Posted on 12/10/2015 2:35:56 PM PST by LS
(This is continuing material from my forthcoming---I hope, bestselling---campaign biography of Trump)
The last week has been astounding, especially if one follows the GOPe crowd on Twitter. These are Trump haters like many of you couldn't believe. They let no comment go un-zinged (always without context), and deliberately obtusely refuse to even try to understand the concerns that average people have---because, don't you know, they are so smart.
What I have increasingly come to understand is that they do NOT want solutions, unless those solutions come entirely through the structures they have created. To us---to Trump's supporters and even to many of you still unconvinced about Trump (but totally convinced that something must change immediately), this is about stopping the demonic transformation of the United States. To them, it's about, 'well, only if we can do it with our approved people and methods. Otherwise, we'll wait four more years.'
This, we all knew. But as the summer has gone on, it has become clear like never before that Trump has not just become a competitor in a race. Rather he is a threat to the entire political-media establishment, which is far, far more dangerous to this nation than the 'military-industrial complex' ever was. This political-media establishment includes outlets as seemingly opposite as the Huffington Post and Fox News, and CAIR and the liberal Jewish community.
Can we agree on this much? That in the last 15 years, 'the government' (by which I mean the president and Congress) has passed or signed onto two truly major laws that involved major social change. The first was the War on Terror/Iraq War. Really, this pretty much was the only major accomplishment of the Bush administrations. Now, I am NOT suggesting that keeping us from domestic attack for seven years was not a substantial achievement. But it was overall the result of a strategy that in part resulted from fighting 'over there' as opposed to 'over here.' This would include passing the Patriot Act, establishing the TSA, and the rest. Most of Bush's domestic policies, including 'No Child Left Behind,' good or bad as they were, paled in terms of significance next to the WoT/Iraq War. Most here have commented many times on the limitations of Bush's policies, including his unwillingness to name Islam as a focus of that war as well as his commitment to 'nation building.' I am not concerned with the wisdom of these policies, but only want to identify the WoT/Iraq War as one of the two major changes in American life.
The other policy is obviously Obamacare, and all its tentacles. Note that I'm not dealing with homosexual marriage, which was effected by the courts---a much different discussion.
During this time, really since the 1990s, there has been a third massive non-policy that intersects everything, immigration. It is now clear that we have been allowing scorpions to come into the country under the auspices of freedom and humanity. We have imported America-hating terrorists, on the one hand, and large numbers of un-republican (small r) Mexican immigrants who have no intention of assimilating or becoming American. Obamacare, of course, was just one sweetener into this package of economically destroying America that intersected with immigration and security.
Did Trump just stumble on this? I don't know. The great ones seem to know by intuition when something is right. Reagan, without ever using the words 'space,' 'lasers,' or 'antimissiles' in a single speech turned the entire Cold War against the Soviets and made it impossible for them to win. He just knew we had the technological and engineering capability to make 'Star Wars' and if we could do it, we would do it, and if we would do it, the Soviets were finished. Funny thing, Gorbachev saw it too.
Once Trump made his announcement speech involving immigration, however---when as he said he wanted his campaign to be about economic revitalization---Trump intuitively knew that America's economic slump was not the problem, but the symptom of the real problem---a loss of faith in American greatness, and in turn, much of that was endangered by the open border.
Soon, that touched the next rail of Islamic terrorism and Iran, which Trump dealt with directly with his immigration policies but also which he tied to America's immediate security (when events in Paris and San Bernadino reinforced that effort).
Even before then, however, he had begun to pose a major threat to the media-political establishment in a way that no other candidate, including Ted Cruz, really could. First, as Rush has pointed out and I have previously discussed, he can circumvent the media, really (even unlike Reagan) turning the media as a weapon against itself by giving him a megaphone through its unrelenting (supposedly negative) coverage. Trump has masterfully played this because he absolutely doesn't care what they say, except to turn around and criticize them in the most unmistakable and powerful way, giving him still more attention and coverage. (Megyn Kelly was the first of these ju-jitsu moves).
Again, old news, but as we have seen, this allowed Trump to maintain more media coverage than all the other candidates, and more than all the GOP candidates put together. But this wasn't just coverage of Trump. It was really a national coverage and discussion of 'those threats which cannot be named.' At least not until now.
