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Charles Cooke versus Ann Coulter: Why are conservatives supporting Trump?
Hotair ^ | 08/14/2015 | AllahPundit

Posted on 08/14/2015 10:36:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

This segment feels like a new phase in the debate over whether Trump truly qualifies as a populist conservative. For the first two months of Trumpmania, the position taken by his fans essentially was that he gets a pass on not being much of a conservative because he’s such a superb populist. If you hate political correctness, if you’re tired of the political class in Washington talking down to you and then making a hash of every policy they touch, Trump’s your guy. He’s a middle finger to the establishment of both parties, especially to the not-so-conservative-themselves GOP. That’s not the argument Coulter and Hannity are making, though. Cooke comes in here demanding to know how two conservatives as famous as them can possibly be shilling for a guy who’s held the liberal position on every major issue — health care, abortion, guns, eminent domain, you name it — and the answer is … well, he’s had a charge of heart. Or he’s a businessman, therefore he’s allowed to play on both sides of the fence or whatever. Or that his new positions, like the idea that he’s going to get Mexico to pay for a border wall, are actually plausible and worth taking seriously.

Glenn Beck watched this segment live last night and then took to Facebook afterward, wondering if he’d woken up in the Twilight Zone.

He is part of the problem when he by his own admission, buys politicians; he said he identifies his “policies more as a democrat”; he makes President Obama look truly humble; he was very pro abortion until very recently; he still says “don’t defund planned parenthood”; he is pro “assault weapon ban”; he is in favor of a wealth tax that would just “take money out of people’s bank accounts”; he is for boots on the ground in Iraq and ‘taking the oil’ from the Iraqi people; he is a progressive ‘republican'; he says single payer health care works; he said he would give people more than just Obama care; the First Lady would be the first to have posed nude in lesbian porno shots; he said that he keeps all the bibles he is given in a “special place” out side the city – and he only goes to church on Christmas and Easter; he is generally not a likable guy; he has around 16% favorability with Hispanics and he has gone bankrupt 4 times.

This is an honest question. I really want to understand:

Why are big name “conservatives” supporting him? I get it if you are tired of politicians, a republican progressive, or you are only about winning (although those who say they would NEVER vote for him is over 50% of REPUBLICANS). Perhaps you are angry and you just want to make someone pay or just want something done and you don’t care how it gets done, but what PRINCIPLES does he have that they are attracted to?

I am not talking about the average Joe, I am talking about Sean Hannity or Ann Colter. How about Savage or Rush?

When Cooke confronts her about Trump’s 24-hour flip-flop on whether to defund Planned Parenthood, she’s actually reduced to arguing that that doesn’t prove he’s not conservative, merely that he was ignorant of how the group is funded because he’s not a professional politician. Trump 2016: Easily rolled by liberals because he doesn’t know the issues, but definitely conservative.

Coulter’s not really representative of the big-name conservatives mentioned by Beck in his post because she’s been more open to centrist Republican presidential nominees than they have in the past. She used to love Chris Christie until his Senate appointee in New Jersey voted for the Gang of Eight amnesty bill. She loves Mitt Romney even now, having once gone so far as to write a defense of RomneyCare(!) in the middle of the 2012 primary. That’s not to say her support for Trump isn’t weird, because it is — one thing Christie and Romney had in common circa 2012 was that they were among the GOP’s most electable options. If you wanted to be charitable to Coulter, you could have defended her at the time by claiming that she was merely interested in maximizing the party’s chances of winning. Trump does … not maximize our chances. Still, if she was willing to tolerate conservative heresies from Christie and Romney, it’s no great surprise that she’d tolerate them from him too. Especially since, with his “Mexican rapists” comment early on, he injected one of Coulter’s core themes — crime committed by illegals, a key part of her new book — into the presidential debate. In fact, Coulter defends Romney to this day principally because he pushed self-deportation as a solution to illegal immigration in 2012. She may not be a single-issue voter but immigration appears to be her number one, by far. And Trump’s the guy who’s making the GOP establishment squirm on that point, never mind the fact that he’s awfully squishy on what he’d do about illegals himself.

