Donal Trump won the Indiana primary easily, and Ted Cruz ended his campaign, seeing no path forward, and not wanting to play the contested convention route, saying it would be bad for the party. So, what now? Here’s Josh Barro
Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president, and this alarms ideological conservatives for several reasons:
1. They think he will lose badly to Hillary Clinton, perhaps so badly that Republicans lose control of both houses of Congress.
2. They are afraid that he will damage the brand of the Republican Party, making it harder to win future elections.
3. They believe that he lacks the temperament and character to serve as president.
These are all good reasons to be alarmed, but there is also a fourth reason for alarm that is perhaps the most alarming of all for conservatives: His nomination could signal the death of orthodox conservatism as one of the two main forces in American public policy, since he is running away with the nomination despite being exposed as a nonconservative.
It’s not just that he is a non-conservative: he is moderate Republican at best, one who holds many Democratic Party positions, and many of those are the ones held by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren.
Trump has somehow found a way to throw away the ideologically extreme ideas that orthodox conservatives cared about while actually making the party less popular. His nomination is a recipe for conservatives to sell out and lose anyway.
I’ve asked a simple question numerous times: when does Trump talk about the Constitution? What is his position on the Constitution? You really do not find him discussing it much. One of his biggest comments on it had him saying that it was “set in stone“, then explaining how to work deals around it.
Trump has his good points, and he has his bad points. Who will Donald J. Trump be going forward? Will he be the guy who made a name for himself and took charge of the primary season by refusing to back down, and attacking back twice as hard? Or, will he moderate and go soft? The general election starts for Trump today. John Kasich is a non-factor. Which Trump will we see?
Will he attempt to reach out to the Cruz supporters, and supporters of the other primary season candidates? Will he attempt to heal the wounds of a nasty primary season? Will he attempt to offer an olive branch to the #NeverTrump folks? Or will he continue to attack Republicans, the people he pro-ports to represent? Will he have his supporters work to heal the wounds?
Victor Davis Hanson makes an interesting observation regarding the Trump supporters (via Maggie’s Farm)
Trump supporters are tired of hearing that black lives matter, while no one mentions that all lives matter. They are sick of seeing protestors wave the flag of the country they do not wish illegal aliens to be sent back to and trash the country they under no circumstances want them to leave. They don’t like getting a letter from an IRS that employs Lois Lerner — a letter that would be ignored with impunity by those who are here illegally, or who run the Clinton Foundation. They are tired of wealthy minorities claiming they are perpetual victims of ill-treatment at the hands of people who are less well off than they. They don’t like hearing from elites that huge trade deficits have little to do with loss of jobs or that cheating by our trade partners is just a passing glitch in free trade. They cannot stand lectures from those who make more money in an hour than they do in a year about their own bad habits or slothfulness.
They don’t know what the on-screen savants mean by a leg-tingle or a perfectly pressed pant leg or a first-class temperament or a president as god — and they don’t care to find out. They do not hate political correctness so much as one-sided political correctness, which gives a pass to some to say things that would get others fired or ruined. They don’t want to be lectured that their own plight is part of a larger, healthy creative destruction or a leaner, meaner competitiveness or an overdue restructuring — by those who are never destroyed, rendered noncompetitive, or restructured. And they don’t like to be talked down to by the experts who ran up $10 trillion in debt, ruined the health-care system, dismantled the military, and screwed up the Secret Service, the IRS, NASA, and the VA. Trump is their megaphone, not their solution. The Trump supporters have seen plenty of politicians with important agendas, but few with the zeal to push them through; at this late date, they would apparently prefer zeal without agendas to agendas without zeal.
Can a megaphone win? Can he lead? If Trump wins, and does the Leftist things we Conservatives said he would, who will take responsibility for this?
Crossed at Right Wing News.
‘Conservatives” seem to represent only 25% of GOP primary voters
Why should they expect to win anything ? “Conservatives” are now regarded as extreme right wing extremists, their no compromise just doesn’t work well in a democracy
And that decision not to even hold hearings on a SCOTUS nominee will cost them dearly
Woukd it have been better to accept Garland, or haveClinton choose maybe Elizabeth Warren?
You are delusional about the nature and history of the Republican Party. It is a center/left party. It has had a Progressive wing since its founding: Lincoln, the 19th Century Radical, T. Roosevelt, Hoover, Wallace, Wilke, Rockefeller, Lindsay Graham. Until the great Democrat Party purges of the 1970’s, it was on average to the left of the Democrat Party. Conservatives and libertarians cling to it, and hope to convert it, because the alternative is a socialist party with a dominant communist wing.
Trump is a perfectly good Republican. He not a conservative, and is best described as a traditional liberal Northeast Republican. He likely is representative of a majority of Republicans.
Wake up, just wake up.
Trump is perhaps more of a Conservative than a lot want to believe. He did his dead level best to stay on Hillary’s side when she was Senator and, given how corrupt and vindictive the Ozark Mafia is, I don’t blame him one bit.
As for “orthodox conservatism”, would anyone care to define it?
Other than the screechings of a couple of Libertarians (Erickson and Beck) who wanted to call anyone who didn’t like Cruz no Conservative.
Conservatism has always been a pretty big tent. Some people, for their own reasons, want to make it their personal club and only they get to decide who gets in.
They will find they have a small club, indeed.
And sykes doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
These are the things I like about Trump:
1. He is not part of the political class and seems to hate them and the misery that they put us through. He has done business with them and knows how corrupt they are. I hope that he has payback in mind.
2. He is not part of the theocracy that has just as bad intentions for us as the stupid progressives, sorry, they are just a progressive as the communist, but only a slightly different agenda.
3. He knows business and recognizes that the US is headed down hill fast due to our current great president. In addition to the stupidity of Bush and Clinton.
4. He at least gives lip service to the current immigration crisis and seems to understand the need to stop illegal wet backs from coming here. These people displace Americans from jobs and are actively involved in multiple illegal activities, such as fraud.
5. He shares my attitude toward the use of military force. We had no business in Iraq but unlike the jerk liberals, he did not take it out on the military. Instead, he supports the military and wants to expand the current ROE’s, which have caused most of the deaths of military men and women under Obama’s watch. I wish he would prosecute Obama for the military deaths he has caused.
6. He understands trade. None of the politicians have a clue what this is.
7. Leaders of other countries already are afraid of him. Good. Better than our current joke.
8. He is the only candidate capable of taking on Hillary and not afraid of confronting her.
9. I think there is a good chance he can unify the country and stop the efforts by the liberals to cast everything in terms of race, sex and anything else they can think of.
10. The dream that someone can finally stop the PC nonsense.
I can think of a number of other hopes that I feel I can read, this only starts the process.
I’ve done it a few times, so, I’m not going to write a book on it, but, American Conservatism is based on the principles of Classical Liberalism, the center of the Democracy model. There are three cores, the Moral, Economic, and Political. In the Moral and Economic, the government stays out of our private lives and business deals as much as possible, generally enforcing agreed upon rules. Think of referees. The govt is there to make sure all are treated equally. Consider the trapezoid in the NHL. That is known as the Brodeur rule, because it mostly hurt Martin Brodeur. Why should be be punished for succeeding and doing well? The govt would knock out a rule like that.
Politically, voting and participation would be as open as possible, with just a few limitations. Things like being a citizen, being 18+, these would be allowable. Things like having to be a land owner would be a step too far.
One way to think of Classical Liberalism is “the government that governs least governs bets”. Another is that “if it’s really not hurting you (and this doesn’t mean your feelings) then why do you care? Live and let live.” I kinda refer to it as “everyone chill, mind your own business.”