So Trump personally dragged the media, the Republican Party, and the nation, into open and no-holds-barred discussions of immigration, the threat of Islam, and trade with China. And (in a move that continues to drive critics and opponents crazy) he has done so without referring back to a set of bullet-point policy recommendations (which in fact he has). Rather, 'we're gonna build the wall.' 'We need to ban all immigration from Muslims until we sort this out.' You see, when you can get people into discussing bullet point policy briefs, you're finished. You're in the details, and can't possibly address every 'yes but' pin-headed academic they can produce who can tell people why it's a bad idea. But when you are setting the stage every time with a big, sweeping comment ('People need to be armed in those situations'), Trump just dismisses the 95% of the idiot talking heads who could dismantle specific proposals, while in the meantime focusing EVERYTHING on the real issue (i.e., 'hell, yah, people need to be armed,' or 'of course it's a good idea to stop travel into the US from Muslims til we can tell the good ones from the bad ones.') These are not only common sense positions, but they are wildly popular---yet would never be discussed if you're talking about a Gang of Eight Reform Bill. (EVEN if it was desirable, which it isn't) or introducing legislation. Working from lower-level specifics to higher-level visionary goals is absolutely impossible with the media-political establishment because they can always pigeon-hole a bill or sidetrack a particular policy.
They can't do that with ideas whose time has come.
Moreover, and this is what I have been slowly grasping: Trump has set the bar for success of his presidency at winning, at completely achieving what he wants to achieve. Note how different that is from the 'I introduced a bill' or the bullet point approach. Even if a President Rubio, for example, is successful in getting an additional carrier group or getting the roll-back of a particular single element of Obamacare (say, the medical device tax) he will claim credit without having really achieved anything. Moreover, if anything is hung up in Congress, he can then blame Congress while insisting 'I did my part.' But Trump's standard of success is the whole issue. 'DID I STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION?' That's all he by his own words seems to want to be measured by.
Thus the final nail in the coffin of the political-media establishment is that Trump has introduced accountability that no one in recent memory has even tried to meet. He isn't saying 'I'll work with Congress to get a bill to build the wall.' Maybe he will, maybe he won't. But most people believe he'll do it, however he needs to. He leaves himself no out. One gets the sense that the pressure on Congress will be so immense that as President Trump would either make them subservient or irrelevant, but either way, it would not stop his program.
This revolution that is occurring threatens to take down, simultaneously, the power of the media to dictate not only candidates but policies. Trump now has severely damaged, if not killed, the media's ability to any longer dictate what the acceptable discussion and debate topics are. 'PC' was just the tip of the ice berg. This goes much deeper, for by his unwillingness to abide by PC talk, Trump already has moved the playing field. Then, by simply restating a truth ('There were Muslims celebrating on 9/11 in New Jersey') he crushes their ability to challenge him on specific minor 'gotchas' ('ok, hundreds rather than thousands). Prior to Trump, critics would jump on such a statement and get the person who made it on the defensive in one minute about the numbers, but Trump deflects it to speak to the issue.
Second, he threatens to undermine the entire consultant/pundit class. These are the king-makers within the GOP (and Dems too, but they aren't our concern). Let me be clear: whether Trump, or Cruz, wins, this class won't be destroyed. It will take several more independent candidates to reject their 'help' and money. But once the trail is blazed, others will follow.
Third, he threatens to eliminate an entire generation of lawmakers and politicians by exposing either their weakness and ineptness or their complicity. It will be interesting to see who finally is revealed to be 'merely' stupid as opposed to those who actively participated with Barack Hussein Obama in the near-destruction of the country.
And that in large part is why I think we need Ted Cruz as Attorney General: to take every one of these Quislings out once The Donald has pulled away the screen.
Trump doesn’t seem to be talking nearly as much as dictator as deal maker. He seems to expect — not just hope, but expect — that he can be the golden orator that talks America into doing these things.
He might be that, though if that is so it will be because he will have been riding a mighty wind, that Obama will doubtless call ugly, but to the willfully ugly the beautiful is ugly.
Another thing... the Trump tendency to hyperbole. That might not be the theoretically best thing in the whole wide world, but to present truth in technicolor is a whole lot better than to present lies that way, which our dear liberal set has been doing in spades.
Trump may be blowing hard, but he also seems to be inspired by something more than just arrant B.S.
The media reminds me of AA guns shooting at a jet that is so fast it's way beyond where they're shooting by the time they pull the trigger. Now, you can keep shooting at empty space, or try to catch up.
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Powerful piece. Keen insights.
Bump to the top.
bkmk
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