The Bush Family has run the Republican since 1988. No more Bush influence in the White House.
Posted on 03/09/2016 11:53:07 AM PST by Kaslin
Donald Trump's candidacy is scary.
Trump isn't frightening because he's anything special personally. He's just a warmed-over mash-up of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, a spoiled brat billionaire eccentric with a history of position flipping and bullying foolishness. He has authoritarian tendencies on a personal level, and no awareness of the Constitution or its importance. In other words, he's Barack Obama if Obama weren't ideologically driven and suddenly experienced a precipitous drop in IQ.
So what's so scary about Trump?
First, the idolatry of a certain segment of his following. Trump has drawn some of the worst elements of American life to his campaign. To be sure, most of his supporters are decent Americans who find his approach to politics a revelation: He's an outsider, someone who will "get things done." Some of his followers identify with his hard-line position on illegal immigration and his dislike of free trade, even though Trump could flip those positions in a heartbeat if he felt the political necessity to do so.
But some of Trump's supporters go beyond that. Some are driven by the pure worship of the strong man. Like Obama's cultish support base, some Trump supporters are willing to follow him anywhere, to justify any misbehavior, to view any opposition to Trump as a sort of irreligious disloyalty. When Trump asked voters to hold up their right arms and pledge their allegiance to him, media mocked him as a Hitlerian figure. He's no Hitler -- he's not nearly as smart, as ideologically consistent, or as dangerous. He's a barroom prince. Instead, we should be concerned with the increasing tendency of Americans, both left and right, to hero-worship politicians to the point of blindness.
Which leads to the second reason Trump should concern conservatives: his appeal to nasty causes. Trump desperately wants popularity. He gauges his success by the size of his crowds, his success in the polls, and the compliments he receives in the press. He'll talk up Russian dictator thug Vladimir Putin so long as Putin calls him "brilliant." And he'll go easy on former KKK leader David Duke if Duke endorses him. Trump's lack of moral principle makes him an easy mark for some of the worst people on the planet. Combine the fact that he is drawn to those who would manipulate him with the fact that he has a worshipful crowd following him, and it's not difficult to see how the Trump movement ends in tragedy.
Finally, conservatives should oppose Trump full-throatedly because he's perverting conservatism. Even as he cultivates idolatry and massages white supremacists and global tyrants, Trump proclaims that he's a conservative. Many of us who have spent a lifetime fighting against the false notion that conservatism is a toxic brew of secret racism and fascism; Trump's rise provides easy fodder for the opposition. And his followers refuse to acknowledge that Trump has little to do with conservatism. Instead, they allow him to use the mantle of Lincoln and Reagan and the founders to shield his own egocentric rise from criticism.
Trump's no conservative -- he's a leftist at heart, a man convinced of his own power, a man willing to abandon all principle to serve himself and his allies. His followers think they're his allies, but that only lasts so long as they follow him. Yes, conservatives should fear Trump's rise. And they should resist it however and wherever possible.
The Bush Family has run the Republican since 1988. No more Bush influence in the White House.
I'll put Trump's IQ up against Shapiro's any day of the week.
And he'll go easy on former KKK leader David Duke if Duke endorses him.
Real conservatives don't play the race card.
If a few curse words is bad behavior then this idiot doesn’t have a clue.
That's pretty ironic, given your toxic brew you yourself have concocted here.
Look in the mirror, Shapiro.
Maybe instead of being so busy penning his emotional tirades, Ben should get out and actually talk to some Trump supporters for once
The better way to understand this is understand the divide in Conservatism between the Dogmatics vrs the Realists.
This is an old divide in Conservatism. The Dogmatist care nothing about political realities, only the purity of the dogma matters to them. The Realist understands you have to be able to advance the political ball down the field to achieve the goals of the dogma.
Reagan, who was a realist, wrote about it.
By Ronald Reagan in his autobiography An American Life
“When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it. “Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything. I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’ If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.
