Posted on 08/18/2015 7:44:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Via the Blaze, consider this an open thread for when Hannity interviews Beck about Trump later tonight at 10 p.m. on his Fox show. There are a million fascinating subplots to Trumpmania and one of them is the sometimes friendly, sometimes not so friendly rifts it’s opening up between big-name conservatives in the media. The Beck/Hannity rift is friendly: Here’s Beck’s respectful open letter to Rush, Sean, et al. last week about why they’re excited about a candidate who’s obviously not a conservative and here’s Hannity’s respectful reply. Read them now as background if you’re planning to watch their tete-a-tete later. (For a less friendly example of a disagreement over Trump, see Mark Levin’s justifiably disgusted reaction to Ann Coulter calling Trump’s immigration plan so great that she wouldn’t mind if he performed abortions in the White House himself.) Beck asks a good question here and then offers a good answer to it.
Why, he says, do conservative opinion-makers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity give Trump a pass on his many, many ideological heresies when normally they’re bulldogs in calling out centrists like Romney for lesser offenses? Beck’s answer: Trump has a swagger that Romney doesn’t. When Trump tells you he’s going to seal the border and destroy the Beltway establishment, you believe him because he doesn’t care who disapproves of him or his objectives. He’s going to do what he sets out to do. After trying for decades and failing to make American government incrementally more conservative, some righties are ready to gamble on a guy who, if, if, if he’s true to his word, will achieve more in that vein than any president since Reagan. Essentially, after six election cycles of making low-risk bets on business-as-usual Republicans, conservatives are willing to make a high-stakes gamble on a guy who won’t be business as usual but, er, might not govern as a Republican either.
Let me give you two other takes on Trumpmania, though, to help explain the divide between Trump-lovers and Trump-haters. I think there’s some truth to what Josh Barro says about Trump appealing to a less libertarian cohort of conservatives, which may explain why Beck in particular is having such trouble grasping his appeal.
Mr. Trump’s critique of government differs greatly from that of most conservatives. The conservative argument for small government ordinarily rests on the idea that citizens necessarily know better what to do with their money and their lives than the government does, because the government lacks the local knowledge that individuals have. Under this theory, even a government run by smart people will do lots of stupid, costly things.
Mr. Trump is positing not a general, inherent failure of government but a very specific one. He nearly shouted it at last week’s debate: “Our leaders are stupid, our politicians are stupid.” This is the core idea of the Trump campaign, and it does not necessarily imply that government should be smaller. It implies that somebody smart, ideally Mr. Trump, should run the government.
If Republican voters share Mr. Trump’s diagnosis that the main problem with our government is stupid leaders, and if they believe that Mr. Trump is much smarter and wiser than the politicians who have come before him, they may be fully prepared to forgive his apostasies on Medicaid, taxes and everything else. If their real beef is not with our leaders but with big government itself, his support should fade as his policy moderation becomes clear.
Beck thinks government gallups along inexorably towards failure because that’s what collectivist institutions inevitably do. The best thing you can do with government is shrink it so that it does as little damage as possible. Some Trump fans — maybe not the sort of grassroots conservatives who read blogs like this one but surely some of his moderate supporters — think the problem with government isn’t necessarily that it’s too big but that it’s been badly run and/or run for the primary benefit of the wrong people and that a better steward could straighten things out. Again, the high-stakes bet on Trump is that he’s a guy uniquely capable, through the force of his personality and his ability to build silent-majority mandates, to do the straightening. Assuming, that is, he behaves like a Republican once in office. Beck, wisely, isn’t willing to make that bet. Hannity seems to be.
The other take on Trump’s appeal is my own, something I’ve been thinking about since he announced his immigration plan this weekend. Trump and Ted Cruz are frequently lumped in together (including by me) because they’re both overt populists and both seen as essentially right-wing phenomena even though Cruz’s base is more uniformly conservative than Trump’s is. In an important way, though, Cruz and Trump are opposites. The point of Cruz’s trademark rhetoric about “bold colors, not pale pastels” is that he’s a true believer in conservatism’s power to win over the masses if it’s presented unapologetically, in its strong form, by an able messenger like Ronald Reagan (or, of course, Ted Cruz).
Give the voters real conservatism and they’ll flock to you, whatever the pollsters or the demographics say. It’s an essentially religious belief in the power of the creed to convert infidels so long as it’s given a fair hearing.
Trump fans, on some level, have given up that belief assuming they ever had it to begin with, I think. They wish Cruz was right but they just don’t think conservatism is an electoral winner anymore, either because the character of the country has changed or because changing demographics have made it impossible. At this point, the best deal you’re going to get is a guy like Trump who’s compromised ideologically but seems to have some conservative instincts, most notably on immigration, and who seems like he really might be willing to push the country in that direction (on certain issues) if he’s given power.