As for what Beck says about Hannity, Rush, Ingraham, et al., who are normally quick to call out RINOs for their departures from conservative orthodoxy but seem willing to extend Trump an infinite line of credit, you tell me. My theory is that they’re enjoying his anti-establishment fireworks too but that mostly they’re trying to stay on the right side of their audience by not coming after him. They’re perceived in the wider media and among the GOP establishment as conduits to the Republican base; they articulate the concerns of grassroots conservatives and shape opinion about what the grassroots should properly be concerned about. If they go after Trump as a fake and listeners revolt (Erick Erickson’s still getting hate mail a week after disinviting Trump from the Red State Gathering), it’ll be seen as proof that they’re not as much in tune with the base as they thought. Essentially, their own status as supreme channelers of populist conservatism would be trumped by the cult of Trump. That’s not a fight worth picking, especially this early in the campaign. I’d be curious to know what Beck, himself a famous anti-establishmentarian and a guy who sees this from the inside, thinks is the reason his colleagues are falling in line for Trump. It can’t be that they think he’s really a conservative who’d be as principled in resisting Democrats as president as, say, Ted Cruz would be. Can it?

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO



TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: 2016election; anncoulter; charlescooke; donaldtrump; election2016; newyork; trump
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

No, you’re full of crapola.

He is the ONLY presidential candidate standing up for the families of U.S. citizens murdered by illegal aliens. All the other so-called conservative Republicans couldn’t give a damn.


21 posted on 08/14/2015 11:07:31 AM PDT by SatinDoll (A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN IS BORN IN THE USA OF TWO USA CITIZENS)
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To: LS

Are a lot of Trump’s pundit-crtics, former Tea Party’ers?

Seems like they were ardent anti-establishment Tea Partyers. Or: I just don’t remember their strong support of GOP in the past.


22 posted on 08/14/2015 11:07:32 AM PDT by unsycophant
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To: cripplecreek

Yes, with his book. He states what he intends on doing.


23 posted on 08/14/2015 11:08:09 AM PDT by SatinDoll (A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN IS BORN IN THE USA OF TWO USA CITIZENS)
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Comment #24 Removed by Moderator

To: SatinDoll

That’s like saying I should educate myself about Obama by reading Dreams of my father.

Donald Trump has been a celebrity for 30 years and I’ve been an adult for all of it. I’ve got all the education about Trump that I need.


25 posted on 08/14/2015 11:11:13 AM PDT by cripplecreek (Sad fact, most people just want a candidate to tell them what they want to hear)
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To: onyx
Charles “C.W.” Cooke is also a pompous ass and British snob.

I didn't know that, but it makes perfect sense. I've read just enough of his articles to never read him again. Happy Friday dear onyx!


26 posted on 08/14/2015 11:11:17 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: SatinDoll

“A truly principled conservative party” would be one which actually fights the left, reduces the size, scope and power of the federal government, does not encroach on personal freedoms, eliminates crony corporatism, and enforces the rule of law...

If Trump so conservative, why was he for abortion before he was against it? Why did he endorse Hillary in 08? Why did he propose a huge one time confiscatory tax taking 14% of everyone’s net worth over 10 million back in 1999? He also said he was for a single payer healthcare system when he was on the Larry King show and in his book “The America We Deserve.” He is neither consistent or trustworthy.


27 posted on 08/14/2015 11:25:48 AM PDT by Sparticus (Tar and feathers for the next dumb@ss Republican that uses the word bipartisanship.)
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To: cripplecreek

CC, I’m surprised at you. You know that the media lies.

Dreams from My Father was propaganda pushed by the Chicago communists to get votes from blacks, who did not know that Barry Soetoro was a queer Muslim from Indonesia.

Castigating Trump as a “celebrity” is like the garbage spewed by Democrats about Ronald and Nancy Reagan being socialites. The MSM goes to great lengths to create the ‘personaes’ what we read about, whether true or not.

Trump has published 16 books, many of them best sellers. He has built millions of dollars worth of buildings and made billions of dollars in earnings, employed tens of thousands of employees, and has had a front-row seat to the Democrats destroying this country. He recognizes that the Democrats are doing so to get votes. So, he is challenging them.

What’s the matter, CC. He isn’t socially conservative enough for you?

First things first: we have to keep the country from going down the crapper!


28 posted on 08/14/2015 11:28:45 AM PDT by SatinDoll (A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN IS BORN IN THE USA OF TWO USA CITIZENS)
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To: Responsibility2nd
CONSERVATIVES DO NOT SUPPORT DONALD TRUMP.
Simple as that.

What we do support is his verbal butt kicking on liberals and his straight shooting on basic conservative issue.

With this in mind, however, we know that Trump is likely to turn back on a moments notice and revert to his liberal tactics. And when he does, he will be dismissed. But until then - he is our useful idiot.

