A Trump in Sheep's Clothing

What person who calls himself or herself conservative could vote for someone who says on health care, "I’m going to take care of everybody…. The government is going to pay for it”? Someone who wants to ban widely-enjoyed sporting and self-protection firearms, and says "I hate the concept of guns"? Who is supposedly hard-line on border security, but actually said "I hate the concept of it, but on a humanitarian basis, you have to [take in Syrian refugees]"? Who says he is "pro-choice in every respect"? 

Read what Trump himself has said about these things! In a recent column, Eric Erickson of RedState.com simply quotes Trump and concludes, I think with frightening accuracy: "Conservatives, particularly evangelicals, have lost their ability to discern wolves in sheep’s clothing."

Read Trump's own words and Erickson's analysis. And when it is your turn to vote...don't be naive! We really have three choices in the Republican primary:

1. Vote for establishment candidates (thankfully, the polls say don't bother)
2. Vote for a liberal Democrat masquerading as a Republican
3. Vote for a brilliant Senator who is already fighting for all of our conservative principles, against the establishment, even when it is unpopular

The choice is becoming very clear my friends!

Ok, there is a fourth option: a couple of very honorable and intelligent men who at this stage need to throw their support behind the brilliant 100% conservative Senator…let’s not split up conservative votes like that, because doing so only assures Trump the nomination. How many times do we have to do this before we learn!

Curt
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In His Own Words

By Erick Erickson · Jan. 29, 2016

“As far as single payer, it works in Canada, it works incredibly well in Scotland.” “I would press for universal healthcare. … I would put forward a comprehensive health care program and fund it with an increase in corporate taxes.” “We must have universal healthcare.”

“I hate the concept of it, but on a humanitarian basis, you have to [take in Syrian refugees]”

“I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun.” “I hate the concept of guns.” “The Republicans walk the NRA line and refuse even limited restrictions.” “I probably identify more as a Democrat.”

“Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing to say. I’m going to take care of everybody…. The government is going to pay for it.” “I believe the Republicans are just too crazy right.”

“I’ve very impressed by [Nancy Pelosi]. I like her a lot.” “Hillary is a great friend of mine. Her husband is a great friend of mine.”

“I’m a liberal on healthcare.” “As far as single payer, it works incredibly well in Canada.” “I am pro-choice in every respect.”

Those are Donald Trump’s words over the last number of years. Trump’s position supporting a socialist healthcare scheme is about the only consistent position he has maintained.

In 2010, Donald Trump funded Democrat efforts to stop Republicans from taking back Congress. In 2014, he switched teams and supported the Republican Establishment against conservatives. Now he has tilted all the way to the right to support the anti-establishment conservatives he so recently hated as “crazy right.”

Conservatives, particularly evangelicals, have lost their ability to discern wolves in sheep’s clothing. Donald Trump calls himself a Christian, but has never asked God for forgiveness and sees no need to repent. Point that out to many an evangelical Christian and they will be quick to accuse you of judging Donald Trump. And if you point out that 1 Corinthians 5 makes clear that Christians are to judge anyone who calls himself a Christian, Trump defenders will proclaim they are not electing a pastor. Paul wrote, “[do not] associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler.” The Bible also implores the faithful to seek out godly men for their leaders.

Pastors in the United States — including Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, an evangelical megachurch — have hitched their wagons to Trump. Jeffress and other evangelical ministers seem convinced that the flawed vessel of Donald Trump can make America great again when they, as pastors, are supposed to be saving souls, not nations. Jeffress and his cohorts are seeking earthly powers to fight spiritual battles.

That men who spend their time wrapped in scripture and preaching in pulpits are quick to embrace a man who is on his third wife gets me thinking. This man is on his third wife — after having cheated on his first wife with his second — and says he has never asked God for forgiveness, cannot name a favorite book of the Bible and has no favorite passage of scripture. This suggests to me that many Christian preachers in this country have unsure moorings and let their homesickness for this country as they think they once knew it supersede their homesickness for the land to which they have not yet been, but to which they supposedly long.

As Screwtape wrote to Wormwood, “we want a man hag-ridden by the Future — haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth — ready to break the Enemy’s commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other — dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.” Many a pastor and Christian for Trump seems hag-ridden by the Future and ready to pursue a rainbow.

No Principles? Trump Has One

I emailed Rush Limbaugh today. Here's what I wrote:

You are scaring me, Rush.  I can't believe that you continue to watch Trump rising in the polls and you nonchalantly talk like you would be happy to have him as the GOP nominee. It is fine to watch a phenomenon going on and all. But this is getting way too serious to stand around doing color commentary.

