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Can Donald Trump Lead A Conservative Movement He Barely Understands?
Talking Points Memo ^ | 12/23/2015 | By LAUREN FOX

Posted on 12/23/2015 3:21:27 PM PST by SeekAndFind

It is as if Donald Trump just walked into a 40-year conversation on conservatism and instead of standing there, nodding his head politely as he got acquainted with the topic at hand, began shouting over the crowd.

It is essentially what Trump has done to conservative policy gurus this year. Trump has reached over anti-abortion diehards, foreign policy neocons, and supply siders to tell base voters directly what he thinks they want to hear and it's working. But he still doesn't have a grasp on how what he's promoting fits into long-term movement conservatism objectives -- nor does he seem to particularly care. Not only is Trump not beholden to the conservative movement, he seems more or less indifferent to it. And that as much as anything strikes fear deep in the hearts of longtime conservatives who see 2016 as a generational opportunity to control Congress and the White House simultaneously.

"If you are a more traditional conservative, someone who has been active in issues like abortion or tax policy and market regulation, yeah, I could see some of those people being quite anxious about Trump because he is a total wild card," said Matt Dallek, an professor of political management at George Washington University who studies the conservative movement. "They don't know him and he doesn't know them. It is not clear that he supports their policies on many issues. Conservatives who have been successful politically did not spend years shouting from the hilltops."

Typically, Dallek says that candidates who catch conservative lightening in a bottle do so because they spent years building a network and immersing themselves in the lingo. Take Ronald Reagan, for example, who Dallek says spent years talking to conservative organizations and emerged out of the anti-communist and pro-market wings of the conservative party, or Pat Robertson, the 1988 evangelical challenger to George H.W. Bush, who emerged from the Moral Majority movement.

Trump has come right out of left field.

The problem for conservatives goes beyond Trump's own positions, which over the years departed from the conservative orthodoxy. Trump lacks a basic sense of the values of the conservative movement, its jargon, or the deals struck over the years to hold the different elements of the movement together as a unified force.

As conservative columnist George Will put it, "Trump is indifferent to those conservative tenets."

For at least two generations, conservatives have been playing the long game on taxes, the judiciary, and abortion, to name a few pillars of the movement. They have carefully crafted plans to make incremental gains when the political winds were against them, and be well positioned to make dramatic gains when the winds shifted in their favor. They talk about their issues in highly refined, well-tested ways, and avoid the rhetorical pitfalls they've discovered the hard way.

Does any of that sound like Trump or his modus operandi?

Like so many other aspects of Trump's confounding rise, the business mogul has somehow captivated primary voters without fully following the movement's rules or understanding it. Trump says the words and attracts applause, but conservatives aren't convinced Trump truly grasps the gravity, the intricacies, and the nuances of the policies he's promoting.

In a Meet the Press interview in August, Trump said that “as a real estate developer and as what turned out to be a world class businessman based on what I've done, you don't ask questions about, ‘Gee, are you pro-choice? Are you pro-life?"

"It's just something that is not really discussed. As a politician, they discuss it all the time," Trump said.

On foreign policy, Trump's saber-rattling rhetoric carries echoes of conservative candidates of the past. How will Trump handle the Islamic State? He's going to "bomb the shit outta them." But past the surface similarities, it's not clear that Trump embraces any particular foreign policy school of thought, or has even given it much thought.

“I don't think he can get up to speed," says Dov Zakheim, a Republican national security advisor who has worked for GOP heavyweights from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney. “You cannot view a few slide briefings or an oral briefing and become a national security expert. It does not happen. You need some experience.”

Other candidacies are plugged into the conservative tenets of foreign policy and most have their own crew of advisers to turn to. Trump, meanwhile, still has not publicly announced a foreign policy team and in August when NBC's Chuck Todd asked Trump to disclose his military advisers, Trump responded, "I watch the shows."

"He has made it pretty clear that he follows his own advice," Zakheim says. "He rejects Washington-type policy people. So the very people he would need to get him up to speed are the people he holds contempt for.”

The Club for Growth, whose super PAC spent $1 million in ads against Trump in Iowa highlighting his past positions such as supporting single-payer health care, eminent domain and higher taxes, says Trump is taking conservatism off track just as the GOP has a chance to retake the White House in 2016.