Very well said.

It's not that we think Trump is a great Conservative hero, but we finally, FINALLY have a non-Liberal that will FIGHT BACK against liberalism and the media and the corrupt establishment.

It doesn't matter if he's not a Conservative. We finally have somebody that's not necessarily our enemy pushing back.

29 posted on 08/14/2015 11:30:00 AM PDT by IDontLikeToPayTaxes
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To: SeekAndFind
the First Lady would be the first to have posed nude in lesbian porno shots;

Is there a citation for this? I will believe it when I see it. So where can I see it?

30 posted on 08/14/2015 11:30:38 AM PDT by JediJones (The #1 Must-see Filibuster of the Year: TEXAS TED AND THE CONSERVATIVE CRUZ-ADE)
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To: Sparticus; cripplecreek

I’m sending you mail.


31 posted on 08/14/2015 11:31:20 AM PDT by SatinDoll (A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN IS BORN IN THE USA OF TWO USA CITIZENS)
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To: Sparticus

If Trump so conservative, why was he for abortion before he was against it? Why did he endorse Hillary in 08? Why did he propose a huge one time confiscatory tax taking 14% of everyone’s net worth over 10 million back in 1999? He also said he was for a single payer healthcare system when he was on the Larry King show and in his book “The America We Deserve.” He is neither consistent or trustworthy


Since you want to play that game: if Ted Cruz is so conservative why did he get in bed with Paul Ryan to enable Obamatrade and other secret Obama “trade” deals.

There is no perfect candidate. Attacking Trump while he is successfully engaging the beltway GOP on immigration and trade is just foolish. Meanwhile, Rubio the snake gets a pass on his treasonous Gang of Eight bill. Pick you targets more wisely, FRiend.


32 posted on 08/14/2015 11:32:35 AM PDT by lodi90
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To: SeekAndFind; South40

After so many years of moderate weasels being nominated you would think conservatives would actually support a conservative for once.

Oh well.

Conservatives love to lose it seems. McConnell & Boner & _______ are not conservative.


33 posted on 08/14/2015 11:36:45 AM PDT by GeronL (Cruz is for real, 100%)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

Andrew Breitbart would be ashamed of his website these days.

He knew Trump was a phony


34 posted on 08/14/2015 11:37:45 AM PDT by GeronL (Cruz is for real, 100%)
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To: SeekAndFind

First of all, Beck is insane.

Second, I’d rather have someone who buys politicians than the politicians he bought.


35 posted on 08/14/2015 11:41:46 AM PDT by VerySadAmerican (Since you're so much smarter than me, don't waste your time insulting me. I won't understand it.)
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To: Sparticus

...Besides, I don’t see him being someone who can do what we really need, which is to transform the Republican party into a truly principled conservative party....

I don’t see that as something I really need, since at this point I couldn’t care less about the Republican party. What I really need, what this country really needs is to get the US back on track.


36 posted on 08/14/2015 11:44:03 AM PDT by Duchess47 ("One day I will leave this world and dream myself to Reality" Crazy Horse)
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To: Sparticus

“If Trump so conservative, why was he for abortion before he was against it?”

Good question: did you ask Reagan that back in 1980?

People change their minds due to life experiences.

Right now there is no law in the land. This administration is against Christians, all Christians, and only administers the law against what it perceives as the weak or an enemy. We may not have another opportunity to obliterate it’s evil.


37 posted on 08/14/2015 11:45:49 AM PDT by SatinDoll (A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN IS BORN IN THE USA OF TWO USA CITIZENS)
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To: SatinDoll

I don’t think this guy can be boxed in. TRUMP would not go after guns, abortion, gay marriage,etc...he is inspired by jobs, economy,trade. My best guess. I imagine him “getting the best around him” and heeding wisdom most of the time. If he puts Palin or Cruz in...that will tell the story. In many ways he is our insurance policy against the GOP machine.


38 posted on 08/14/2015 11:46:53 AM PDT by magna carta
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To: magna carta

I agree.


39 posted on 08/14/2015 11:48:11 AM PDT by SatinDoll (A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN IS BORN IN THE USA OF TWO USA CITIZENS)
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To: SeekAndFind

He isn’t consistent, and his supporters know that. But he fights.

Thats worth something.

I’m for Cruz, Cruz is the real thing. But Trump fights and he doesn’t back down. He has all the right enemies. I’m not taking that away from him.


40 posted on 08/14/2015 12:19:53 PM PDT by marron
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