The idea of having a businessman run the country sounds good on the surface. Trump has two things right:

   1. We need to stop pandering to the media and political correctness, and

   2. We need to take border security seriously.

But this man has zero conservative principles. Trump has ONE guiding principle: he does what he needs to do to get Donald Trump what Donald Trump wants. In business, in bankruptcy, in marriage, in lobbying and in flattering politicians. As President--as unlikely as that is, since he has given the Dems so many ways to beat him and many conservatives lots of reasons to sit it out (far more than Romney did)--I have complete faith that he would continue acting on his one fundamental principle.

Now Trump wants the GOP nomination. 

• Every "new" position on which he claims to be changed from his past behavior is just an obvious attempt to get what Donald Trump wants.
• His ugly turn in the campaign to illegitimately besmirch Ted Cruz is just to get what Donald Trump wants.
• The latest efforts to suck up to the establishment is a transparent effort to get what Donald Trump wants.

Tragically these efforts seem to be working. In reality, these efforts to get what Donald Trump wants prove, substantively, that we do not want Trump as nominee nor President:

• You don't put a recent convert in charge of the free world.
• You don't nominate someone who resorts to personal smears on fellow Republicans.
• You don't change the way Washington does business by sending someone who is promising to make give and take deals; that is exactly what an "outsider" is supposed to NOT do.

Our country is in deep trouble, Rush.  This is way too serious to screw up. We need a strong leader who will lead his party back to the Right road.

So my email probably won't get read on the air, or even by El Rushbo himself. But I hope you, having read this far, will pass the word along to your friends and relatives. Minds far more scholarly than mine are saying similar things. Please read the following from Mark Alexander.

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About Trump's 'New York Values'

Memo to Trump Supporters: Caveat Emptor!

By Mark Alexander · Jan. 20, 2016 http://patriotpost.us/alexander/40159

Republicans convened January 14th for a sixth debate, and it is clear that the leading candidates are now Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

The most trumped-up moment of the debate was when Senator Cruz was asked by moderator and New York City-dweller Maria Bartiromo to explain his assertion that Donald Trump “embodies New York values.”

Of course, Cruz was referencing Trump’s own words from an interview with the late Tim Russert, who asked Trump about his liberal positions on gun control, partial-birth abortion, homosexual marriage and other issues. Trump told Russert that his values are different than those in other parts of the nation: “I’ve lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life so my views are different than if I lived in Iowa. … There is some different attitude in different parts of the country. You know, I was raised in New York and I grew up and worked and everything else in New York City.”

Of course, there is plenty other evidence of Tump’s allegiance to Democrats. He has not voted in a single Republican primary since 1989, according to New York voting records. And he has heaped a lot of praise on liberal policies and politicos. On the economy, Trump says, “I probably identify more as a Democrat. If you go back, it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.” And he has repeated praised Hillary Clinton: “I think she’s a very, very brilliant person, and as a senator in New York, she has done a great job. Everybody loves her. … She’s really a very terrific woman.” (If the general election is a Trump/Clinton contest, she has some great Trump endorsement campaign ads to run.)

Responding to Bartiromo, Cruz said, “I think most people know exactly what ‘New York values’ are. There are many wonderful working men and women in the state of New York, but everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal…”

Cruz was right about most Americans knowing what he meant, and Trump’s only escape from his own words about his New York values was to shamelessly invoke perhaps the most catastrophic moment in our nation’s history.

When Bartiromo asked Trump to respond, he played the 9/11 card: “[Ted] insulted a lot of people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York. … Thousands of people killed. … We rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.”

Of course, Cruz’s assertion had nothing to do with 9/11, and Trump’s response — invoking that Islamist attack and all its death and destruction — is both typical and disgraceful. Trump sidestepped the subject of his own words regarding liberal New York values and instead raised as a political shield the murder of 2,606 people, including 72 police officers and 343 firefighters. Democrats likewise do this with the victims of mass murders.

Predictably, no one among Trump’s fawning Leftmedia entourage has called him out on this cynical sleight-of-hand. And it’s no small irony that this crass political ploy reinforces Cruz’s reference to Trump’s “New York values.”

Rush Limbaugh conceded that many people thought the exchange was “a big Trump slam-dunk win,” but he argued, “Trump is essentially making Cruz’s point.”

Since the debate, Trump has referred to 9/11 at every campaign stop. It’s instructive to note, though, that a review of the pittance of donations from his $8 billion purse reveals not a single record of support for any of the foundations set up to assist the families of 9/11 victims.

Moreover, if general elections represent “New York values,” then what does the election of Trump’s gun-grabbing billionaire buddy Michael Bloomberg, and his hard-left successor Bill de Blasio, say about those values? In the 2012 presidential election, more than 81% of New York City voters supported Barack Obama.

Propagating that 9/11 diversion, Trump and other New York elitists demanded that Cruz apologize.