"I think the conservative movement has waited long enough and if there are these concerns that Trump is not the full-orbed conservative he claims to be, then people need to be making that case," says Doug Sachtleben. "It is not like we are left with no one running. There are good choices. That argues all the more for why the conservative movement should speak up."

Some have tried. The anti-abortion movement, specifically, has shown a lot of skepticism toward Trump, who more than a decade ago billed himself as pro-choice.

"There are a lot of folks that distrust where Trump stands on life because of his track record and even his recent vacillations on Planned Parenthood," Lila Rose, a prominent anti-abortion activist, told TPM in August.

But other key conservatives have been reluctant to jump in to attack Trump's lack of policy knowledge or his detachment from their movement. David Keene, the longtime chairman of the American Conservative Union and a former president of the National Rifle Association, says the while he is always worried about any candidate coming up short on Second Amendment rights or seeing a candidate "talking about something they don't understand," he feels comfortable with Trump's basic stance on guns today even if Trump once supported a ban on "assault weapons."

"We believe in redemption," Keene said.


TOPICS: Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: aliems; alieninvasion; buildthewall; closethemosques; conservatism; deportthemall; elections; endanchorbabies; endsanctuarycities; enfocethelaw; holywar; immigration; infiltrators; invaders; invasion; islam; islamistheproblem; jihad; koran; mosques; muslim; musliminvasion; securetheborders; securethenation; sendthemback; sendthembaxk; sharia; terror; terrorism; terrorists; trojanhorse; trump; trumpwasright; war; warfooting; wartime; wartonterror
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To: SeekAndFind

Trump can lead a Patriotic revival movement that he understands very well.

Just having a president who puts the interests of America and the well being of Americans first would be a huge improvement over what we have had since January 1989.

How could Trump possibly be any worse than the so-called conservatives now in Washington who have licked Obama’s butt for 7 years?

You can probably count the true conservatives in Washing without running out of fingers.

True Americans are tired of “leaders” like Obama, Hillary and Kerry who built their careers on anti-Americanism and promises of more socialism and more totalitarianism.


21 posted on 12/23/2015 3:36:55 PM PST by Iron Munro (The wise have stores of choice food and oil but a foolish man devours all he has. Proverbs 21:20)
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To: SeekAndFind

“It is as if Donald Trump just walked into a 40-year conversation on conservatism and instead of standing there, nodding his head politely as he got acquainted with the topic at hand, began shouting over the crowd. “

Said the girl who graduated high school in 2007. Hell, I have boots older than her.


22 posted on 12/23/2015 3:38:06 PM PST by DesertRhino ("I want those feeble minded asses overthrown,,,")
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To: SeekAndFind

The only thing I’ve heard a Dallek say is “Annihilate”


23 posted on 12/23/2015 3:38:12 PM PST by Fai Mao (Just a tropical gardiner chatting with friends)
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To: SeekAndFind

Lauren, Donald Trump is his own man.

DC can go to hell.


24 posted on 12/23/2015 3:38:35 PM PST by eyedigress ((Old storm chaser from the west))
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To: SeekAndFind

Aye...there is the rub. Trump is not a conservative. He is loud. He waves the flag. He spouts populist views.

He is no conservatives.


25 posted on 12/23/2015 3:39:52 PM PST by Vermont Lt (I had student debt. It came from a bank. Not from the Govt.)
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To: TomGuy

I didn’t think Trump was trying to lead a conservative movement... I was under the impression that he was trying to be elected President and make America great again.


26 posted on 12/23/2015 3:40:13 PM PST by I Hired Craig Livingstone (Leftists don't love blacks; they hate whites. Islamists don't love Muslims; they hate the infidel.)
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To: I Hired Craig Livingstone

RE: I was under the impression that he was trying to be elected President and make America great again.

So, Conservatism does not lead to a great America? I thought that most FReepers agree that conservatism is what it TAKES to make America great again...


27 posted on 12/23/2015 3:43:19 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind; All

We have had an unconstitutionally big federal government at least since the time of Constitution-ignoring FDR. So what is Ms Fox talking about regarding corrupt, Washington cartel ”conservatives?”


