The smoke-filled backrooms adjoining the Halls of Political Power in our nation’s capital have become scenes resembling the Psych Ward in the Jack Nicholson Class, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
Howard Kurtz, Media Analyst for the Fox News Channel, recently posted the following observations.
The Republican establishment, which has always distrusted and discounted Donald Trump, is getting increasingly nervous.
So nervous, in fact, that some of its media voices are starting to denounce their party’s front-runner in the strongest possible terms.
As in, refusing to vote for the man if he’s the nominee. As in, loudly proclaiming that he will destroy the GOP.
Viewed from one perspective, this has the smell of panic. Viewed from another, it’s a case of party stalwarts speaking out based on principle.
For decades now, there has been primary-season sniping between the establishment wing and the insurgent/hard-line/Tea Party wing. Commentators rough up their least favorite candidate, even declare them unqualified for the White House.
But if that person prevails—think Mitt Romney in 2012—the sharpest Republican critics find a way to walk it back. Well, he wasn’t my first choice, but he would be better than Barack Obama. He’s evolved on immigration/tax cuts/ObamaCare. He would pull this country out of its left-wing tailspin.
These days, the rhetoric is getting so hot that there will be no scrambling back on board. Bill Kristol has been openly musing about a third party if Trump wins the nomination.
Does the conservative media elite hope to throw some tacks under the Trump steamroller with such sharp rhetoric? Or are its members just speaking out to clear their consciences?
If it’s the former, I think it might actually help Trump to have the Beltway types arrayed against him. These are the folks he is running against, and he’s never positioned himself as a doctrinaire conservative.
Michael Gerson, a Bush White House official who writes for the Washington Post, uses sweeping language:
“Trump’s nomination would not be the temporary victory of one of the GOP’s ideological factions. It would involve the replacement of the humane ideal at the center of the party and its history. If Trump were the nominee, the GOP would cease to be.”
Cease to be. That’s pretty historic stuff.
Gerson calls Trump a “demagogue” who “has followed some of America’s worst instincts wherever they have led, and fed ethnic and religious prejudice in the process. All presidential nominees, to some extent, shape their parties into their own image. Trump would deface the GOP beyond recognition.”
In case you missed the point, Gerson says: “Trump is disqualified for the presidency by his erratic temperament, his ignorance about public affairs and his scary sympathy for authoritarianism. But for me, and I suspect for many, the largest problem is that Trump would make the GOP the party of racial and religious exclusion.”
Doug Heye has been communications chief of the RNC, a top deputy to Eric Cantor and a Bush administration official. He makes a personal declaration in the Independent Journal:
“Because of Trump’s perversion of conservatism, along with the devastating impact he would have if nominated, I cannot support Donald Trump were he to win the Republican nomination.”
Heye says Trump would be “dangerous to the United States and the world at a time when the world is at risk.” His nomination, says Heye, “would be catastrophic for Republican hopes to win the White House and maintain control of the Senate and would damage the party and the conservative cause for years to come. His having the legitimacy that comes with the nomination of a major political party would cause greater instability throughout the world at a time when the world looks to America for leadership that is serious and sober.”
This is the New York Times’ latest version of the same story, calling it a “people’s coup”:
At family dinners and New Year’s parties, in conference calls and at privatelunches, longtime Republicans are expressing a growing fear that the coming election could be shattering for the party, or reshape it in ways that leave it unrecognizable.
But a very different tack from Peggy Noonan, who worked for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who turns the question back on the establishment:
“I do not understand the inability or refusal of Republican leaders to take Mr. Trump seriously. They take his numbers seriously—they can read a poll—but they think, as Mr. Bush said, that his support is all about anger, angst and theatrics. That’s part of the story, but the other, more consequential part has to do with real policy issues. The establishment refuses to see that, because to admit it is to implicate themselves and their leadership. Political consultants can’t see it because they don’t think issues matter—not to them and certainly not to the dumb voters.
