How Long Will Trump’s Cathartic Candidacy for Fed-Up Conservatives Last?

National Review ^ | August 12, 2015 | VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

[Steelfish]

How Long Will Trump’s Cathartic Candidacy for Fed-Up Conservatives Last?

by VICTOR DAVIS HANSON August 13, 2015 The coarser and cruder Donald Trump becomes, and the more ill-informed on the issues he sounds, the more he coasts in the polls. Apparently, a few of his targets must be regarded as unsympathetically as their defamer. Trump is rightly mocked for cynically spreading quid pro quo money around. But he quickly counters that his critics — from Hillary Clinton to his Republican rivals — have all asked him for such cash or for favors. Trump preps little. He has no real agenda.

And he makes stuff up as he goes along. For such a New York brawler, he has thin skin, smearing his critics, often in creepy fashion. How can a former Democrat, once a pro-choice, pro-amnesty liberal and a supporter of single-payer health care, remain the godhead of the conservative base for weeks on end? The answer is that Trump is a catharsis for 15 percent to 20 percent of the Republican electorate. They apparently like the broken china shop and appreciate the raging bull who runs amok in it. Politicians and the media are seen as corrupt and hypocritical, and the nihilistic Trump is a surrogate way of letting them take some heat for a change............

[newnhdad]

Trump is 100 percent personality and zero substance. He is spouting populist talking points like Obama did. Imo, a trump presidency could be horrible because he’s as big a narcissist as dear leader. I don’t believe that he believes half of what he says.

[1010RD]

Perfect post, but the blind men are the Trumpettes pushing Trump (D-NY). The Donald (D-NY) is working for the unions and Clintons.

[1010RD]

Trump (D-NY) Democrat Spy.

Trump (D-NY) Democrat Spoofer.

Trump (D-NY) Democrat Supporter.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Stop falling for the FAKE.

[1010RD]

I read his book and played his game. He’s a fake. Stop falling for him like a school girl crush. He’s not the savior you’re looking for.

[trebb]

Unlike Cruz, VDH doesn’t grasp the full or real import of the Trump “mania” and he fears him. In a way, VDH was smearing the American People who are just as fed up with government antics as Trump is and must be too stupid to realize that calling out the deceits and tyranny of the government is not the way to go....

[Arm_Bears]

VDH is treading close to irrelevancy.

[jmaroneps37]

Hey Victor is that smell coming from your pants?

[Steelfish]

I a crowded field 20% is a “majority.” Trump has no national appeal. When the Republican platform narrows and many of them peel off, watch Trump’s numbers plummet. Trump has hit his ceiling.

[Reaper19]

“There’s very little difference between (D) and (R) period. Where does Trump enter the equation?”

Trump enters by making most RINOs look like Regan in comparision to him.

“Still don’t get what you mean by “liberal soldiers”.”

Trump and others who share his long time positions on the issues.

“And I think the biggest dividing question at the moment is do we want libs and dems crossing over, or not?”

At what cost? You can’t alienate conservatives by pushing a liberal like Trump any more than you can by pushing someone like Romney.

Eventually Trump’s conservative followers will wise up. I remember when Rubio was the great white hope a few years ago when he was first elected, then he stabbed us all in the back on immigration. Then Chris Christie was mean to a union member one time and he became our great savior until people discovered that unsurprisingly a politician from the east coast is rarely conservative. Now Trump’s talking tough. It won’t last.

If Trump wants to show that his 2011 conversion on every major issue was totally sincere and not just some convenient swap to run as a Republican, let him become a governor or congressman first. Let him become mayor of NYC. Anything to give him a chance to show that he actually acts as a conservative and not just talks the talk.

[Democratic-Republican]

"I a crowded field 20% is a “majority.” Trump has no national appeal. When the Republican platform narrows and many of them peel off, watch Trump’s numbers plummet. Trump has hit his ceiling."

Whoa there. You just conflated primaries and general into the same statement.

