrants from the 19th and early 20th centuries were expected to fend for themselves in self-reliance. Their attitudes and values today would be called ‘conservative’ but they never called their way of seeing the world as ‘conservative’. They saw their responsibilities as the ‘American Way’. Conservatism has had a few slogans that have caught on such as Reagan’s “Peace Through Strength” and others but there is no doctrine or dictate that defines and mandates a conservative way of life other than remembrances of the American Way. Conservatives also define themselves today by what they are not. They are not liberals and will not advance the liberal agenda, at least we hope they won’t.
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are in my view very conservative in their thinking (and I give DT a clean slate now that he’s in politics for real). For example, Ted will say “before we ever talk about reforming immigration we have got to have a secure border”. That’s not only conservative sounding it is also logical so it appeals to my intellect. Donald Trump will be even more direct. He will say he will build the most beautiful wall you ever saw and we can believe him because he has built some mammoth things in his life. He also says of illegal immigrants “they all have to go”; no exceptions, no side arguments, no dissertations on how or why, no elaborate speeches, etc. just simply “they all have to go”. That’s hard-line conservatism.
Is Donald Trump a conservative? At the beginning when I did not know much about him I thought he was all bluster, full of talk and full of himself. But I did my homework and found out he means what he says. For example, when Donald Trump says he will take care of our veterans, I now believe 100% in him. Here’s the proof:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3330070/posts?page=79#79
3 excellent responses!
I love Free Republic :)
Thank you, Hostage
The others were liberal icons who lost Senate seats in 1980. I wasn't talking about their Presidential runs. They lost "safe" seats in 1980 because it was a conservative time. You helped ignite it.
Ironic that you sympathized with the old lady who was going to lose her home back then, but now lionize the crony capitalist who tried to evict an old lady from her home so he could build a parking garage. And he tried the same thing to an old farmer in Scotland. They stopped him. I wonder how many more he succeeded in destroying. I guess they were just "losers".
Not because of conservatism but because it made no sense on how it could be managed. It also seemed the people pushing it were more aligned with leftwing extremists. There was no conservative champion that defeated it.
OK, it's been a long time, so I won't mock you. But the ERA was on it's way to easy passage until heroic conservative Phyllis Schlafly led the fight against it. You should remember that. Every conservative should. And young ones should be taught about her efforts.
The Bushbots would love to air brush her out of history. But she made a huge difference. She also led the fight for two generations to keep the platform pro-life.
> “Ironic that you sympathized with the old lady who was going to lose her home back then, but now lionize the crony capitalist who tried to evict an old lady from her home so he could build a parking garage. And he tried the same thing to an old farmer in Scotland. They stopped him. I wonder how many more he succeeded in destroying. I guess they were just “losers”.”
Haven’t heard of those. Actually I’ve ‘heard’ of how Donald Trump has saved people from foreclosure, not the other way around.
I don’t believe everything I hear or even read. I look at performance. That link I gave you above about the veterans is real performance. No one can say without lying that it is untrue because it is direct and undeniable.
Please provide the stories you mentioned with links and background etc. If you’re just ‘carrying’ the story from somewhere else without really checking it out, then you need to straighten yourself up.
I will give you a true story about a New Yorker I know. He is in his 70s and is very rich. He owns one square block of Manhattan and has many apartments that he rents. He’s fairly well known and he is really a good guy, a good friend to have. He’s got the NY toughness in him that is typical but he’s got a soft side that is very helpful. In short he’s a typical downstate New Yorker. Now I talked to him on Skype about 3 years ago and he was on the phone with an apartment manager talking really aggressively, aggressive even for a New Yorker. There was one other person from Chicago on the Skype call who is also a friend of mine for many years and we heard our NY friend almost screaming in the background to remove all their belongings and put them on the street. He came back to the Skype call and apologized that he was throwing a couple out of one of his apartments because they were a day late on the rent or a day over whatever was agreed. But it seemed so harsh to me as images were conjured up of some poor couple who couldn’t afford the off-the-scale Manhattan rents, etc. I never expected to see that part of his character come out and in fact I was shocked that he could be that way. My friend from Chicago later told me that was the ‘NY way’ but I didn’t buy that so much. Later I found out that the couple he threw out were running a drug business from their apartment. That changed everything for me in the way I viewed his behavior. Add one fact and the whole picture changes. I call that getting the whole truth and context. It’s important to get all the facts before jumping to a conclusion.
As for conservatism, as a philosophy it did not win the 1980 election, it inherited the election. All those senators you posted who lost were not all facing conservative opponents. They were facing voter wrath. They were defeated because their party was bankrupt of any credibility just like today.
