The Poor Farm in Haverhill was right around the corner from my maternal gf's house. A 92 yo aunt lives on the old site, now elderly housing, named, IIRC, for Saint Jack.
Posted on 11/20/2015 11:30:00 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
As has been made abundantly clear by his incessant mewling and pathetically thin skin, Donald J. Trump is not in fact an unwaveringly resolute tough guy of the type you would hope to find standing next to you in the trenches, but an insecure attention seeker who cannot help but pander to his audiences' prejudices. In the past few days, Trump has been asked variously whether, if elected, he would use his power to close mosques; whether he believes that Muslims should be registered in a special government database; and whether or not it would be a good idea to suspend the Fourth Amendment for anybody who prays to Allah. In all cases he has either demurred completely or eschewed the more traditional "yes" and "no" categories in favor of some choice hedging. "That may have to be done," Trump says. "There's no doubt." "We'll look at that." "We'll consider all the options." "We're going to have to look at a lot of things very closely."
So painful has this tendency become that I have begun to hope his interviewers will get a little surreal, just to see what he says:
"Will you replace your hair with spaghetti and your fingers with soup spoons?"
"Sure. We're going to look at everything."
"As president would you consider taking suspected burglars and parachuting them naked into lava?"
"That's something we'll consider. You can't have all this crime. Terrible."
"Do you think it's fair to say that you are the egg man, that you are the egg man, that you are the Walrus?"
"We're going to examine a range of possibilities."
"GooGooGooJoob?"
"I'll be looking into that."
Perhaps the only thing that is worse than Trump's silence is what he does say.
The most common defense of Trump's perpetual acquiescence has been that he did not explicitly say "yes" to the more controversial among the questions, and that he cannot therefore be accused of endorsement. In truth, this isn't quite right; speaking to NBC last night, he did seem to suggest affirmatively that Muslims would be required to sign into his hypothetical database or face consequences. Either way, I'm struggling to see how this defense can be acceptable to his admirers. Trump, recall, is supposed to be courageous. He's supposed to be steadfast. He's supposed to be a no-holds-barred badass who will make great deals and stare down enemies and Make America Great Again. How, one wonders, does a chronic inability to say "no" fit into that mien?
If there is one quality we need in a president, it is the ability decisively to say "no" - especially, I would venture, if that president hopes to advance conservative goals. When a sane person is asked whether he would institute a tracking database for Muslims or force one religious group to carry special ID cards, he says, "Of course I wouldn't." If Trump is unable to manage even this, how would he rein in spending or limit illegal immigration? More to the point, as Trump might ask sneeringly of others, how would he deal with Vladimir Putin?
Perhaps the only thing that is worse than Trump's silence is what he does say. Even if we are generous and assume that the man does not actually believe any of the specific proposals to which he has given his tacit consent, the attitude he is exhibiting is positively Wilsonian in character. In Trump's world, America will be restored to glory when his handpicked team of experts is permitted to experiment upon the public outside of the usual constitutional limits. Nowhere in his rhetoric will you find any reference to America's pre-existing cultural and legal traditions, or to the necessary bounds that free men insist be imposed upon the state. There is no talk of "freedom"; no reflexive grounding of ideas in the Declaration and the Federalist Papers; no conceptual explanation or underlying philosophy. There is nothing, except will to power. By his own admission, Trump's are the politics of doing enthusiastically what works in the moment; of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; of the administrative state and of bureaucratic expertise; of the Prussians and the French and the Singaporeans. Whatever he might claim before his adoring crowds, Trump is not in fact an antidote to Barack Obama. He is his parallel.
Calvin Coolidge said "no" over and over and over again because he understood that the federal government existed for a handful of specific reasons, and that any action it took outside of its carefully delineated tramlines was inherently suspect. Donald Trump's only visible constitutional opinion is that someone strong ought to make sure the trams run on time. There's a word for men like that, and it sure as heck isn't "conservative."
Convince you you’re wrong?
No, just go vote for Romney or whoever... Leave the dirty work to us.
That is not deep thinking. It's just compromise with a fancy name.
Actually, it's not compromise: it's duplicity.
trump has no constitutional compass.
How is it duplicity?
Nonsense. Producer v. parasite, non-politician v. politician.
There is a large part of the party that neither wants trump nor Bush. We would prefer an actual conservative. Someone with a passing familiarity with the Constitution would be nice.
He’s already said yes to ethanol and wind subsidies and his supporters don’t have the stones to vet their boy.
Cooke, Geraghty, Goldberg, Benson, the Four Horsemen of the Anti-Trump Apocalypse. Sorry, they have been haters from day one. The defeated Walker bitterness bubbles up again.