28 posted on 12/23/2015 3:43:37 PM PST by Amendment10
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To: SeekAndFind
As conservative columnist George Will

That's funny right there.

29 posted on 12/23/2015 3:44:26 PM PST by exit82 ("The Taliban is on the inside of the building" E. Nordstrom 10-10-12)
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To: Vermont Lt

He sent me a Christmas Card. That was different.


30 posted on 12/23/2015 3:44:29 PM PST by eyedigress ((Old storm chaser from the west))
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To: DoughtyOne

The Donald is not, by any definition, a conservative. But he has harnessed the conservative impulses for his own purposes in gaining access to the highest levels of power in America, and by extension, in the world. Crafty in the way he has tapped into a huge wellspring of pent-up desires, he exploits them in the manner of a highly skilled conductor leading an orchestra, from mere cacophony into a sweet and melodic concert, falling pleasantly on the ears of the audience.

Pied Piper, or genius and master of the universe? Maybe, and perhaps in the end, we may be someplace far from where we are at, but is the direction we otherwise would be headed in any way preferable?


31 posted on 12/23/2015 3:45:10 PM PST by alloysteel (Do not argue with trolls. That means they win.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Well little girl let me explain why. The GOP has decided “conservatism” is global government, so called free trade no matter what it does to our nation, the invasion and removal of every non-sunni government in the middle east, national healthcare, abortion, universal domestic spying, TSA, homo marriage, and a wave of moslem and Mexican invaders, and amnesty and open borders.

Guess what miss, Trump has a right, as do I to say if that conservative, here’s my middle finger.


32 posted on 12/23/2015 3:45:33 PM PST by DesertRhino ("I want those feeble minded asses overthrown,,,")
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To: SeekAndFind

The only other conservative running is Cruz. So the others apparently don’t know anymore about conservatism that Trump does.


33 posted on 12/23/2015 3:46:44 PM PST by VerySadAmerican
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To: alloysteel

Excellent Ponder.

Obama and the UN or Trump and America.

We decide.


34 posted on 12/23/2015 3:46:48 PM PST by eyedigress ((Old storm chaser from the west))
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To: I Hired Craig Livingstone

The Libs/Media/GOP establishment can’t pigeon-hole Trump, and that is what scares them.

They have no idea what he might do to their status quo environment they have maintained for decades. Their thinking: better the devil you know [Hillary] than the one you don’t.


35 posted on 12/23/2015 3:48:46 PM PST by TomGuy
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To: Jim Noble

You need to post this about ten times a day


36 posted on 12/23/2015 3:50:35 PM PST by bigbob ("Victorious warriors win first and then go to war" Sun Tzu.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Mixed up loon. We do not need Donald to do today’s dysfunction called conservatism. We need Donald to articulate and establish the type of populism that made America great.


37 posted on 12/23/2015 3:50:38 PM PST by amihow (l)
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To: hinckley buzzard

“Conservatives like Will, “

Pondering George Will,,,the conservative.


38 posted on 12/23/2015 3:52:15 PM PST by DesertRhino ("I want those feeble minded asses overthrown,,,")
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To: SeekAndFind

“For at least two generations, conservatives have been playing the long game on taxes, the judiciary, and abortion, to name a few pillars of the movement.”

Astonishing. Said without a hint of embarrassment.


39 posted on 12/23/2015 3:54:58 PM PST by DesertRhino ("I want those feeble minded asses overthrown,,,")
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To: SeekAndFind

Maybe this argument might have meant something to me several years back. But it no longer does. After seeing the constant capitulations of the GOP, after seeing an impotent class of think-tank types and ‘so-called’ conservative pundits constantly wagging their fingers and discussing the various transgressions heaped upon the Constitution by Obama and his ilk, all while being steamrolled over like little insects, and lastly, seeing America itself finally cross a line into such cultural filth and depravity...

it just doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. The rule of law is dead, the Constitution is dead, the borders are wide open, and the populace is comprised of spineless, PC-cowed slaves. It’s just time for the kind of rule-breaking disordered carnage that perhaps only someone like Trump has the ability to serve up.


40 posted on 12/23/2015 3:55:05 PM PST by greene66
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