There is hypocrisy afoot. (R)epublicrats are calling him a fake, a democrat, not a conservative, not a Republican, while simultaneously saying he has no national appeal!

What we don't know is what his specific (R) party appeal is, and that is what the primaries are for, and it is exactly why the establishment wanted to kneecap him at each step: saying attacked Mexicans, attacked McCain/Vets, keep him out of the debates, kick him out of the party, dirty tricks to kill him in the womb. They do not want to go through the primary process to actually find out how many (R) will accept him. This is because the dirty little secret is out: our (R) friends are just as nasty and partisan and close minded as our (D)ummy friends.

What we do know, in spades is that he has "national" appeal. The only way you wouldn't know this is if you have dived into your bunker a month ago and pulled the doors shut behind you. His "national" appeal is evident everywhere because it sure ain't just (R)epublicans flooding every forum ( I mean EVERY single one ), and every media outlet, radio, TV, online and every possible poll. It is wide and far. That *is* literally the definition of "national" appeal. It is cross party appeal.

The very thing that partisan (R) hacks despise is that he is NOT a partisan (R) hack. I'm from the same place and he has been pretty much party agnostic, especially for New York where party hacks like Cuomo and Koch and Rockefeller are well defined. He is hated by both because he is neither an (R) or (D) party hack. He is called a "switch-hitter" or an "opportunist" by them. THAT IS HIS VERY STRENGTH. That is why it is laughable to say he has no national appeal.

What we will find out is whether the (R)etard party will accept him and back him. That's the real question. They are throwing every thing they have at him. They want to create another outcast like Perot so that when they lose again they will have another convenient but FALSE scapegoat.

[Steelfish]

Haven’t you heard the Buckley Principle?
We elect the “most conservative,” and “one who can win.”
Trump is in neither part of that statement.

[Democratic-Republican]

Trump's position? At what cost? Alienate Conservatives?

I call this thinking: "partying like it is 1988", 1992 or 1996.

Selecting the ideal "conservative" and placing him on the (R) ticket and then cooking up popcorn and watching election night returns in anticipation of a fair fight with 50/50 chance with the electorate ENDED 20 years ago, some 70 million people ago and 20 million or more illegal aliens ago.

Is the Rip Van Winkle act by (R)epublicrats intentional or from ignorance? While they slept, the enemy has defeated us by attrition. Our WWII generation and their boomer kids are dying and coupled with birth rates at zero or below replacement levels have been replaced by immigration and illegal alien invaders plus all their babies at a rate of ...

1980 226,545,805
2015 321,514,000 ( + 95 million )

... 2.7 million per year or 7,400 per DAY every day since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. And now another massive amnesty is pending which will turn future elections in to Soviet/Cuban/Iraqi style forgone conclusions. If those new bodies were politically breaking at 50/50 things would be a wash, a push, and traditional thinking would still be logical. The numbers I have seen say it is around 70% against us, and that fits the evidence seen in 2000 when they finally brought a majority to the polls.

While we slept they did all this to fudge the fiscal numbers, specifically for the Social Security Ponzi scheme which needs new workers on the front end, for Chamber of Commerce backed low wage workers with the added benefit of killing off the Conservatives and Republicans, Nationalism, and to breed new (D)ummycrats to bribe with welfare.

There is no election night fair fight ...

... we have all our "Conservative" states already in the bag. Others have already turned purple, And the enemy who apparently never sleeps has now set its sights on Texas.

Trump's position? At what cost? Alienate Conservatives? These are questions for 20 years ago. Conservatives will NOT stay home for Trump (R) like they did with Romney, McCain and Dole, they are too smart. It is the (R)epublicrats this time who might stay home. But we do not know if there are enough of them dumb enough to make a difference.

