Jonah Goldberg:
Conservatives are griping at each other a lot these days. If you haven’t noticed, I envy your ability to ignore the obvious. One of the problems, I think, is that people are talking past each other.
A major reason for this stems from the fact that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have spent the last year lumped together by those conservatives who consider themselves “anti-establishment.” That’s fine, and it is absolutely true that both Trump and Cruz are anti-establishment. But being anti-establishment isn’t in and of itself an ideologically coherent worldview. Bernie Sanders is anti-establishment, too. That doesn’t make him conservative, does it?
While Ted Cruz may be slippery on this issue or that — like most politicians — he is obviously and clearly a conservative. Unless you are willing to take Donald Trump at his word — and a great many are for reasons that baffle me — he’s not a conservative. Or if you think that’s too harsh, the case that he’s a conservative requires an enormous amount of subjective good will and credulousness. Even those who hate Ted Cruz readily concede he’s a conservative, because that’s an objective judgment. There’s nothing in the record that requires Trump’s critics to make the same concession.
Think of it this way: There were Christians who were opposed to the Roman Empire and there were barbarian pagans opposed to the Roman Empire. One could, for strategic or conversational simplicity, refer to both groups as “anti-Roman” or even “anti-establishment” but that doesn’t mean the pagans should be confused for Christians or vice versa.
The problem, by my lights, is that too many people, particularly our friends in talk radio, have made exactly this error. I’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh and Hannity quite a bit over the last few months, and they routinely talk about how the establishment hates or fears both Trump and Cruz. That’s true. But they quite often leave in the air the insinuation that therefore they are ideologically similar. I don’t see it. At all.
The other night I was on Sean Hannity’s show to discuss the war of words between Cruz and Trump (despite being a fan of Trump, Hannity has a solid record of giving Trump critics airtime). At one point, Sean said, “I don’t like it. Conservatives are getting angry at Trump because they like Ted Cruz. It’s different than, quote, ‘an establishment candidate.’”
Later on, there was this exchange between Sean, Monica Crowley (an unreconstructed Trump fan), Geraldo Rivera (another Trump fan), and myself:
HANNITY: Here’s the flipside of it, Monica. If you get in a general election with Hillary, do you want the guy that’s going to fight her hard? And he’s already shown he is willing to take her on and the Clintons on in a way that nobody else will.
CROWLEY: You want somebody who has been deep in the competition, who has absorbed punches from their own side so that they’re more prepared to take punches from the other side, because whether the Democratic candidate is Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or somebody else, you want a candidate who is prepared, who knows how to dish it and to take it and how to dish it out and take it. Both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are in that position now.
I’m with you. We don’t like to see conservatives or Republican candidates beating each other up, but this is presidential politics. And I’d rather see it now –
GOLDBERG: You were fine with it when Donald Trump was doing it to everybody else. Let’s just be straight about this. The idea that all of a sudden you don’t like these guys attacking each other –
RIVERA: They can take care of themselves.
HANNITY: But I think the difference is, Jonah, is that I think conservatives like Ted Cruz more than they do some of these establishment guys.
As I conceded, that’s absolutely true. What I should have added though is that there are plenty of conservatives — real, full spectrum conservatives — who do like “these establishment guys.”
The problem is this implicit notion that if you are an “establishment candidate” you aren’t a “real” conservative. It may be true that if you are an establishment candidate you aren’t apopulist, but the notion that Rubio, Christie, and Bush – never mind Huckabee, Santorum, Fiorina, et al – aren’t conservatives strikes me as indefensible. Maybe they aren’t conservativeenough on this issue or that. Maybe they aren’t sufficiently hostile to “the establishment” (however you define that infinitely malleable word). Perhaps you have reason to think they won’t hold their ground sufficiently once elected, but that doesn’t make them un-conservative and it doesn’t make their supporters un-conservative either.
Donald Trump savaged Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Scott Walker to the point where he was a major reason they dropped out of the race. The argument that it was fine for Trump to do that but it’s wrong for Trump to attack Cruz because Ted Cruz is a conservative simply makes no sense.
