National Review has a special edition out titled “Against Trump“. From that issue’s Editorial:
Trump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed politician in all of American history…
After 8 long years of a rudderless country, a nation adrift and with an absentee POTUS, people are yearning for leadership and an un-P.C. authority figure. The country’s pervasive liberal culture that is so corrosive to open and honest discussion and debate on the most important issues facing us (e.g., national identity; demographics; etc.) has even swallowed up GOP, Inc.
How will knowing “the relevant details and the levels of power” (aka Beltway Insiders) combat this?
At root, the rot we are now facing — illegal immigration; Islamic terrorism; BLM; white dispossession — is a new, pointed front in the Culture Wars, one with a prevailing but unspoken racial component, but where candid rightist opinion is stymied by Political Correctness and its career-ending potentialities.
If Trump makes nationalism his clear guiding principle, rather than ideological purity (what someone like, for example, Glenn Beck wants in an idealized, non-existent candidate), he will tap into something that hasn’t been tapped into for some time. Perhaps the traditional, punditry-class-drive bifurcation of all political reality into “Left” vs. “Right” is… passe. Perhaps these concepts, as traditionally understood, have lost their explanatory value and become deracinated.
As a POTUS, Barry did exactly zero to ‘cross party lines’ and broker deals with his opposition. He was able to jam through Obamacare and his trillion dollar ‘Stimulus’ fiasco only when he had Dem majorities in both houses. After 2010, his legislative ambitions have been nil and subsequent executive orders is how he’s since done things.
Insofar as much of a POTUS’ effectiveness is the bully pulpit, rallying the country behind him, Trump will be formidable. The Reagan comparisons here may not be unfounded.
Is Trump a narcissist? Probably. But rare is the D.C. politician who is/was not. Have you heard many times Barry — who wrote two autobiographies by the age of 40 or so — uses the word “I” in his speeches, or how he does that hold-your-head-up-high-like-Mussolini thing?
In a President Trump we might see the stridency and egotism of Teddy Roosevelt (now widely considered a ‘great’ President), the flamboyance of Silvio Berlusconi, and/or the forthrightness of Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, or Hungary’s Viktor “Keep Europe Christian!” Orban.
The NR Editorial continues:
Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot explain their Beltway maneuvers — worse, if their maneuvering is indefensible — they will be rejected by their own voters. If they cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump supporters about the GOP, but that doesn’t make the mogul any less flawed a vessel for them.
So… NR is basically admitting here that the Republican Party Elites are completely out of touch with their base. Where would we situate NR’s favored candidates (e.g., ¡Yeb!, Rubio, Kasich) on the issues noted above?
The I-word here is crucial.
That is the #1 issue that rocketed Trump to frontrunner status last spring/summer.
He must never lose sight of that.
