Friday, December 25, 2015

ON THE SUBJECT OF…’THE DONALD’…


George Will recently made a rather impassioned plea to ‘conservatives’ in a Washington Post column earlier this week.  His thesis?  That Donald Trump’s nomination could mean no less than the end of the “conservative party.”  What he said was: “Conservatives’ highest priority now must be to prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination in this, the GOP’s third epochal intraparty struggle in 104 years.”  I find it somewhat hypocritical that Will can use such language when talking about Trump, and not be bothered in the least by GOP members of Congress.

While I suppose one can argue that Will is certainly no crackpot, he has now joined a crowd that has begun to sound a bit like a broken record on the subject of Trump.  Look, anyone who bothers to look at Donald Trump’s record, to say nothing of the policies he espouses today, can see that he’s not a “conservative” in what has become the generally accepted form of the word.  Having said that, he is extraordinarily right-wing on some things – immigration, for instance while at the same time being relatively liberal on others, such as taxation.

But let’s face reality here, the electing of so many ‘Establishment’ Republicans, aka RINOs, is what resulted in our current House of Representatives. I wonder, does Speaker Paul ‘RINO’ Ryan qualify as a conservative in George Will’s estimation?  Apparently so.  Yet this gutless coward just presided over a $1.1 trillion spending bill that reads like a Democrat Party wish list. That’s to say nothing of the last eight years, which have been marred by one Republican surrender after another. Or the last two elections, where ‘Establishment’ Republicans were trounced by Barry.

Let’s face it, at the end of the day, Trump is the ONLY ‘Republican’ willing to do the ugly work of securing our southern border.  Because if we continue to allow illegal immigration to run wild, as it has especially over the course of the last seven years, it won’t matter if we elect the ghost of Ronald Reagan next November; the game is officially up. This is the Democrat Party’s ultimate demographic triumph, and it could forever push the GOP to second-tier status. Without a country where laws matter, what difference does it make who the president might happen to be?

Even Trump’s biggest supporters regularly express reservations about him. No one is going into this exercise in presidential politics with the even slightest belief that he’s as great and as wise as he boasts. No one is fooled by his “there will be so much winning” rhetoric.  Many of his supporters even have serious doubts as to whether he can actually deport 11 million illegal immigrants.  But political bluster wasn’t invented by ‘The Donald’, and you would have to have been born yesterday to buy into any campaign promises without chasing them with a grain of salt.

What Trump brings to the table, however, is a rather refreshing disdain for politics-as-usual.  And as his numbers continue to grow, it could be that his supporters recognize that there’s more wrong with this country than which party is occupying the White House. There is an infection in the system. Is Trump the cure?  We may soon find out. Personally, I am not at this point in our current election season, not a supporter of Donald Trump.  He is not who I will be voting for in the primary in my state.  Having said that, I am extremely glad to see him in the race.  

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