I find the struggle to understand just how Trump is conservative to be puzzling. He’s not very wide of the mark at all, as far as my own personal view of just what constitutes conservatism. Maybe people who are enthralled with anything that creates more profit for the corporate world regardless of how badly it eviscerates the domestic economy are confused, but people who actually care about the future viability of the citizenry of this country are not confused in the least. He’s a patriot, he’s a nationalist. Those are not bad words to people in the real world unassociated with any think tank. It’s music to our ears.
I could not have said it any better.
“Maybe people who are enthralled with anything that creates more profit for the corporate world regardless of how badly it eviscerates the domestic economy are confused”
That is a lot of it. Post-Reagan the GOP reverted to form, serving the interests of the boardroom set and ignoring the Dirty Jobs set that had constituted the Reagan Democrats. Trump is definitely a Dirty Jobs conservative.
And as you note everyone has their own idea of what ‘conservatism’ amounts to. I notice that Rush routinely mentions ‘Burke’ in his litany of what conservatism is, yet never once mentions what Burke was all about. Nor does he mention Russell Kirk who is the only reason that Edmund Burke comes up at all- he was a lead element of Kirk’s ‘The Conservative Mind’, which launched the post-WWII conservative movement.
Russell Kirk of course dwarfs Wm F Buckley in terms of the value of his writing- Buckley quipped and wrote spy novels and not much else. Rush venerates Buckley yet I doubt that Rush has ever taken the time to read any of Kirk’s books. I’ve never seen any evidence of it.
Kirk notably said that conservatism is not an ideology. An ideology is a secularized religion. Kirk said conservatism is the antithesis of an ideology. And with that in mind Donald Trump is certainly a conservative.
Trump IS MORE CONSERVATIVE than I ever dreamed possible AND above all he is a STREET FIGHTER this IS going to be a fight worse than when Reagan was elected BECAUSE the left KNOWS Trump will FIGHT them tooth and nail and HE WILL WIN!!! Trump NEEDS to get congresscritters in there that WILL take up the cause OR threaten the ones there that HE WILL go after them if they DONT get with the program!! The people are SOLIDLY with Trump if these BASTARD congresscritters think they need to back off Trumps promises because of these SCREAMING town halls (Astro turf) or EVEN TRY to give us OCARE LITE, they haven’t seen the HELL that will be coming their way COWARDS!!!!! WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH and BECAUSE OF THAT we have TRUMP these BASTARDS STILL DONT GET IT!!!! But they WILL!!!! WE ALL thought electing Trump would show them just how PISSED we were, but evidently NOT!!!!!