There has been an incredible amount of on the fly revisionism within the Republican Party as President Trump has lurched from one glandular impulse to another in office. We are told not to worry about what he says, but to watch what he does--an interesting line from a Party for whom prudence, judgment, and morality once made a difference. We are advised to be happy because of inspired judicial picks and because of (necessary) deregulation. We are told to admire the strength of the men he has surrounded himself with on national security matters without a hint of irony at the threats to our national security from this man's impulses that make their service essential. Mostly, we are assured by self-appointed Trump Whisperers that this is actually just a very bland middle of the road Republican Administration -- when one chooses to ignore the Clockwork Orange circus that has pitched its tent on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Many us who lived our lives as bland, middle of the road Republicans viewed the candidacy of Donald Trump with great suspicion. He wasn't one of us. He had the impulses of a Queens social climber attempting to curry favor with his betters on the Upper West Side. He spent most of his life as an urbanist, anti-gun, pro-choice, isolationist, protectionist, big government Democrat who thought that because he waded through construction site lunch gatherings now and then, he was a man attuned to the "little guy". And to the extent that these little guys were the foot soldiers of organized crime influenced construction unions with whom he was cozy, I suppose he could make such a claim.
But--our country--in a generalized snit of self-pity--elected this man at the head of one of its great (and formerly conservative) political parties, President of the United States. There was no mystery as to who he was--some loved it, and some hated his opponent so much that they felt they had to vote for him. But to the extent that he actually believed in anything, those beliefs were of a man of the center left. And so--we come to the events of this last week.
We are presented with a man who has no respect for the Constitution--whether one ponders its amendment protecting the right to bear arms or its protections of due process. His preference for restrictions on speech already well-known, we are left with a man un-dedicated to the document he swore to defend.
Moving on now to trade policy, he has the instincts of George Meany, or any other socialist/labor union organizer of fifty years ago--and his grandstanding ridiculosity on steel and aluminum tariffs reinforce this. Free trading people on the right must reject this, as they must reject the stupidity of the "he's a free trader, but it has to be fair trade" crowd. Ben Shapiro has had a few tweets today that I find worth reviewing:
Clearly the solution to other countries hampering our sale of goods is to impoverish our own citizens with higher prices. https://t.co/VAvIbhUNap— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 2, 2018
This is like saying that if you spend more money with Amazon than they spend with you, you become richer by shopping more expensively elsewhere. It’s idiotic. https://t.co/L3s8HuY5ki— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 2, 2018
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1 comment:
Chill, dude, America is much bigger and greater than the clown we hire periodically to a four year term to work for us. We survived eight years of a transnational progressive deceptive Chicago machine university snake who didn't really much like our country. We will surely survive the current occupant as well. Either he gets fired at some point, or time moves on and we hire somebody else to do an executive job. These politicians are not the fabulous exemplars of all that is best about what American is, and more importantly what it should BE!! as all the idiots on TV and the press continue to pine for. It's just a job, and they are all flawed, clueless strivers. We are only gifted a Washington, Lincoln, Coolidge, Reagan by accidents of fate.
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