During the contest for the Republican nomination, my position of consistently opposing Donald Trump has been abundantly clear. I think we can and should do better in selecting the Republican candidate for President in 2016.
That said; it is high time for the mainstream media to take a leap back from their righteous indignation and try to at least pretend to want to conduct an honest conversation. To date, that has hardly been the case.
Trump has countless things that deserve to be roundly criticized as documented by Washington Post columnist, George Will. “Trump, who was a big government liberal until he recently discovered he was a conservative Republican, has the upturned jutted jaw, the celebration of ‘energy’ and the flirtation with violence and torture that characterized the Italian who was a radical socialist until he decided he was a fascist,” writes Will. “Trump, however, is as American as Huey Long.
Indeed, Donald Trump has been rude, insensitive, and downright offensive a good deal of the time. He also, on a wide array of important issues—from taxes to healthcare to his general support of a large and muscular government—is dead wrong and not in keeping with the conservative tradition and values of individuals such as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
Polls, while always subject to change, most generally show 60 and 70 percent of Republicans say they are supporting someone other than Donald Trump. Serious and responsible conservatives publicly denounce The Donald every day, often to the point of outright declaring they will not support him, even if he were to become the nominee.
“There’s winning. And, then there’s supporting a bigot. If GOP lines up behind Trump, it doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously anymore.” These are the words of Mitt Romney’s chief strategist, Stuart Stevens.
Yet according to the liberal chattering class, Donald Trump doing well can only be explained in one of two ways, the natural outgrowth of long-held evil thoughts and views conservatives and Republicans have been espousing for many years or that establishment Republicans did not condemn Trump and do what is required to “stop” him.
For liberal commentators such as E.J. Dionne or Eugene Robinson, Republicans are getting what we deserve for all the times we have been on the wrong side and encouraged hatred and bad things. I call this the “what did you expect to happen” school of analysis.
As to establishment Republicans “not doing what they should have to stop Trump,” the argument is at best vague. What specifically should have been done by which specific individuals or groups? Establishment Republicans? Millions of dollars have been spent dumping on Trump by Super PACs. Conservatives everywhere, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, continue the daily onslaught against Trump.
The notion that somehow a group of elected officials, successful business people, etc. could gather together and prevent Trump’s success is sheer political fantasy. Doesn’t it matter that this is exactly who Trump is running against? His supporters like the fact that establishment Republicans do not like Trump. It is a badge of courage in their eyes.
Meanwhile, no liberal can even consider the possibility that Trump has gathered support for any legitimate reason. The idea that anyone who feels that liberals have consistently and constantly treated certain people with contempt and disdain does not compute with liberals. If a white person believes that there are instances of reverse discrimination, this is nothing more than white privilege speaking. President Obama meant it when he said “those people cling to their guns and religion out of bitterness and fear…” The concept that any individual or group, not a part of the universe liberals have determined through their identity politics as being deserving of special attention and treatment, might have a legitimate complaint is inconceivable to liberals.
In other words, for liberals it is beyond belief that their arrogance and visible lack of regard for those not among the elitist liberal world or part of what they consider a special and deserving group might be to partially account for Donald Trump. Once again, liberals’ lack of self-awareness is an ugly part of what constitutes our current political landscape. And, that is a shame.
