Trump: Conservatives helped the GOP betray the base, you know

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Allah:

I can’t shake the nagging suspicion that not only isn’t this guy conservative, he doesn’t much respect conservatism either when you come right down to it.

Here’s Trump firmly planting his flag in the soil of nationalism:

Ben Shapiro says the mask is finally off. Was it ever on?

So why is Trump blaming “the help of Conservatives” for the lies of the Republican establishment? Because Trump isn’t conservative, and now he’s admitting it. Trump has spent most of his career giving money to Democrats; he has spent most of his career rejecting conservative policies; even now, his version of conservatism boils down to “give me power and I’ll make great deals,” which is a leftist vision of government rather than a conservative one. Like many members of the Republican establishment, Trump thinks the biggest problem with the Republican Party is ideology; he only dislikes the establishment because he doesn’t run it. He wants to replace the old Party establishment with himself. He wants to top the power pyramid.

And so he blames conservatives.

This is also a strategic play to get ahead of the Cruz-led argument that Trump doesn’t philosophically qualify to win conservative votes. Trump is stating pre-emptively that he isn’t failing conservatism – conservatism has already failed, and he’s just here to help the country. Many of his followers believe this – I routinely receive emails and tweets proclaiming that Trump fans don’t care if Trump is conservative, because he’s a “real American,” as though Americanism can be boiled down to nationalism while excising Constitutionalism. Trump’s going full-bore populist now.

Right, excellent point. It may seem counterintuitive that Trump is deriding conservatives ahead of a primary in South Carolina, which is a lot more conservative than New Hampshire is. But it makes sense strategically. There’s no point in him spending the next nine days trying to convince voters there that he’s a conservative when Cruz will be showcasing ample evidence to the contrary. He’s better off trying to consolidate populists and moderates — and there are plenty of the latter in the SC GOP, which is how Lindsey Graham keeps getting reelected — by wearing Cruz’s accusation as a badge of honor. Okay, says Trump, I’m not conservative. But what has conservatism done for anyone over the past eight or 16 or 24 years? It’s time for the GOP to become a nationalist party.

The risk is that some conservative voters in South Carolina who are on the fence between him and Cruz will take this the way Shapiro did, as a kiss-off. Never forget, though, that Trump’s more daring public statements usually come with a walkback later. Whether it’s mass deportation (the “good ones” can come back in) or banning Muslims from entering the U.S. (the ban might not last long), his ability to seem as hardline or “malleable” as his individual supporters want to perceive him means he’ll be able to massage this if there’s any backlash. If he’s challenged on this, he’ll probably say that the “conservatives” he had in mind who are aiding and abetting the GOP are Rubio and Cruz, even though Cruz is the Senate’s most notorious obstructionist — and has been derided as a “maniac” by Trump because of it. Or, if he ends up getting in a lot of trouble for this, he’ll claim that it’s only because he’s so conservative himself that he’s terribly, terribly disappointed in the conservatives in Congress who failed to stop Obama, never mind the fact that they’re a small minority even within their own House and Senate caucuses. In other words, he wasn’t pronouncing himself a post-conservative nationalist, he was pronouncing himself the truest conservative in the field.

Would Republicans who are open to Trump buy that? Sure, probably. One thing we’ve learned about voters who claim, or have claimed, to be conservative is that a lot of them are very cheap dates ideologically:

One of the great puzzles of the primary season is why a candidate who so recently espoused moderate or progressive views is succeeding in a party that favors purity over pragmatism. Of course, Trump can always claim that he had a road-to-Damascus-style conversion to conservatism. But this claim surely won’t cut it for many movement conservatives. After all, if Trump can flip to the right so recently, perhaps he’ll flop back to the left in due course.

For Trump, the solution has been to announce something so outrageously offensive to liberals, so contrary to every progressive shibboleth, that its utterance immediately disqualifies him from being a leftist. Opposing Obamacare isn’t good enough. After all, some progressives aren’t big fans of the Affordable Care Act. Neither is it sufficient to back gun rights. Many on the left own guns and believe in the Second Amendment. In any case, these are issues on which reasonable people can disagree. What Trump needs is something that is literally unspeakable for a liberal. Trump’s immigration policy is just the ticket. Virtually no progressive would dream of banning the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims from visiting the United States. The very idea represents a kind of exclusionary nativism that is anathema to liberals. Trump’s anti-immigrant language is an efficient way of proving that he has abandoned the left. In a single glorious moment of illiberal demagoguery, he can achieve what would otherwise take months of debate and rebuttal.

