Posted on 08/04/2015 6:40:08 AM PDT by SJackson
Do We Need the Right Leaders, or the Right People?
Most of the Republicans attacking Donald Trump are missing the real significance of the Donald and his popularity. A lot of Republicans and independents don’t like establishment Republicans. They see them as an entitled elite that talks big but then compromises their principles in order to serve the interests of big business and to get along with their fellow social elites in the other party. They look at a Republican Congress’s record so far and see very little legislative pushback against an arrogant, lawless Progressive administration under which the federal Leviathan has waxed ever fatter and more intrusive.
That view may be simplistic, unfair, or or even untrue, but that’s irrelevant. It is the perception many voters have, and there is a lot of evidence that makes it plausible. Start with the confirmation of Loretta Lynch for Attorney General. The Senate should have voted her down and told Obama to come back when he had a servant of the law rather than a slavish minion of an imperial presidency. But too many Senators, frightened at appearing “racist” and “sexist,” and eager to display their bipartisan bona fides, folded their strong Constitutional hand when Obama shrewdly played both the race and the sex cards. An opportunity was lost to show Obama that Republicans were now going to play by his rules in order to reclaim their Constitutional authority.
This points to one of the bad habits of some Republicans that angers voters. They are masters of the “preemptive cringe,” particularly when questioned by those Democrat Party operatives laughably called “journalists.” That’s why they like Trump––he slaps down journalists when they get on their hind legs. More typically, Republicans anxiously monitor their words and deeds lest they offend the editorial board of the New York Times or Washington Post, and then have to suffer people calling them bad names or snubbing them at Georgetown cocktail parties.
They don’t seem to understand that Progressives hate Republicans just because they are Republicans. Like jihadists, they want those political infidels to either lose elections or live in cringing submission. No matter what they do, how much they apologize, how often they protest their love of “diversity” and “fairness,” Progressives will still call them racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, xenophobes, nativists, neocon imperialists, henchmen of the 1%, haters of the poor, stooges of corporate malefactors, enemies of science, rapists of Mother Earth, storm-troopers of the “war against women,” and all around evil-doers. If you’re going to be called names anyway, why not at least have the honorable satisfaction of sticking to your principles?
Many fed up with Republicans figure that this anxious fear of offense and calumny is why a Republican Congress hasn’t covered Obama’s desk with bills that he’d have to veto, and that they could later hang like albatrosses around Hillary’s neck. More important, they wonder why the House isn’t using the power of the purse, which the Constitution gave it precisely in order to check a tyrannical government. “This power over the purse,” James Madison wrote, “may in fact be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”
Instead of using this “effectual weapon” against an overweening president, Congress is holding endless hearings and issuing endless subpoenas regarding Benghazi, Hillary’s private server, and the IRS, and nothing changes. In response, the Obama cadres display open contempt for the people’s representatives and the separation of powers, and just keep stonewalling, ignoring, misdirecting, and lying. The Fox News dogs bark, but the Progressive caravan moves on, now heading for a nuclear-armed Tehran. So why not try using the power the Constitution gave to the House for just such tyranny, and cut off the money? If you think “we can’t do that” because our society and human nature have evolved beyond the world of Madison and the Founders, then you’ve ceded the fundamental assumption of Progressivism, which means that we’re now just dickering over how fat the federal Leviathan should be.
. These questions seething in the minds of many voters can be boiled down to one: Why won’t the Republicans fight harder? When will they drop the courtly pretenses and missish reticence, discard the Marquess of Queensbury rules, and fight as dirty as the Dems do? Do they want to win, or do they want to preen about their “bipartisanship” and “reaching across the aisle” and superior manners and lofty decorum?
No doubt some of these perceptions are unfair, simplistic, and uninformed. But democratic politics is more about perceptions than facts. Barack Obama getting elected twice proves that. Yet there’s another side of the story, an ancient principle of mass democracy: you can’t make a political silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Or as Milton Friedman put it more elegantly:
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
In other words, the “climate of opinion” among a critical mass of voters today tends to the big-state, crypto-pacifist, entitlement-dispensing federal government of the sort Obama and his fellow “wrong people” have created. Perhaps that explains the lack of widespread outrage over the serial scandals, lies, and skullduggery of this administration, most importantly the looming disastrous nuclear deal with the genocidal mullahs of Iran. People are angrier about a dentist shooting Cecil the lion than the possibility of an intolerant apocalyptic regime getting its hands on intercontinental missiles and nuclear warheads. And don’t even think about addressing the looming fiscal catastrophe of unfunded liabilities, metastasizing entitlements, and the monstrous government debt, unless you want to face AARP-funded ads with retirees snarling, “Keep your hands off my Medicare!”
