From the moment he came down the Trump Tower elevator to join the political fray, President The Donald has displayed one distinctive talent: an uncanny ability to inspire his political opponents to destroy themselves. It’s Fight Club: the opponent turns out to be an illusion. They think they’re swinging at him but he’s them and they end up with the black eye.
Think of Marco Rubio’s awkward descent into Trumpian insult-slinging — “You know what they say about men with small hands…” Think of Jeb! Bush’s pushback against the nickname “Low Energy Jeb,” — a defense so weak it made the nickname stick. And, of course, think of the patrician disdain that caused Hillary Clinton to curse Trump voters as “deplorable,” and thus unite them into an impassioned tribe.
Trump’s openly boorish belligerence causes his opponents to sink into their worst selves and thus give away the truth: for all their pretty pieties, they are no better than he is at his worst. At his worst, he is them, and they are him. It’s Fight Club.
So it is with the Democrats’ Brett Kavanaugh debacle — which may turn out to be one of the signal political missteps of modern American history.
To stop the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice whose jurisprudence might limit the words of the Constitution to their meanings, the Democrats and their press pulled off a kind of Circean Backfire: They turned themselves into swine.
A vicious attempt at character assassination; a moral panic that used and degraded the legitimate complaints of assaulted women; bullying and intimidation in the halls of the Capitol; an intellectually corrupt exercise in moving goalposts — and the result? As I write this, polls show conservatives newly energized for the upcoming midterms, Trump’s approval rating is on the rise, even Never Trumpers like Bret Stephens are siding with the president — and Kavanaugh is on the verge of being confirmed.
All praise to Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley for holding the line, but it’s Trump who drove the other side into such a self-debasing tactical error. Because he’s them. He’s who they really are. And it makes them crazy.
They call him rude. He is. But it’s the left and their press who have slung abusive insults at the American people for the last three or four decades. It’s the Democrats and the media who call us racist, sexist, homophobic or Islamophobic in lieu of honest debate.
They call him hateful. It’s true sometimes. But it’s the left and the press who make excuses for the violent fascists of Antifa, who use the term “white male” as a pejorative, and who turn viciously on any black or woman or gay person who refuses to tow the leftist line.
They call him an authoritarian. Is he? When has he actually transgressed the bounds of constitutional governance the way Obama did when he used the IRS to silence conservatives or used the Justice Department to spy on a political opponent’s campaign? When has he actually censored the opposition as the left censors the right on Google and Facebook and Twitter? And why is it his judges want to read the Constitution as written, while the left’s want to make law by fiat from the bench? Trump presents the image of authoritarianism perhaps. But the left is the real deal.
Perhaps FA will do an article of the various attacks on Collins since she provided a really unarguable justification for her vote, and then her vote. Indeed, take heed women; the Democrat party is like the Mafia; once you’re in, you can only leave feet first and a woman that has been “moderate” but doesn’t vote the liberal direction sleeps with the fishes.
Has Andrew Klavan ever, even once, watched a Trump rally or speech?
Trump began his political career at the Trump Tower ESCALATOR, not its elevator!
Whenever Trump mentions that fact he gestures what going down that escalator was like: a rolling bumpy scary ride into the unknown.
And Trump’s rules for beating an opponent?
Sure he labels the person, like sleepy Ben Carson, low-enegy Jeb or crooked Hillary.
BUT, once he’s beaten that person, he does something his father taught him: he takes the lumps out.
Thus many of Trumps’ ex-opponents are now his allies.
Ben Carson, for one, is now in the Trump Cabinet.
But when someone picks out a position opposing Trump he can easily, rhetorically, paint them into a smaller corner than what they thought made up “the other side.”
So, for instance, the NFL kneelers were tricked into opposing the US flag, law enforcement and the Judicial system, even patriotism itself!
And that group was “led” by someone who merely wanted to get his job back!
The globalists, who preferred to pass themselves off as simply a different political view of the way America should be, have been exposed by Trump as wanting ICE abolished, the prisons emptied, the sanctuary city concept spread to all the nation, our laws, mores, traditions to all be abolished and multiculturalism to take it’s place. They are even being exposed as anti-white, both male (toxic masculinity) and female!
As a result of Trumps ability to soothe ex-opponents as well as marginalize current opponents he has expanded his base while shrinking the Left’s!
(Think about The #Walk Away movement and how the Kavanaugh circus grew it.)
My bottom line:
Writers, like Klavan, who want to try to explain Trump, ought to, as a prerequisite to writing, at least watch 5 to 10 Trump speeches/rallies.
One is just getting started this hour.
He’s got 4 this week.
Is she talking about Kav or Don?
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4674689/wrap-smear
Geeze it no longer is very effective