That, more than any other reason, probably explains why Cruz and others have had so much trouble getting the charge that Trump is a phony conservative to stick. Some voters, as Shapiro says, don’t care about conservatism in the first place; either they’ve been centrists for years or they’ve drifted towards nationalism in frustration with the GOP. But others probably do still identify as conservative yet have no problem identifying Trump that way too because their definition of conservatism is thin and consists in great part of opposition to the left.

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He is just trying to get the Hillary vote she when gets indicted.

Good. He’s not conservative. Not liberal. What many have been waiting for.

I don’t want a “two-party” system. It’s simply something that happened due to the status quo, and there’s nothing about that has to stand.

BUT

You simply can’t go “third party”. That’s a joke.

We need one of the parties to explode while the other implodes (get it yet).

Trump will win, because everyone’s blind obedience to “party” is beyond treasonous.

I don’t think Trump is the best of us: he’s an asshole.

“It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.” _ George MacDonald

Will he shake things up? Disrupt the “political class”?

Yes. That’s why I support him, and that’s why many do. I don’t care what the President thinks, says, etc. They are there to fill a job: ensure freedom for the us all, in conjunction with the rest of the republic. They are not an icon, not a graven image, not a person to aspire to. They are awarded a post. Not a celebrity. They are, by definition, the “worst of us”.

They have a job to fill, decided by us. Commander in Chief filled by a son-of-a-bitch CEO. After Obama…a man that may be tempted to think he “made a difference”…

..Yes. Trump is most qualified, ideology be damned.

“Trump’s more daring public statements usually come with a walkback later. Whether it’s mass deportation (the “good ones” can come back in) or banning Muslims from entering the U.S. (the ban might not last long),”
Here is a clue as to the author’s (Allah? WTF?) honesty. Lies about what Trump has said.
Those aren’t “Walkbacks”. The immigration plan that Trump has endorsed has always included a way for those here illegally to, under certain conditions, return legally after voluntarily leaving. And the ban on Muslims was never intended to be permanent, only until we could get the mess of background checks taken care of.
When you lie so much about things of which we have knowledge, then we won’t believe what you about anything.
As a Trump supporter, I am sick and tired of being lied to, lied about, and sick and tired of you believing that I am stupid enough to believe your lies.

Nathan Blue says elect an asshole Prez. A truly honest yet sad statement.’ The question becomes–Will a majority concur?

@Richard Wheeler: Just a note for you, junior: Obama is an asshole. The “majority” concurred on that one.

Bush was an asshole.

Clinton was an asshole. etc.

These aren’t good people you want; but they’re what is attracted to power. We the people have to use that, and make sure they are “cleaned out regularly”.

It will all make sense when you get into your thirties…or perhaps you should join the military, gain some life experience.

You’ll see.

@Nathan Blue: FYI Sonny—I served as a Marine Corps Officer in Viet Nam 1967-68–do the numbers.

@Nathan Blue:

I don’t want a “two-party” system. It’s simply something that happened due to the status quo, and there’s nothing about that has to stand.

We have had a “two-party” system since our conception. Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists could certainly be considered the “two-party” system being created in our earliest days.

..Yes. Trump is most qualified, ideology be damned.

How so? Because he parlayed money from his father into great personal wealth? Tell me why he is “qualified” to run the most powerful nation in the world.

@Petercat:

As a Trump supporter, I am sick and tired of being lied to, lied about, and sick and tired of you believing that I am stupid enough to believe your lies.

And who, exactly, has been lying to you?

Yet, you seem to be taken in, hook, line and sinker, by a man who couldn’t even come up with an original campaign slogan. The whole “Make America Great Again” was a take-off of Reagan’s “Let’s Make America Great Again” yet Trump is bloviating how he could “sue” for others using a slogan he basically plagiarized from Ronald Reagan.

And what exactly does it mean? That the Trumpster thinks America isn’t great now? Ummm, that seems to fall right in line with Obama’s opinion of our nation, doesn’t it?

I railed on the Dems in 2008 and 2012 for falling for a carnival barker who spouted “Hope and Change” with no solid specifics. How sad that there are now those on the right side of the aisle that supports the GOPs answer to a Kardashian candidate.

@retire05: #8
“Because he parlayed money from his father into great personal wealth?”
There’s one for you right there. The source for that was one single book that was discredited almost as soon as it was published. It has been repeated so many times that the original source has been obscured. Trump’s first project, rebuilding a hotel near Grand Central Station, was done with the help of business partners who put up most of the money because Trump didn’t have enough. Everyone involved profited from that deal, not just Trump, and many continued with him on other projects.
If I was to list all of the lies told about Trump, I’d need a lot more time than I have.

Really, you must have done too many drugs while you were in Vietnam. How else do you explain asking me who has been lying when I gave you TWO EXAMPLES IN MY FIRST COMMENT?
You know, they have treatments for dementia now. You should look into them.