... there is one entity that can’t dump Trump, no matter how hard it tries: the GOP. The Republican Party can’t dump Trump because Trump is the Republican Party.The part of this I disagree with is the notion that Trump is picking this stuff up "conveniently." Milbank thinks Trump is being totally cynical. I'm not so sure.
... Trump has merely held up a mirror to the GOP. The man, long experience has shown, believes in nothing other than himself. He has, conveniently, selected the precise basket of issues that Republicans want to hear about --- or at least a significant proportion of Republican primary voters.....
Anti-immigrant? Against Common Core education standards? For repealing Obamacare? Against same-sex marriage? Antiabortion? Anti-tax? Anti-China? Virulent in questioning President Obama’s legitimacy? Check, check, check, check, check, check, check and check.
Milbank writes:
Does anybody suppose Trump really cares about illegal immigration (which helps his construction interests, by suppressing wages) or about defending traditional marriage (he’s had three)? ...He goes on to tell an anecdote about Trump's 1999 flirtation with a presidential run. Pat Buchanan was running, and he was ranting about crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. Back then, Milbank says, Trump considered that kind of talk racist. Now he's saying the same things. Therefore, Milbank concludes, Trump is faking all this right-wing rage.
Maybe -- or maybe Trump has become an unthinking consumer of the same rabble-rousing media that some of your non-mogul relatives avidly consume, then quote verbatim at Thanksgiving dinner. He certainly wouldn't be the only rich guy who seems to have Fox commentary memorized -- how many billionaires in the past few years have declared that the criticism they've faced makes them feel like Hitler's victims?
But whether Trump is being phony or sincere, much of the political world doesn't realize that he's speaking the well-established language of modern conservatism rather than expressing prejudices that are strictly personal. As BooMan writes:
I’ve spent 10 years trying to convince you that this is exactly what the Republican Party has become. But I couldn’t get people to shun the GOP the way they are suddenly shunning Donald Trump and the Confederate Flag. Milbank is right. Trump didn’t invent any of this. He’s just exploiting it in a way that’s a little more obvious than the way that Rick Santorum and Lindsey Graham and Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz have been exploiting it.The difference is that anbitious Republicans pols, even the likes of Cruz, Santorum, and Huckabee, know enough not to push it too far -- that's left to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, and to pols like Steve King who don't have national ambitions. Everything Trump is saying is regularly said and published in the right-wing media -- it just isn't said very often by someone who's winning presidential polls.
As a result, when Trump is finally out of the race, BooMan (and the rest of us) will still have trouble convincing people that the Trump message was central to Republicanism, not a bizarre, fringey eruption of personal bigotry. The mainstream press will continue to insist that the real Republican Party is polite and civil and works well with others. But Trumpism will still be its underpinnings, long after Trump's 2016 campaign is forgotten.
4 comments:
He is not a cynic in a real sense he is opportunistic...he threw a Hail Mary pass on immigration to get in and it was successful....
Why would he quit???…it took years before Palin went down in the GOP world…I still feel if he can get the financing from one GOP big donor…he can win Iowa NH and SC… he has huge advantages over the other GOP in personality and charisma…and he thinks fast on his feet…he makes the others look slow
The GOP elite want him out and the so called liberal media want him out…will see how he is treated by hate radio AM and FOX in the coming days
BTW
I like the consistency/and historical referencing of this blog i'm sure its a lot of work
Trump is first of all one thing and will always be one thing a Business Man. He will say and do anything that he feels will give him the benefits of what he wants.
The first item he is gaining is publicity and more notoriety.
The FWingers voters love him, at the same time the true NONLIBERAL MSM hates him for he is bringing out clearly to the world their hidden,implied policies.
The other GOP politicians know beyond a doubt that as long as Trump keeps bringing out and shining light on their true political policies they have no way to win. The world will reject them and has already done so by the numerous companies breaking off association with Trump. Those policies done secretly and supported secretly was one thing. Now that they are coming to light businesses can not afford to be associated with them for they will go broke.
Thus Trump is clearly bringing to light that GOP policies are not only failures in general, but the are strongly rejected by the majority of the USA voters and consumers.
Because, Nomore, if he is not doing this purely out of Ronery-Prince-Business-Seeks-To-Be-Lord-Business level cynicism, then we're left with:
a) he believes this crap he's spewing, all of it, despite that, in nearly if not exactly every particular, at some point since the last Clinton administration, often more than once, he has stated, no less publicly, brashly, fervently and insistently, the antithesis;
b) he has insufficient fux to give because he has some weird delayed orchidis developmental mutation owing to which he failed to mature past 15, stuck in time with over-stimulated hormones that render him a slave to a permanently raging boner, accompanied by its own comb-over, entourage and pathological need for attention; or
c) he's the victim of this rare condition, The Madness of The Donald, by which he's struck by a series of conscience-de-activating mini-strokes, and these current episodes are precursors to him becoming completely out of control like an extreme case of Tourette's, dropping trou, fondling snakes, raving in tongues saying 'I dare, I JUST DARE THEM ALL, China, ISIS, that Kenyan usurper, all those Mexican rapists, the gays, just look upon my ginormous Justice League of Trump Revenge Machine', licking reporters' faces, wiping himself on their clothing ... or ...
d) all the above.
All good points above. I would add that Tramp has maybe developed some deep-seated grudge with the Republicans for past slights and is going to wreck their carnival just for lulz by using their platform as a garish parade float while soaking up the press attention. It's win-win-win for old uncle Donald.
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