To put this in perspective, Trump is now proposing a larger troop deployment than any other candidate has endorsed — not even the “neocon” Marco Rubio wants that many boots on the ground. And yet virtually no one seems to have noticed this apparently startling reversal. Why? Because Trump’s supporters don’t even believe anything he says about policy at this point. Keeping up with the substance of his ever-shifting pronouncements has exhausted the most dogged observers to the point that all anyone can do is marvel at his cult of personality.
.. But the Republican front-runner isn’t a Jacksonian populist. He’s a Trumpian Trumpulist. And his motto is “always be closing.” Weeks ago, when he declared that he could shoot a person on Fifth Avenue and not lose votes, he was signaling that he’d closed the deal with his base. He had their support sewed up, and now it was time to pivot back toward the center in search of the next deal. Because closers close.
Social-justice warriors taught us long ago that truth matters less than narrative, and millions of Americans have now piped up on cue to prove the point. The narrative they crave is chillingly simple — I win, you lose. It’s all will to power now.
.. Last week, after Mitt Romney laid out a point-by-point case detailing Trump’s business failures and his flawed policies, the response wasn’t a defense of Trump but rather insults such as, “Establishment!” or “Where was that passion against Obama?”
.. So get ready, Trump fans, to lose everything in a general election — everything except maybe victory. Trump is a closer. He’s closed on you. Now he’s got a bigger deal in his sights.
Donald Trump: The Post-Truth Candidate
Trump, despite his denunciations of employers preferring foreign to American workers, turned down 94 percent of American applicants for seasonal jobs at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., and used, instead, workers brought in on H-2B visas. Not to mention that he has employed illegal immigrants on at least two occasions, the best-known in the early 1980s, when he used undocumented Polish workers to avoid paying pension and welfare benefits to unionized Americans. Trump, who was previously against increases in the importation of low-skilled and high-skilled workers, now suddenly supports those increases.
.. In short, Trump believes in nothing except the force of his own personality. Often, it’s not quite correct to say he’s lying, because he never believed anything in the first place. Donald Trump is post-truth.
Rubio’s Opportunism on Immigration Is Coming Back to Haunt Him
The “flip-flop” charge on immigration stings because it’s completely true and reflects poorly on the candidate. Rubio’s immigration record is his biggest weakness because he has tried to have things both ways in a short period of time. Even other pro-immigration candidates can use that against him because it also draws attention to Rubio’s opportunism.