What you need to do is look at those maps and figure out who can flip MI, PA, WI, IN, IA, OH, FL, NC. This is what we need to focus on. We're past litmus checklist conservatism in Presidential elections ( but it is absolutely vital at the Congressional, state and local level ). Now place those 17 candidates on that map and find us a path to 270+. There is no way to grab those purple states using classic litmus checklist conservatism, the candidate has to be able to get (D) crossovers just like Ronaldus Maximus did ( and like Bush and Dole and McCain and Romney did NOT ).

I don't like typing this any more than you and others like reading it. But we have to face facts. The elephant in the room, or better yet the Rhino, is that Bush45 and his ilk like Rubio and Carly and Lindsey and Christie have no chance of dragging over any (D) voters. Why would they vote for (D)-lite when they have their own (D)? If it was ever possible Dole or Romney would have got them. The (D)ummycrats hate the (R)epublicrats just as much as the inverse. The only hope I see is for a populist who can create a jobs engine and get tax cuts. That is exactly how Reagan went from 50.8% in 1980 to 58.8% in 1984.

[Democratic-Republican]

"Haven’t you heard the Buckley Principle? We elect the “most conservative,” and “one who can win.” Trump is in neither part of that statement."

I always loved him. Remind me what he got elected to?

See the post below yours.

[Democratic-Republican]

Also remind me of the last time that Buckley’s lightweight replacements like Lowry and Will were right about anything?

[Steelfish]

Interesting yo call them “lightweights” because they don’t toe the line on Trump?

They were both responsible for having HW withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers to the SC. Lowry opposed all of Obama’s SC appointees. He authored several editorials against gay marriage and called for the immediate defunding of Planned Parenthood. Lowry has hammered McCain many times over. Could it be that the real “lightweight” is a buffoon who is playing “The Apprentice” on a national stage where he does not belong?

[Democratic-Republican]

"Interesting yo call them “lightweights” because they don’t toe the line on Trump?"

Are you kidding me? Tell me you're not Rich Lowry, because only he could use Trump, a month after he came along, as a shield to deflect criticism of his years of metrosexual pussiness. But the answer is no, Trump has *nothing* to do with it.

"They were both responsible for having HW withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers to the SC. Lowry opposed all of Obama’s SC appointees. He authored several editorials against gay marriage and called for the immediate defunding of Planned Parenthood. Lowry has hammered McCain many times over."

Praising him and his ilk for those things is the equivalent of giving a child a ribbon for pissing in the toilet and not missing!

Where was he for the sticky battles? The battles for the Constitution itself? Illegal aliens, welfare, income tax, Islam, socialized medicine via Obamacare, TEA Party? Where was he when the marxist-in-chief should have been stopped for his natural born communism and lack of natural born citizenship? I'll tell you where he was, hiding in the tall grass where all cowards run, and attacking Ann Coulter in trying to shape the (R)etard party into being acceptable on the Sunday morning talk shows.

A Presidential candidate with a foreign father wasn't enough to get him to remove his bow-tie and jump into the battle. Weatherman and out-in-the-open Communist ties and Islamic leanings and Chicago connections wasn't enough. He saw the skin color and checked his eternal vigilance tat the door.

The common denominator of Lowry and Kraut and Will and VDH and a hundred more is their lack of even recognizing the enemy - Progressivism/Socialism/Communism, a worldwide movement. It has literally usurped the infallible USA without firing a shot, using our system against us. They needed to be fought on every battlefield, not just those selected by the weenie class of talking heads.

"Could it be that the real “lightweight” is a buffoon who is playing “The Apprentice” on a national stage where he does not belong?"

Well Trump is definitely a buffoon compared to the neutered metrosexual cocktail party circuit of surrender monkeys who sit around deciding which issue is too politically correct to speak, let alone fight about. But compared to the current reality of TV which is TMZ, Kardashians, MTV, Bruce Jenner, and utter filth, well, he looks almost normal. It's all relative.

There may be some who are attracted to Trump for his TV persona, not me though. I never even saw the Apprentice. Many are attracted because he has yet to back down from a fight, and has the temerity to fight back. This is what the stuffed shirts cannot grasp.