“But issues do matter, and Mr. Trump has functioned this year not as a great communicator or great compromiser but as the great disruptor. He brags that he has brought up great questions and forced other candidates to face them and sometimes change their stands—and he has.”
There really isn’t much of an establishment left. It consists of some megabuck donors, elected officials, seasoned operatives and media pundits. They don’t have the power to stop Trump, and they know it.
The best they can hope for is to influence the debate. Their problem is that most of them don’t like Ted Cruz, either.
Indeed.
Just as the backlash against President Barack Hussein Obama and the Democr5at Party has reached deafening levels here in America’s Heartland, snobbishly referred to by the Political Elite as “Flyover Country”, so has the refusal of the leaders of both Political Parties to admit their culpability in creating the problems our nation is facing, which can be traced back to their failed domestic and foreign policies and failed leadership.
Why do I believe that Donald J. Trump is still the frontrunner among all the Republican Presidential Candidates?
This brash, unabashedly American, business entrepreneur and quintessential showman has dominated the media for the past several years.
The popularity of his reality program on NBC and the catch phrase that came leaping out from it, “You’re fired!”, spread across America like wildfire.
Now, his Presidential Campaign continues to do the same.
It is not just his flamboyance that has caught the eye of Americans.
The fact is, after almost two terms of an Administration taking the great country in the world on a scenic tour of the Highway to Hell, Donald Trump is the only Republican Candidate shouting, “Hit the brakes, you idiots!”
Trump’s straightforwardness has struck a chord in the hearts of average Americans, tired of the wussification of America, being so relentlessly pushed by both modern political parties.
This is what I don’t understand about the Republican Establishment:
They run around telling everybody how Conservative they are, when in reality, they actually hold the same beliefs as Liberal Democrats.
Ronald Reagan gave a famous stump speech about the fact that the Republican Party at one time, needed “bold colors, not pale pastels”.
From what I’m seeing out of a lot of the Republicans right now, they’re not even presenting Americans with pale pastels.
…Except for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
The “Republican Elite”, as Kurtz refers to them, are showing their color to be Liberal Blue, while they claim to be Conservative Red.
It is almost as if they believe that the Political Tsunami, which resulted in Republicans holding both Houses of Congress, came about because they made themselves look like Democrats.
They need to come down off of Capitol Hill every now and then.
And, visit Realityville.
Average Americans, like you and me, living from paycheck to paycheck in America’s Heartland, do not need another Democratic Party.
If we wanted to continue to put up with their Liberal Stupidity, we would have left all of them in office.
Instead, in November of 2014, we showed them the door.
If Jeb Bush and the rest of the Vichy Republicans actually believe that they will win over the Mexican vote, or the rest of the Hispanic Vote, if by then those who are now illegal are allowed to vote, in 2016, then I have two bridges over the Mississippi River at Memphis to sell them.
The overwhelming majority of average Americans want Conservatives whose blood runs red, not Liberal squishes, who have more in common with the Democrats in the Northeast Corridor, than they do with average Americans in the Heartland.
If the Republican Establishment does not come to that realization very soon, they will go down to defeat again in 2016.
They will never achieve victory by trying to push a candidate, who represents the Jello of “Liberal Moderation”, up a hill.
In summation, the American people are tired of Political Correctness and anti-American political expediencies being forced down our throats by both political parties and trumpeted by their lackeys in the Main Stream Media.
Donald Trump, for all of his brashness and braggadocio, is a breath of free air and, quite frankly an anomaly. He’s not a professional politician. He is a businessman who wants to become a public servant.
Now, where did I hear that before?
Oh, yeah.
That’s the way the Founding Fathers envisioned our system of government, led by citizens, who served their terms as public servants…AND THEN WENT HOME.
But, I digress…
You know what tickles me the most about “The Donald”?
He reminds me of one of my favorite movie characters.
He actually has a backbone.
Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.” – Jack Burton, Truck Driver (Kurt Russell) “Big Trouble in Little China”
…and that, boys and girls, is a refreshing change.
Until He Comes,
KJ