And it's more than a bit rich for NR to posture themselves as conservative crusaders when they are the very epitome of the GOPe that has betrayed us at every single turn
You can measure a man by the enemies he makes, and so far Trump is making all the right enemies; just like the Tea Party I might add.
A Hillarity supporter are ya?
If you think Yeb would be better have at it
The Pope is Catholic?
Who knew?
A latter-day Peronista, maybe, with his “redistribution” doctrines and claims to be “of the people”.
To get back to The Donald, what you hear up there on the stage during his speeches, or rather pep rallies, is that EVERYTHING is subject to being part of a “deal”, what is needed is a much more developed set of negotiating skills. And The Donald has spent his lifetime honing and polishing his negotiating skills, parlaying it into a multi-billion fortune, and doing it in such a colorful and artful manner that he attracts attention wherever he goes, even from persons reluctant to grant him the least of virtues.
Does The Donald have enemies? To be sure, but The Donald has always chosen his enemies, and those he treats as enemies, very carefully. Like a celestial object approaching the sun, he uses the deep gravity well to accelerate his velocity to a much greater degree while he sweeps past, to emerge on the other side propelled to a much high velocity, launched to a much more distant goal.
But a goal from which he does not deflect once oriented upon it.
“Make America Great Again”. Learn it, love it, live it.
Don't worry....you can vote for Hillary if you wish. Trump will have plenty of voters willing to take up your slack.
This is what the GOP-E doesn't understand: For every "conservative" who won't vote for Trump...there will be PLENTY of cross-over votes from people who are sick and tired of the GOP-E and the DNC.
PLENTY.
The Poor Farm in Haverhill was right around the corner from my maternal gf's house. A 92 yo aunt lives on the old site, now elderly housing, named, IIRC, for Saint Jack.
You can't be convinced but you do make a good case for planned parenthood.
With the US and most of the world in conflict with radical Islam, is a federal database of US Muslims really so out of line? Such databases are already no doubt available for commercial purposes, so why would a federal database be so objectionable?
During the Cold War, US conservatives -- including National Review -- strongly supported stringent internal security measures and disagreed with the eventual voiding of many of them by the US Supreme Court. One of Bill Buckley's earliest books was even a robust defense of Joe McCarthy -- a position that Buckley never repudiated.
Notably, a wartime FDR even approved the internment of Japanese immigrants and their citizen offspring due to well-founded internal security concerns. Radio intercepts showed that a dozen or so Japanese spy and sabotage rings were operating on the US west coast and the FBI was unable to locate them. The internment of the Japanese though shut every one of them down.
Yet in fact Trump did not call for a database of Muslims or for the internment of Muslims, and the larger point is what kind of President Donald Trump would be. Trump, a New Yorker to the core, would be much like the last Republican President from New York -- Teddy Roosevelt -- in his zest for controversy, assertion of American national interest, and build up of military strength.
In domestic policy, unlike Teddy Roosevelt, Trump's business background would put him on the side of growth, jobs, low taxes, and free markets. On Obamacare, Trump is like other GOP candidates: get rid of it. There is no sound basis on which to think that Trump would disregard the constitution -- unlike the US Supreme Court, which seems to do so regularly.
Is there anything about Trump to worry over? Well, like Teddy Roosevelt in his day, the GOP establishment hates him, and he is not from within the conservative clubhouse.
On the plus side, these attributes and Trump's outsize personality have made inroads among blue collar Democrats, Blacks, and Hispanics. Most of all, Trump opposes illegal immigration and means it. This a winning issue politically and a fight that must be won if the US is to survive as a self-governing constitutional republic.
Otherwise, the massive tide of immigration and coming fiscal crisis will tilt the country Left more or less permanently. With the GOP establishment dominated by cheap labor interests determined on an open borders policy, the anti-establishment Trump may well be the best hope we have, not just for winning in 2016, but for being able to win at all in coming elections.
Wifey comes in wearing a suicide vest, blows herself up, and you don't appreciate the war on CW.
Are you taking logic lessons from obama?
Are we not all in a database? What is the census?
Looks pretty nice. Imagine what the inmates would do to the asylum today.
I need to do more research into the history of American welfare. I read Olasky s The Tragedy of American Compassion. In the 19th century work was required to receive either food or money --I forget which. Men chopped wood. Women sewed. As much as anything, it separated the truly needy from the panhandlers.
Until the 1960s welfare in MA was administered through the towns. People kept an eye on their welfare-receiving neighbors to see if they were scamming. They also urged out-of-towners to move along, like you see in the old movies.
According to Howie Carr the system completely disintegrated when welfare was moved to the state level.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.