[Steelfish]

The facts point otherwise. Unlike the WSJ, NR has argued against illegal immigration and VDH has been the most ardent critic of amnesty. Same goes against gay marriage with some calling for resistance. Has Trump done so? Has Trumped called for the immediate defining of Planned Parenthood? No. Lowry et al did not provide boatloads of cash to the Clintons, Schumer’s etc. Trump was part of the system of crony capitalism.

[Democratic-Republican]

"The facts point otherwise. Unlike the WSJ, NR has argued against illegal immigration and VDH has been the most ardent critic of amnesty. Same goes against gay marriage with some calling for resistance. Has Trump done so? Has Trumped called for the immediate defining of Planned Parenthood? No. Lowry et al did not provide boatloads of cash to the Clintons, Schumer’s etc. Trump was part of the system of crony capitalism."

Illegal Immigration and Amnesty don't appear out of thin air. They are the end product of earlier mistakes. These issues needed to resisted and fought along the entire timeline, in Congress and The White House, since 1988 and obviously earlier.

They did not get fought at the early steps precisely because of the party purifiers that weeded out each and every "loose cannon" and "crazy" that was vaguely courageous enough to address such issues.

Whenever you run someone like Keyes or Bachmann or Palin or [others] up the flag pole, you can quickly expect the first shots to be fired from our alleged friends at our Think Tanks. Thanks to this not so "friendly fire" phenomenon of screening out the "nutjobs" the (R)etard party was in place constantly ( at least until the first wave of pushback with the 104th Gingrich Congress ).

Immigration and Illegal Alien Invasion was toxic until Trump came along. But make no mistake, it is NOT Trump driving it at all, the people are and Trump is their vehicle. Ask yourself why the (R)etards never even tried? They weeded out almost every single one who had a spine.

I am positive there are lots of checklist conservative issues that Trump is weak to soft on. But how many are within the Constitutional boundaries of Presidential power? Very few. Drop abortion right away, and gay marriage, since with the Supreme court decisions as firewalls you are wasting time mentioning them in the context of the President. Get busy in Congress and don't confuse people by obfuscating hard Constitutional limitations.

It's too early to endorse anyone so I'm not, but on the biggest three: taxes/jobs and defense/offense and the Supreme Court appointments, I see no problem whatsoever. Immigration is questionable, but it is less questionable than with the others, especially the (R)inocrats.

He does offer some extra bonus in that I easily could see a major shift in the Justice Department focus onto real corruption, and a huge turnover in the establishment civil servants running the District Of Criminals. I look forward to lots of political secrets being uncovered, those that currently enjoy the wink/nod (D)/(R) protection that each President does with his predecessor.

But let me turn it around and put all the concern trolls on the spot. Name the specific issues that fall under Presidential purview that separate these guys? When handwringers and trolls throw out all these philosophical litmus test items, it is either from massive ignorance or for intentional confusion. In short, they don't matter. And I care about as much about meaningless items ( for the President, NOT the Congress ) as I do what his favorite team is or how he wears his hair. What things as President would they actually do differently.

P.S. I need a source of those campaign donation numbers. I heard him detail the numbers on Hannity radio I think, and they were evenly split (D) and (R) over time. Besides, I'm not sure what the point is. Is it better if he never gave? Is it desirable that it was only to (R) candidates? What is the specific point? The numbers are literally chicken feed for him, especially compared to others like Gates and Buffet and Soros and many more.

[MagnoliaB]

How’s that been workin for ya?

[MagnoliaB]

Throughout all this Trump talk, no one is talking about how the registered unaffiliated or independents will vote. I’m registered unaffiliated (because both parties are crooked as a dogs hind leg) and I can vote in one or the other primary. I have never voted for any dim except for one state treasurer because I knew his daddy and he was a good man. No one seems to be giving a thought to how we might vote. I don’t know that a third party wouldn’t be appealing since both parties SUCK! Dimocrats suck more but not by a whole lot since the gop elites are up to their usual tricks.