Posted on 08/13/2015 6:40:24 PM PDT by 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............
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
VDH must not have listened to Trump tonight on Mark Levin
Levin gave Trump the courtesy of a fair interview focused on his position on various issues
Donald Trump is a hard working successful American businessman who is entitled to run for the USA presidency. The snob elite are showing themselves to be unworthy of being spokesman for the conservative cause by treating the man with such disdain. Get the issues out and let people decide.
Was this the Levin show where he talks about Reagan?
I’m listening to it now.
On thing I caught Levin saying while talking about Reagan, he said :” He (Reagan) too would not take no for an answer.” In that statement by saying “too”, I knew he was referring to Trump.
LOL “Cathartic” If Trump is Cathartic the other candidates must be dead and buried.
Steelfish, you’re hilarious.
If what you’re saying is true and republicans disliked Trump, he wouldn’t be in first place.
The idiots the DC GOP Establishment supports are dead before they even start. Their collective goose is cooked. Look at their poll numbers! Jeb is in 5th place. So keep spreading this convenient falsehood. We’ll see if it helps you.
How many "well-informed" candidates from both parties have made nice sounding campaign promises that they NEVER keep? Hint: Nearly ALL of them. I say we give someone a try that isn't caught up in lying to get elected to office.
Duplicate post
the nihilistic Trump
I have great respect for VDH but that was just idiotic. I have never seen VDH do a rant, and this one is a doozy.
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Agreed. I was a fan of VDH until a few months ago when he showed a side that was too off-putting for me. I relegated him from must-read to case-by-case. Walter Williams fills the void nicely.
Is it now the fashion for people like Will and Hansen to write articles delineating Trump’s flaws?
Apparently.
What they need to be focusing on and blown away by is how popular this guy is and why.
He’s popular because we want someone to take no prisoners, tell it like he sees it.
We may not like the finer (?) points of his rhetoric, but he is saying what the people have been thinking and what they want to hear.
That would be a good topic for a thoughtful column, not this easy piling on of Trump.
Read the article by VDH and could not decide what his objective was. VDH has always been on the right (correct) side of issues, but here he does not make sense. Stick to classical history VDH, you make more sense.
I can’t say for sure, as I tuned in about 5 minutes before the interview.
So, I did not hear the earlier parts of his show.
“Nihilistic?” I think VDH meant “narcissistic.” Dude needs a thesaurus. And a therapist. And a pair of balls.
I have my concerns about Trump but one thing has struck me over the course of his very entertaining run thus far: he is reflexively pro-America. It just tumbles out like everything else. He’s not faking that. For all the potential disagreement I might have with the man on a variety of political points, that is a rare quality in a Presidential candidate these days. Unapologetically pro-America.
That may change but maybe not. His actual unfavorable is 48% and favorable 53% but I know what your saying. He hit a homer tonight on Levin.Let’s watch this.
I know T is for Trump and the D is for Democrat, but what’s the S stand for? Shouting?
Cruz likes him. What else can I say?
There is one real candidate here who is both very conservative and can will and has shown himself to be one. Ted Cruz.
The other is basically a buffoon playing the rest of us with empty platitudes and he has been all over the map on single-payer care; abortion, gay marriage and is weighted with strong negatives and an unbridgeable 15-point gender gap with women that will sink him faster than a rock.
Trump spoke in broad generalities and gave no specifics. We’ve got to fix things, but Trump is a say-whatever do-nothing.
Project we much?
He has even more negatives in national polls. This is a hot air balloon that will soon run out of its helium.
Trump (D-NY) is a demagogue and speaks is broad generalizations. In a meeting with Democrat operatives looking to throw the election to their party a careful analysis was made of the most volatile members of the TEA Party movement. The GOPe was bushwhacked by TEA Party, but the Democrats always worried about the TEA Party. So they moved first.
What they found about the most Volatile TEA Partiers (and that’s what they called them) they had four push button issues all revolving around a 1950s nostalgia for American ‘greatness’. They are:
1. Immigration in general and specifically illegal immigration.
2. Red China and the ‘trade deficit’.
3. The military and specifically veterans with the VA and honoring them as a backdrop.
4. The coastal elites and their disdain for conservative values across a bevy of issues.
The Volatiles were looking for a brash champion to carry their cause forward. They want fighters, bombasts who take on the media and break through with tough words never backing down.
Thus was born the campaign of Trump (D-NY). Note bene that he hits on each of those issues with vague platitudes and is heroic in nature, brash to the point of tendentiousness and aggressive. Polling showed a candidate like that would peel off about 12-22% of the GOP electorate during the Primaries. More than enough even at the low end to kill off the most electable conservative candidates.
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