Teflon Trump’s The One
This was the moment last night for me that reinforced my conviction that Trump cannot be trusted, because he will say whatever comes to mind:
GOP frontrunner Donald Trump suggested at Thursday’s CNN Republican presidential debate in Miami that he would be willing to support a massive ground force to take on ISIS.
This is a shift for Trump, who has, as a presidential candidate, often portrayed himself as less hawkish than his Republican opponents.
.. More ground war in the Middle East. How, exactly, is Trump different from his opponents on foreign policy?
.. One of the most fascinating dynamics has been Trump’s invincibility, in specific his inability to harm himself. He came across last night as somebody who doesn’t know his material. He often does; he is all about attitude. He flip-flops — on Mideast war, on H1Bs, etc. And yet … it doesn’t matter. I think there is in many Trump voters such a deep and abiding desire to punish the Republican Party that they don’t care.
.. Whatever his imperfections, Trump is mostly hated by professional Republicans and Democrats because he stands for the idea that US foreign policy, economic policy, and immigration policy ought to be run in the interests of the American people, not some abstract ideal of trade globalism, internationalism, or the interests of multinational corporations and minority-group lobbies.
.. And I keep hearing from readers — conservative Republicans! — who say that if Trump does nothing else, the fact that he has smashed the Republican Party is an admirable achievement.
.. I suppose I am a conservative outlier here, but until the GOP gives a sign of understanding what it got wrong in Iraq, and that it has learned from that catastrophe, I find it impossible to trust Republicans more than Democrats on foreign policy. For all his mistakes and shortcomings on foreign policy, President Obama has kept us out of another land war — one that President McCain or President Romney would have been more likely to bumble into.
..The fact that they aren’t (the argument goes) indicates that they are, deep down, RACISTS. What they refuse to grasp is that there is nothing about Sanders that would restrict immigration or would stand up to political correctness. In fact, Sanders yielded to the Black Lives Matter protesters who seized his microphone in Seattle. He is a symbol of the weakness of liberal authorities in the face of left-wing illiberalism — and for Trump voters, that, rightly so, is a deal-breaker.
.. I recall that after the 2006 election (or perhaps 2008), David Brooks wrote a column in which he predicted that America was in for a period of ideological instability as both parties grappled their way towards a new paradigm to replace the exhausted Reagan-era/Clinton Democrat consensus. Well, it looks like something new is emerging.