Is it so difficult to imagine that most of those senators you mentioned would have won had Carter and his party done better at governing? It was not conservatism that Americans were yearning for. No one sold them on conservatism because most people did not know what conservatism really meant. What they wanted was a change because Carter and the democrats had shown how awful and incompetent they were.
Conservatism as a brand did not really catch on until after Reagan was in office for a couple years. Heck even JFK was viewed as a conservative but most people then and now would not think of him in that way. Reagan made conservatism so popular that his ‘revolution’ continued into the 1990’s and 2000’s. It started waning in about 2006 when it became more widely apparent that GW Bush had gone liberal on everyone or worse had let liberals walk all over him.
Let’s just agree that we should never give strangers 100% credit on what they ‘SAY’, but rather we should look at they ‘DO’. Once they demonstrate to us that they mean what they say and say what they mean by pointing to a real track record to back up their talk, then we can give them full faith. I think that’s why a lot of us look for the genuine conservative who tells the truth because it takes the pressure off of us to have to check out everything all the time on what a person says they will do, meaning they have integrity.
Ted Cruz has so much integrity that I believe him with my eyes closed. Ted has proven himself so much to me that he could say “bing bang bung bam!” and ask me what I thought. I would respond “You got it Ted, whatever you say I’m all for it”. His credible nature just makes it so much easier for the rest of us. So far I am persuaded that Donald Trump is the same way because of what he’s done that I have actually taken the time to verify and/or have people that I trust confirm to me the facts.
He’s talking about how Trump has used eminent domain to get control of private property to build his projects on.
And how Trump supported the Kelo eminent domain ruling which is really disturbingly bad.
You may be giving Phylis a little too much credit but I will take your word for it.
But that was Phylis back then.
Phylis ***now*** is a scaremonger who spreads fear and doubt without facts to derail a dear conservative cause of mine. I view her as having been assimilated into the Beltway cultural sewage so much she has lost her sense to know that there are pleasant smelling places outside of DC. She’s projecting the rottenness of the DC culture onto the rest of the country and that’s just wrong.
Yeah I heard about that. But I want to see full facts and context because I don’t want to join a group and find out they are a lynch mob with bad information.
Facts and context, facts and context. They require work which is why most people don’t bother. But it doesn’t mean we should just buy what’s being peddled to us.
Look at #32 above at my example (large paragraph about half way down) of how wrong we can be based on incomplete facts and lack of context.
You won’t have to look very long.
Trump not that long ago said the Canadian healthcare system was the model we should use and that the US system was killing us. He also said single payer was the way to go. Additional context can’t really fix that. Now he says the “free market” is the solution. You can’t have it both ways. Nor can there be such a dramatic swing in fundamental core beliefs at his age over such a short time.
If we refuse to acknowledge his past, how on earth can we predict the future he’d likely bring.
Yes, he’s saying nearly all the right things now but his past is also there for anyone willing to look. It isn’t pretty on a number of fronts.
For me much of this sounds like echos of Obama back in 2008. He’ll be the great “uniter” and work with everyone, provide transparency, bring out economy back, etc. All ignoring his past, a past filled with just the opposite.
> “Trump not that long ago said the Canadian healthcare system was the model we should use and that the US system was killing us.”
You think I haven’t seen that? You think people here are so stupid they haven’t seen that?
I’ll give you a clue. You’re missing the context. I said “facts AND context”, I didn’t say “facts OR context”.
> “He also said single payer was the way to go.”
See above.
> “Additional context can’t really fix that.”
You haven’t got any context to begin with so you shouldn’t be talking about ‘additional’ anything until you’ve got something to start with.
> “Now he says the “free market” is the solution. You can’t have it both ways.”
There is no ‘both ways’ here. There is a change of mind. Even Ted Cruz has changed his mind. Even Ronald Reagan changed his mind.
> “Nor can there be such a dramatic swing in fundamental core beliefs at his age over such a short time.”
It’s not a short time. The reported statements were from a long time ago.
*************************************8
You’re not going to persuade anyone with incomplete pointless and skewed ‘internet stories’ about any candidate least of all Donald Trump unless the listener is very gullible. You won’t find many of those among long timers on FR.
The first thing a person should do is to ascertain whether a candidate’s actions are law abiding, respectful of the Constitution and credible. I said ACTIONS, I didn’t say WORDS.
Because anyone can perform magic tricks with words. Even the corrupt little weasel Rand Paul can get a good writer to gin up some red meat for conservatives and one will hear the ‘words’ and can come away thinking “Golly gee that Rand Paul is such a conservative”. But his ‘actions’ and the motive and intent of his actions tell the real story.