Cruz, a champion debater at Princeton before completing his law degree at Harvard, responded accordingly:

“Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio have all demanded an apology. I’m happy to apologize: I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been let down by liberal politicians in that state … the hard working men and women who have been denied jobs… I apologize to all the pro-life and pro-marriage and pro-Second Amendment New Yorkers who were told by Governor Cuomo that ‘they have no place in New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.’ I apologize to all the small businesses that have been driven out of New York City by crushing taxes and regulations. I apologize to the millions of unborn children, many African-American and Hispanic, whose lives have been taken by politicians who relentlessly promote abortion on demand with no limitations. … I apologize to the people of faith who are ridiculed and insulted by the New York media. And I apologize to all the cops and the firefighters and 9/11 heroes who had no choice but to stand and turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio, because Mayor de Blasio over and over again stands with the looters and criminals rather than the brave men and women of the law. And to the millions of conservatives — working men and women in New York, with common sense values, trapped by the failures of your political leaders — I am glad to tell you, help is on the way!”

It would appear that the few conservatives still in New York concur with Cruz. After the debate, the influential Metropolitan Republican Club held a star poll and Cruz narrowly beat the hometown favorite.

(Of course, what also distinguishes Trump’s “values” from those of Ted Cruz is that Trump was born into wealth, privilege and elitism. Cruz comes from a heartland family of trials and very modest means.)

Notably, in his debate rebuttal to Cruz, Trump also said, “Conservatives actually do come out of Manhattan, including William F. Buckley.”

Anyone who knows anything about Buckley (the godfather of modern conservatism who helped The Patriot Post launch online 20 years ago), fully understands that “Trump is an affront to William F. Buckley’s legacy.” That is why National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955, devoted an entire edition to Trump’s defeat.

Of course Trump is an affront to Buckley’s conservative legacy, as well as to every steadfast advocate of Liberty today — at least those of us who can see through the Trump façade.

Consistent with his modus operandi, Trump responded, “The late, great, William F. Buckley would be ashamed of what had happened to his prize, the dying National Review!” If National Review is dying, it would be because demagogues like Trump have hijacked the Republican Party. For the record, in an essay on essay on pretenders like Trump, Mr. Buckley wrote, “The resistance to a corrupting demagoguery should take first priority.”

Of his followers, Trump declared, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot people and I wouldn’t lose voters, okay. It’s, like, incredible.” Indeed, he is “incredible.” George Will writes of his adherents, “Many are no doubt lightly attached to the political process, preferring entertainment to affiliation. They relish in their candidate’s vituperation and share his aversion to facts.”

My analysis of his followers is less strident.

As I wrote last year in “The Trump Card — Ace of Anger Affirmation,” it is clear that “Trump’s support reflects very little about his qualifications, but a lot about his message and how dissatisfied millions of disenfranchised conservatives are with Republican ‘leadership.’ Grassroots Americans are rightly outraged.”

In her endorsement of Trump Tuesday, Sarah Palin focused on the outrage: “Right wingin' bitter clingin' proud clingers of our guns, our god and our religions… Enough is enough. … We are mad and we’ve been had.” (If you’re a “mad” Trump supporter now, get ready to be “had” like you’ve never been had if he is the Republican nominee.)

Limbaugh offered an assessment similar to my own regarding Trump’s angry supporters: “I think those who are with Trump [are not] with him because they think he’s conservative.”

Unfortunately, I think some do believe Trump is a conservative. However, he is at best, a card-carrying patron of the deservedly maligned “establishment Republican cartel” in Washington, which is why it’s lining up behind him, including former Republican presidential loser Bob Dole.

Trump is now personally assailing Cruz, claiming, “[Y]ou know, everybody hates Ted [Cruz]. It’s a very tough thing. They all hate him for a lot of reasons, but they all hate him.”

Ironically, Trump is referring to the fact that his fellow “establishment Republicans” in Washington don’t like Cruz. And his assertion is amusing given that Trump reflexively calls everybody “very stupid” anytime he’s at a podium.

Not only did Trump steal Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again,” but in attempting to cloak his own deep and demonstrable Democrat roots, Trump is now comparing himself to President Reagan: “If you look at Ronald Reagan — and he was a Democrat with a very liberal bent, and he became a Republican with a somewhat conservative … Republican.”

Despite his penchant for incomplete truncated sentences, Trump’s self-aggrandizing comparison is patently absurd, except for one point. Ronald Reagan was a “Democrat” much in the way Donald Trump is now a “Republican” – in name only. And, Despite Trump’s bizarre assertion to the contrary, President Reagan did not have a “very liberal bent,” and clearly he was not just a “somewhat conservative Republican.”

As Reagan said famously about his party affiliation change, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” But today, Trump embraces many of the statist Democratic Party policies Reagan rejected. He is a shallow, petulant and narcissistic minsogynst, far more aligned with Democrats than the Party of Reagan.