Honestly, I cannot recall a group of candidates for a presidential election year quite like this group. I didn’t start really paying attention to politics till 1976, when Carter beat Ford. Maybe it is my perception through the looking glass, but there definitely seems more strident division not only between parties, but within them as well.
I find myself questioning my negative perception of Trump, though admittedly through a heavy layer of skepticism with regard to his actual principles. If polls are to be believed, he is the republican frontrunner. I like what he says on immigration, the border wall, and his support for private firearms ownership. I find myself wanting to believe his catchphrase “Let’s make America great again” is more than vague propaganda. Furthermore, the contemptible corruption of the left, and lack of principles displayed by the GOPe makes Trump’s public persona of being a political outsider much more preferable than another namby-pampy elitist moderate willing to “compromise” with the despicable leftists, in the questionable event that such a candidate could actually win (see Dole, McCain and Romney)
But as I believe Mark Levin said, we are one SCOTUS nomination away from losing our 2nd Amendment rights. Despite Trump’s stated support for the right to bear arms, I cannot shake the feeling that the businessman negotiator in Trump would find a compromise “moderate” to nominate rather than stand firm on principle.
I say that based on his 1990 and later statements in support of a nationalized (socialist) healthcare system, and his fairly recent positive comments (albeit prior to that election) regarding the moron de Blasio becoming NYC mayor. Yes, Trump is saying pro-American, nationalist things, but as Goldberg and others have alluded to, I am not convinced Trump is particularly conservative.
And therin lies the problem. No doubt, I would vote for Trump over anyone the dems nominate, and with the growing email and Benghazi scandals swirling around Hillary, her coronation grows more doubtful each day, leaving the excerable piece of marxist garbage Sanders as the leftist standard-bearer. But the existential dangers facing our nation economically and geopolitically make it more imperative to me that our next president be principled rather than fixated on popularity. Perhaps it would be best to go to Trump’s website and obtain a clearer idea of his stated platform.
As I have said before, (at present) I support Cruz. I support his positions on the most important issues, and I agree with his disdain for the sellout liars like McConnell, whose only principle seems to be caving to every whim of Obama and Reid, while falsely posturing as a conservative Leonidas defending the Hot Gates against the leftist hordes. But it seems rather obvious that the GOPe, previously bent on knocking out Trump when they had deluded themselves into thinking Jeb had a snowflake’s chance in hell of being nominated, have pivoted to begrudging preference for Trump to prevent any chance of Cruz winning the nomination. It is rather disturbing to see the plodding GOPe opposition to Trump as a buffoonish opportunist morph into this “stop Cruz at all costs” bit of hypocritical acceptance.
Donald Trump savaged
Bobby JindalJonah Goldberg…..Lest we forget.
After Jonah came out parroting Dem and GOPe talking points against Trump at the very start of his campaign, Trump asked who buys Jonah’s pants, since it was apparent he was not adult enough to shop for himself.
Since then it has been ”on,” between the two.
I am old enough to recall when ronald Reagan was not only a Democrat, but also a union leader in CA.
People’s views change.
When Donald Trump began talking about how he would allow Veterans to have portable health care (go to a close doctor/hospital even if not a VA facility) he was approached by various veterans who had been having problems getting care the way the system is now.
So, did he do a ”listening tour” a la Hillary?
No.
He privately took care of each one of them.
As the Bible teaches, he doesn’t let his ”right hand know what his left hand is doing,” meaning he doesn’t report on his charity publicly or even on his taxes. He keeps it between him and God, as we always did when we paid taxes.
But stories leak out every now and then.
As a result, I think he is a man of his word, especially on Veteran’s health reform.
Donald Trump is (perhaps) over-promising.
BUT, were he to get only half of all he’s promised, it would be a win-win for the nation. Can you imagine cutting down a multi-month waiting list at the VA to zero?
How many Dems in Congress would vote against it?
From an Establishment Blog site: There Is No Republican Establishment
Yeah, right. Oh, and about that
conservativeestablishment National Review article:The Attacks on ‘Against Trump’
16 whole shares for your article should tell you something Mr. Podhoretz. We are no longer buying the silver spooned propaganda issued forth by aloof self-described “educated conservatives” from their ivory towers.