“Paging Mr. Obvious!”
Excellent, Presidential, remarks by Trump today. Ironically from Scotland. Probably won’t help the business at his golf course there. But a word of caution to those quick to draw parallels. Certainly Trump and his supporters are pleased by ‘leave’ winning and have much in common with those who so voted yesterday. But yesterday the Brits were voting directly on the issue of leave/remain and not for specific candidates. A year ago they were voting for specific candidates and those candidates and parties most strongly tied to ‘leave’ did NOT do well. Voter turnout was quite a bit lower than yesterday. Farage quit as UKIP leader in response to their poor showing. Those wanting out were not united and didn’t have their acts together. Cameron won big by simply promising to hold this referendum, not to support Brexit. A better US parallel to the Brexit vote would be what the mood here would be a year after a HRC win, when her policies have melded the Trump and anti-Trump&Hillary forces together. Alas our system would make it much harder to replace her then. I’m not saying this is necessarily poor for Trump. Watch today and you will certainly see many on Trump’s side celebrating Brexit. You won’t see anyone on Hillary/Bernie/Obama’s side celebrating. But you will also see many anti-Trump, nominal Republicans and independents celebrating. Trump should use this to try to get as many of them onto his side as he can. If too many sit out last year’s Brit election would be the model we’ll repeat in the fall. Get enough of them on board and our Liberals will be fleeing Trump to a newly independent Scotland and making a haggis of it.