Both sides in the Republican Party thus have an argument. Those attracted to Trump’s blunt rhetoric believe that the vast reservoir of anger at Republican establishment weakness bespeaks an opportunity to push the country back to its traditional center-right orientation. They point to Republican success in the 2014 Congressional elections and those in the state governments as evidence of this shift. Establishment Republicans don’t believe that the reservoir is capacious enough to gain the ultimate prize, the Presidency. They argue that reaching out beyond the angry base and compromising on some issues are necessary to amass enough electoral votes to win. Hence their belief that toning down the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the sort Trump is accused of is critical for peeling off Hispanic votes.
This argument will be resolved next year at the ballot box. If a scandal-ridden, money-grubbing, old Beltway insider like Hillary Clinton can get elected, then the “climate of opinion” is such that a majority of the voters are de facto Progressives. At that point, the only question will be how much closer does the iceberg have to get before the people start to turn the ship around.
Not that I can tell.
Not that I can tell.
I was going to say something very similar, but you beat me to it.
He’s leading because while all the other candidates are saying carefully constructed statements that they think sounds good in the media and have a wide range of appeal, he’s speaking his mind … and people like that.
I guess FrontPageMag is getting on board. They were trashing him just last week.
Hell, why won't the Republicans fight at all?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I want Trump as President because he ISN’T a politician...he’s a businessman...he knows how to make money, how to trade, sell, and barter, he knows the prices of things...
We’ve had politicians after politicians and how has that worked for us? It hasn’t....
I like Cruz from the rest of the field of candidates because as V.P. he is a politician...he can be the go between from Trump to the Congress and Senate...Cruz knows how to write bills, he’s a good speaker, and people like him...
With Trump being President, doing what he does, making money to get America out of this debt we have...Cruz can learn from Trump....
Say Trump is there for 4 years...great...America is run like a business...Cruz can learn from Trump about that end and when Trump leaves, Cruz can step into being President for 4 or 8 years....you see the situation of having these two together....we can build our Country back...
Reagan was an ‘outsider’ and he did a great job after Jimmy Carter...sometimes we didn’t like what Reagan did, but he brought back this Country....well Trump and Cruz can do the same...bring this Country back after the crap this Kenyan did to it....sorry but if people can’t see how beneficial this can be for our Country, they need to think a little harder....
And most of them have a better bottom line in personal wealth. I’m not saying that 90% of both houses are thieves and whores but maybe 89%.
All the regular commentators, the ones often with insight still don’t get Trumps appeal. They blithely dismissTrump as entertainment, and are focused on some vague lack of Trump’s lack of depth. Thomas Sowell, eg, wrote such a column that appeared today, which reiterated all of the GOPe talking points on Trump. I heard Trump on Hewitt yesterday, and his discussion of Iran and The Planned Parenthood ghouls was very substantive.
Thank you, I have been telling my wife and everyone I know the exact same thing. Most the time people look at me as if I have horns and a tail. Now I know that my dream for America is understood by others.
This has been going on for 7+ years now. It is a major (and powerful) reason why the Beltway RINOs act the way they do. I'm not saying they would be tons better if this were otherwise, but they have accepted this false premise without even fighting back.
“No doubt some of these perceptions are unfair, simplistic, and uninformed.”
Shows the author is still tainted by journalistic PC-ness.
It has been going on since they trashed Bush and he refused to stand up for himself or the people that voted for him.
Talking points. That’s the problem with the GOP regulars. They need to move beyond talking points like Trump is doing.
Exactly. And the negative effects have lingered still until this day. Its been over 7 years since he left office and the left is still blaming Bush.
Neither do his fellow candidates, and more than a few Freepers.
My vote goes to anyone that isn’t ‘a rat and says ANYTHING other than “I’m Sorry”.
Why shouldn’t Conservatives be cowered? Look what happened when they tried to use their rights to form the Tea Parties—Old folks in lawn chairs—tricorn hats and flags. They were labled racists, terrorists, punished by the IRS and MSm—One yahoo shows up with a Confederate flag—out of the hundreds of US flags—and he’s the one who gets his picture taken in the newspaper. It was shameful—My bet that whole thing—to break the Tea Party—was directed out of the Oval Office. And it worked. Political people were humbled—broken and forced to play along with the Progs or face isolation. I blame the Media, Hollywood, and the GOP. The fighting Republicans are almost all sent to the museums. Trumps rise was caused by the GOP not standing up to Obama and his minions. Its caused by PC, Race card, and failure.
Actually; he’s speaking THEIR mind!
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