When real conservatives like Goldwater are attacked by the press, the Republicans have have had an ignominious and pusillanimous history of turning the other cheek. Goldwater lost but his champion, Ronald Reagan, had learned a lesson, Reagan expected and Reagan received little help from the Republicans but he turned the media back on itself with wit. Donald Trump, who is no conservative, simply lashes back at the media and he does so in the most unseemly, boorish manner. I was one of the very earliest supporters of Ted Cruz in this forum and I always characterized the senator as a man who "never put a foot down wrong." I know of no gaffe committed by Ted Cruz. I know of no contretemps between Cruz and other candidates. Cruz fights very hard but he fights against the establishment for conservative principles, he does not fight with television executives who buy their gigabytes by the barrel about the menstrual cycles of female news presenters.
I will grant Donald Trump that he has inadvertently performed a great service for conservatism, he has made it politically possible, if not politically correct, to directly attack the media. This was done the last cycle by Newt Gingrich but Trump has simply made it part of our culture. I will even grant that Trump has helped to create an atmosphere in which the Republican establishment has been exposed and he has contributed to the atmosphere which has brought down John Boehner. But these contributions were not intentional contributions to conservatism, they were opportunistic lurches for power by Donald Trump on behalf of Donald Trump. Are they any more than ugly excrescences of Donald Trump's ego?
I will grant the Donald Trump regards himself to be a patriot who wants to, "make America great again." What patriotic conservative does not? But does Donald Trump share a conservative vision of what an America restored to greatness would look like? Are we committing ourselves with an emotional orgasm to a world according to Donald? We complained long and hard on this forum before Obama took office that he was not just a mountebank but a communist. It seemed as he walked up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House on Inauguration Day that the whole nation had swallowed uncritically his mindless rhetoric of "hope and change." Have we not learned any lesson? Barack Obama governed as he the man he was and always had been. Why do we think Donald Trump will do otherwise? Are we so desperate in our genuine patriotic need to save the Republic from the destruction to which it is unarguably headed that we will uncritically substitute rhetoric for reason, hope and change for on the ground political biography?
A word about electability. When the Republican establishment passers up every opportunity to exercise the power of the purse to control the budget and save the nation from bankruptcy, to defund Planned Parenthood and spare millions of babies from dismemberment, or to defund Obama care we are told that it is a question of electability. We must grab our ankles for Barack Obama on immigration and on Iran because of electability. Astonishingly when we criticize Donald Trump we are lectured by principled conservatives about electability. Many a conservative on this form will say that electing a Rino Republican President is no different than electing a Democrat. I say that electing a narcissist, and opportunist, a man who is clearly not a conservative is not likely to be an improvement in many respects and in ways we cannot yet anticipate might well prove disastrous. We fault the Rino establishment for failure to fight for conservatism because they cite electability. Why should we sacrifice principle for electability on behalf of a man like Donald Trump?
Donald Trump seems to be qualified because he has the right enemies but the problem is virtually everyone is Donald's enemy. If one does not submit to the cult of personality he becomes Donald Trump's enemy. The cult of personality is something we despise in Barack Obama, let us not succumb to our own conservative temptations to have false gods before us.