If I may, Mr. Trump, I knew Ronald Reagan. Mr. Trump, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

The great tragedy of a prospective Trump presidency would be that, after working tirelessly to gain not only Republican majorities in Congress but substantial conservative representation, those conservatives might be faced with the ultimate RINO in the executive branch.

Caveat Emptor.

Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

 

Trump's Latest Self-promotion Efforts: the Presidency

Has one-third of the Republican party simply lost its collective mind!...starting with Sarah Palin? Her endorsement of Trump makes her a poster child for disconnect. She says the problem in Washington is that the people we send there are making deals to benefit themselves, and ignoring the electorate, and that we need an outsider, someone who isn’t going up there to get along. Practically simultaneously, Trump is going on about how

A.    that Cruz is hated, for many reasons, the rest of Washington hates Cruz; and

B.    that he, Trump, is a deal maker, he knows how to make deals, you get everyone in a room and cajole and give everybody something and make a deal.

Given that this is true…wouldn’t Palin have been endorsing Cruz then? His life proves that he indeed makes deals, but for whom? Always to advance himself…I think his latest deal is with Palin…same purpose as usual.

I cannot see how any who calls himself or herself a conservative or a Christian can vote for Donald.  Not only in the primary, but this may be true in the general election as well.

Starting today with Rich Lowry, you will find on this blog a regular stream of carefully considered essays, columns, etc. on this point. With some you may get a cartoon tossed in for good measure...for educational purposes, of course.

Curt

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The Battle for the Soul of the Right

By Rich Lowry · Jan. 23, 2016

http://patriotpost.us/opinion/40222

At the moment, the Republican establishment is relevant to the presidential-nomination battle only as an epithet.

Less than two weeks from the Iowa caucus, the fight for the Republican nomination isn’t so much a vicious brawl between the grass roots and the establishment as it is a bitter struggle between traditional conservatism and populism that few could have foreseen.

Conservatism has always had a populist element, encapsulated by the oft-quoted William F. Buckley Jr. line that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But the populism was tethered to, and in the service of, an ideology of limited-government constitutionalism.

The fight between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump is over whether that connection will continue to exist, and whether the conservatism (as represented by Cruz) or the populism (as represented by Trump) will be ascendant. Cruz did all he could as long as possible to accommodate Trump, but now that the fight between them is out in the open, the differences are particularly stark.

Cruz is a rigorous constitutionalist. He’s devoted much of his career to defending the Constitution and has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court. Trump has certainly heard of the Constitution, but he may know even less about it than he knows about the Bible.

Cruz is an advocate of limited government who is staking everything in Iowa on a principled opposition to the ethanol mandate. As a quasi-mercantilist and crony capitalist, Trump isn’t particularly bothered by the size of government and is happily touting his support for a bigger ethanol mandate.

Although Cruz is more flexible than his reputation suggests, he has the long baseline of consistency that you would expect from a genuine believer in a political philosophy. Trump has a few long-running themes and bugaboos, but has been all over the map on almost everything and sometimes will meander from one position to another within the same answer, in keeping with his lack of ideological anchor (and limited knowledge of policy).

The two have completely different political styles. Trump is instinctual and has a roguish charm, whereas Cruz is earnest and tightly disciplined. If almost everything about Trump is unconventional, Cruz is outwardly a very traditional politician.

Truth be told, the Texan is a prodigal son of the establishment. If you just looked at Cruz’s CV and had no idea about the mutual hatred between him and his party’s leadership, you’d figure he was the archetypical upwardly mobile Republican politician.

The irony of Cruz’s position now is that, despite all his outsider branding, he is not getting savaged by the establishment. Sure, fellow senators are looking for ways to shiv him, and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad wants him to lose, but they aren’t his biggest worry.

It is Trump who calls him a hypocrite and a liar. It is Trump who is hitting him on his belated disclosure of a Goldman Sachs loan. It is Trump who says he’s a nasty guy and a maniac with a temperament problem. And it is Trump, of course, who constantly raises doubts about his eligibility to serve as president.

If you guessed a key event in the nomination fight would be the “othering” of the most potent tea-party conservative in the country by a billionaire businessman with a long trail of liberal positions and a history of praising President Barack Obama — well, then, you forecast the GOP race perfectly.

In short, Cruz is under assault from a segment of the anti-establishment, although Cruz takes every opportunity to portray himself as the victim of the machinations of dastardly political insiders. The reality is that the establishment is sitting on its hands, agonizing over whom it loathes least, Trump or Cruz, while the fight between populism and conservatism rages.

The battle for the soul of the GOP is now a battle for the soul of the right.

© 2016 by King Features Syndicate