In particular, by calling for all illegals to be deported and immigration to be reduced, Trump would drastically reduce the number of future voters from Mexico and the third world, most of whom would end up voting Democratic given past trends. (Coulter makes this point pretty explicitly in praising Trump’s plan.) If you’ve given up on conservatism’s power to persuade and have come to see national politics chiefly as a power struggle among different demographic groups, Trump arguably makes the most sense. He may not be a conservative but he’ll protect what’s left of the country and the people who still care about it from being preyed upon domestically and abroad, which, at this stage of American decadence, is the best you can hope for. Essentially, and very ironically, he’s the guy standing athwart history yelling “stop!” Not my candidate, but I think what I’ve described is a core part of his appeal.
Beck, you’re FIRED!
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Trump is reflecting the American silent majority, that is why.
I saw the interview, the answer Hannity gave Beck is that Americans are madder than hell and that only Trump has the $$$ and guts and smarts to kick their butts .
That that outweighs a few liberal positions.
I miss Becks 5pm show.
Not going to support Trump.
Then stay stuck at your impasse Beck and shut the hell up!
But, at the moment, he seems to be the clear front runner among those at least willing to talk about our issues and not take a special delight in poking us in the eye with a sharp stick like other GOP "leaders" including Jeb, Boehner and McConnell.
Fifty percent of Republicans (to include Tea Party folks and Independents)...have lost faith with the national party of the Republicans. It’s nothing personal, just that they don’t believe the chat-topics, getting-things-done-rhetoric, bogus-we-will-fix-things statements, or bold new world gimmicks. It doesn’t work.
You can even send the Fox News crowd out, and people have gotten so bright and clever over the past five years....that they won’t believe half the stuff that Fox News says now.
The bottom line? They want to fire the insiders. They think Trump will do it. I’m not a Trump supporter but I can see the frustration here, and it’s not limited to Republicans. I’d take a guess that twenty-percent of all Democrats now feel frustrated and just won’t go with the typical messages that the news media hands out.
He doesn’t understand why trust is not especially relevant. This is a point of view that imbues government WITH trust. He wants to trust government. This is completely lame and a low-intellect position. Of all the things that have been proven, decisively, government is not worthy of trust. Indeed, the Founders knew this. This is why they set up checks & balances. To extract every single nuance from all things a candidate on the campaign trail says is an exercise in futility and is a naive, simplistic viewpoint. Because Congress, except in the case of 0bama, does not give the pres everything he wants. The electorate has come to understand that every one of these SOBs is a liar.
And that’s why I think Beck is a slug.
Insightful. I want to believe, I really truly with all my heart want to believe. Yet the ghosts of 1992 and 1996 linger.
I just heard somebody on Beck saying nowadays, with the elections the Dems already have 48% of the vote, in that general range. I don’t know if it is that high but it sure is bad for a national vote. 70 years of entitlements.
Trump is tapping into peoples anger at the current political climate.
The same political climate that most of those angry voters have voted for.
Trump is a real smart guy who really has nothing to lose.
I just wonder about exactly which Donald Trump will emerge after the election, if he is elected.
For once Glenn and I agree about something. Of course I don’t understand why conservative trust Glenn either, but he’s got a point this time.
Trump is for (and is apparently the only majority candidate in either party for) Americans making things in America once again.
Every year we export ever more formerly American jobs to Communist China, where Americans cannot immigrate, nor own majority control of any company.
Our bilateral trade deficit is now 342 billion / year, and STILL GROWING. Yet Americans cannot even own companies in China. It is all Chinese-majority. American cannot go there to live. Americans are the foreigners, yet we continue to think there is nothing about American businesses which we should support.
Yet nobody is saying that building up China and tearing down America is a bad thing.
Nobody.
Not in the GOP. Not in the democrat party. Everyone is silently watching our own country being sold ever-further down the river.
Except now, Donald is saying that.
Donald Trump.
Alone, among generations, is saying America should be for America once again.
That is so welcome to hear.
Has there been any statements from Cruz campaign on what he will do with 40mil? I get it No Amnesty & border enforcement but any more detail?
If Trump starts dropping conservative names in Team-building at the WH then we really know he means it.
Right now I’m elated at his immigration stance.
They promised, promised, to repeal obamacare and fight him at every step of the way.
They didn't even try.
What have we got to lose by voting for an outsider?
The insiders have PROVEN they will stab us in the back and laugh at us the whole time.
For the life of me I cannot understand why we should care what Beck, Vanity, Coulter, Krauthammer, or any of them think.
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