Trump is a mess in a some ways, but he’s his own mess. His family isn’t trashy and I don’t think he’ll be taking billion dollar vacations.
What exactly have the conservatives in congress accomplished?
Obamacare scrapped?
Illegals deported?
Wall built?
Anchor babies outlawed?
National debt reduced?
Abortion restricted?
China trade deficit reduced?
Food stamp growth curbed?
Welfare growth reduced?
Fraud in Medicare & Social Security under control?
If Trump can deliver any 3 of above, he is more than enough
conservative for most rational people.
Trump is conservative on these issues:
Pro life since at least 2001,
Wanted to ban partial birth abortion as far back as 2000
Pro Traditional marriage. Gay rights is not his thing
Pro capital punishment
Hold Judges accountable
Common core is a disaster
Anti education unions (2000)
For school choice
Believes man made Climate Change is a hoax
No Cap-and-Tax
For drilling our own
Stressed importance of strong family & culture (2015)
Supports Israel
Opposes Iran deal and letting Iran obtain the bomb
Wants to crush ISIS quickly
Wants a military so strong no one will challenge us
Against unbalanced trade deals that kill American jobs
Against warrant-less government surveillance of citizens
Against having a high national debt
Warns that $24T is a point of no return
Against gun control
For assault weapon ban but says the AR-15 shouldn't
be considered an assault weapon
Wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with market driven
polices and increased competition among insurance companies
Wants to increase military spending
Top priority to build a REAL wall on the southern border,
and get Mexico to pay for it
Will deport all illegals but will let the hard working
ones go through the legal process to come back
Against Anchor babies
Will bring jobs back through better trade negotiation
Stood up for Birthers and challenged Obama on his fraud
Believes USA is the greatest force for freedom the world
has ever known
Wants to honor commitments on Social Security and Medicare,
which we can afford if he gets the economy going full steam.
Wants to reduce the fraud in disability and other programs
Against marriage penalties in tax code
Wants to simplify tax code with just 3 simple brackets
Wants to reduce income taxes and reduce corporate tax
Wants to rebuild our infrastructure
Wants to apply welfare-to-work to 76 other welfare programs (2011)
Does not have time for political correctness
Not afraid to call out either party or both when they are wrong
Not a puppet of mega-rich donors and Lobbyists
Go Trump 2016! Make America Great Again! It is almost too late, but only Donald Trump has the know-how, courage, name recognition, and freedom from rich donors to accomplish that gargantuan task.
“Trump has drawn some of the worst elements of American life to his campaign”
People that wont do as they are told. Yes, we know.
Picky, picky, picky. . . .
A candidate for the office for the leader of the world should not use cuss words in public.
Ben Shapiro is right about Trump, the authoritarian.
Dole/Romney/McCain/Ryan perverted conservatism.
Conservatism it not as defined by Romney.
They keep using that word like it means something to the voters.
Not this year.
Odd how you forget Bush/Cheney calling a report an A—hole in 2000.
Oh big deal. Stop clutching your pearls. I don’t want another milquetoast candidate like Cruz. Obama was enough.
I am glad u cite that Reagan Quote, I have made mention of the 75 to 80% standard of Reagan, which is why he always said that if a Republican agreed with him on 75% to 80% of his platform and agenda, that person was an Ally, not political enemy.
As I have said in other threads, Ronald Reagan would have a problem getting the support of many of the individuals on FR.
“inally, conservatives should oppose Trump full-throatedly because he’s perverting conservatism.”
The problem is that conservatism does not work for conservatives. It may work for the boys down at the Chamber of Commerce. But it does not work for the rest of us.
Liberals are happy to get part of a loaf of bread today, because they know they can just get a bit more bread tomorrow, and soon they will have the whole loaf.
Our side wont budge unless we get the deed to the bakery itself, or else our quest to get part of a loaf of bread was a failure.
That is why the left has a string of victories over the past 25 years, and our side has virtually nothing.
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.