Donald Trump was talking about how universal healthcare worked so well in Scotland from many years ago or so. But he was ‘talking’ meaning ‘words’.
Donald says a lot of ‘words’ but his actions meaning his final decisions are what counts. I have watched him a number of times where he appears misinformed, he appears wrongly informed by what he says and then presto he says “Maybe we do something like this” which is the decision he is considering because he says maybe, and amazingly his candidate decision comes out on target with the correct direction. He’s accurate nearly always and then he has people get him the precision he demands.
He has an ability to get to the right decision irrespective of the information given to him.
It goes like this in logic and inference.
Fact 1 (words)
Fact 2 (words)
:
______
Correct Decision (action)
Bad Fact 1 (words)
Bad Fact 2 (words)
:
______
Correct Decision (action)
When ‘information’ as ‘words’ are input, regardless of their validity or completeness, out pops the correct action. (logic 101: F>>>T = T always) This is a talent of Donald Trump. Like watching a ballplayer at the plate swing and miss, swing and miss, and then bam over the fence. Whereas the first two strikes are unnerving, they don’t matter if the result is a home run.
I’ve watched Trump on a wide range of issues and I think I have him pegged. He wants to make things the best ever, the best of everything. No matter what it is, he wants it to be the best. That means he’s not going to live with some rinky-dink retarded socialist model of healthcare. He’s going to find the most talented people and make them want to work for him. And then he’s going to make them work harder than they ever worked in order to meet his standards.
Donald Trump also consults with trusted and respected attorneys to make sure he can do what he would like to do. That means he is law-abiding. Is Obama law-abiding? Is Hillary law-abiding?
And Trump as President needs to follow, be guided by the Constitution. He needs people like Ted Cruz by his side. But does anyone doubt he will follow the law and the Constitution? Of course he will.
Did he violate the Constitution, the law or the spirit of the law and the Constitution when he is alleged to have taken inappropriate advantage of eminent domain?
Facts and Context, Facts AND Context, not ‘OR’, but ‘AND’.
I can tell you there is circumstantial evidence as clear as the Sun rising in the East that contradict alleged negative aspersions of Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in an alleged eminent domain scandal. That circumstantial evidence is this: if there was anything to it, his enemies would have blistered him with it by now. Their silence on it speaks volumes. That tells me there’s nothing to it. It’s garbage.
But I will keep an open mind for anyone that puts forward credible verifiable Facts AND Context on any matter that suggests Donald Trump is unfit to be President.
I will not put up with those that think as follows:
“Well I don’t like his egotistical manner, his loudness, his NY accent, his braggadocio, THEREFORE he’s guilty of all charges that anyone can dream up even in the absence of evidence to support, even in the presence of evidence to the contrary. He’s just not likable to my senses, therefore he’s BAD because I say he’s bad.”
I’ve been here longer than you (since you bring up how long people have been here).
So in other words you are too lazy to look up stuff yourself and anyone who says something contrary to your views without a reference is full of shit...
Here’s your “internet” story:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/04/enter_the_donald_take_two.html
The references contained in that should lead back to the original source.
There is NO context that fixes single payer. And 15 years ago for a 69 year old isn’t that long ago on something so fundamental.
He also proposed taxing all wealth “one time”, not income, but wealth over ten million dollars at nearly 15%... Oh ya, that’s real constitutional... Open that Pandora’s box and see where it leads...
And you go on about words being meaningless without context well Trump is all words these days and his history is the only context available and you want to ignore that.
Here’s Trump on eminent domain:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/265171/donald-trump-and-eminent-domain-robert-verbruggen
This was 4 years ago long before TDS so you can’t blame this story on that. Just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t make it ethical or proper. He’s forced people to court which is a pretty awful experience just to retain their rights to their own property because he couldn’t close the deal any other way. With Kelo that barrier has been breached.
Trump has expressed little interest in the constitutional limits of government from what I’ve seen.
I don’t doubt Trump has good intentions regarding is run. Many liberals have good intentions. Intentions are not enough. In order to actually get there there has to be core principles based on the constitution and limited government.
And last but not least, if all you have to offer is personal snark, don’t bother.
From your ‘internet story’:
> “”We must have universal healthcare,” wrote Trump. “I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses.””
That’s a quote from a book he wrote (The America We Deserve) published in January 2000.
Is that the best you can do?
You’re fired!
Rubin’s dream come true ate dog as a boy in Indonesia.
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