Levin once said, “Conservatism is not definable.”
I disagreed, but do have to admit that most folks have some overlapping issues that others don’t use to define Conservatism. Do in a sense Levin was right.
So asking Trump this question, is asking him a trick question. And why even bother answering it? Trump says good things every day, and folks look for the one thing they think provides a gotcha moment.
As for Jimmy Carter, he has displayed over decades that he has no common sense when it comes to personalities. The Ayatollah he helped bring to power, to Fidel Castro, te Chavez, to the leaders of North Korea, Carter is bosom buddies with the lot of them. So you rest your case on his support or non support for Trump, knowing full well he will never vote for him. Really?
He did not waffle on defunding the abortion side of PP. When he finds out that’s all they do, guess what...
You know, go ahead and think the forum has gone of the deep end. That’s what you need to believe.
It really needs a context in order to be able to get a definition.
Like I said years ago, I would ask conservatives, what are you conserving? And liberals, what are you liberating?
The devil (as well as God) is most definitely in these details. Not even liberal used to be the odious thing it so commonly means now, in fact even an oxymoron; it used to be classical liberal, which liberated thought to consider matters of truth and beauty without conforming to the stereotypes of mere tradition.
Except Rubio answered it immediately after Trump, so it was able to be defined at least in broad brush strokes. I think Kirk is the default answer that most conservatives fall back on, and if you aren’t as academic as that, then you can fall back on Reagan’s three-legs of conservatism: fiscal responsibility, cultural tradition, and strong national defense.
Carter’s comments aren’t about holding Trump in high esteem, clearly Carter doesn’t, but he was commenting on who he, as a political enemy, would prefer seeing in the White House. He said Trump specifically because he has a history of being malleable on his views and beliefs, unlike Cruz who was dedicated to conservative issues.
When people from the right say these things about Trump, they are dismissed as a purity test. But when a liberal says the same thing, then it is an indication that this is a trait seen regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum: Trumps views change to suit his immediate needs.
Will he defund Planned Parenthood? You assume so, but he has said that Planned Parenthood does a lot of good things for womens’ health. You say he will find out that all they do is abortion, but how will he find out when he is surrounded by people who won’t disagree with him on even the slightest thing?