* * *
Depending where you are on the political spectrum, you’ll
likely have different reasons for loving or hating Donald Trump.
To the Establishment - of both parties - he represents an
end to the status quo, the gravy train, and the old methods of not just getting
things done in Washington - but winning votes to stay there.
To activist liberals, Trump, despite his “live and let
live” attitude on many social issues, is anathema to their Utopian,
politically-correct world and indeed everything they stand for. They hate him,
and he hates them back.
* RIGHTEOUS CONTEMPT, I'D TERM IT.
* AND WITH GOOD REASON!
Conservatives, however, are undeniably as divided as
they’ve ever been, or at least since the Goldwater days.
* AGAIN WITH THIS "CONSERVATIVE" CRAP. FOLKS...
THE WORD IS FINE AS A "SHORTHAND" LABEL... BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS
THAT THE BEST WAY TO LOOK AT THE POLITICAL/IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM IS ANARCHY THRU
TOTALITARIANISM.
* ON A LIGHTER NOTE... JOIN ME, MY FRIENDS! JOIN THE
BARKERIST REVOLUTION! SING IT WITH ME (TO THE OLD DR. PEPPER TUNE): "I'M A
BARKER, HE'S A BARKER, SHE'S A BARKER; WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO BE A BARKER
TOO?!"
(*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*)
To those who remain anti-Trump, the #NeverTrump crowd,
the Republican nominee represents nothing less than a complete abandonment of
their principles and the values they consider integral to the fabric of
America. To them, a vote for Trump is a vote against civility, decency, and
everything they hold dear.
* FAILURE TO VOTE FOR TRUMP EQUALS ALLOWING A LEFTIST TO
BE ELECTED AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM TO BE LOCKED IN. PERIOD.
The conservatives who are with Trump, however, see
something entirely different. They see an unprecedented way to accomplish
conservative goals, meaning to actually “conserve” what made America great in
the first place, even without an ideologically pure standard bearer.
The key to this pragmatic position, and the reason it’s
so effective, is the uncomfortable yet true realization that in order to
actually get one’s agenda accomplished legislatively in America, one must
actually win elections on a national scale.
(*SMILE*)
In order to do that, conservatives must abandon the
“conservatism” that in effect “majors on the minors” by focusing on peripheral
issues that, while they may be important morally, don’t personally affect the
average American voter, and instead embrace issues that do.
For their own survival, it’s time for conservatives to
become populists.
* AT LEAST WHERE POPULISM IS MORAL AND ETHICAL!
By making immigration his central campaign issue early
on, Donald Trump did just that, speaking to something that hits home for many
if not most Americans.
We wonder why "our betters" insist on bringing
in two immigrants for every job created when American wages have been stagnant
for decades. We ask why it’s so imperative that masses of unassimilable and
unscreened Muslims be brought to our shores from regions which we’ve helped
destabilize in the first place. Why must our border with Mexico be a sieve that
allows anyone and everyone to enter, while Americans who marry foreigners and
try to get them a legal permanent resident card face so much red tape?
The burden illegal immigration from the Third World
imposes on American society is a steep one, yet one that only ordinary
Americans unable to afford high fences and Gulfstream jets have to pay.
We know that 25% of Federal prisons are filled with
illegal aliens...
We know (often thanks to Donald Trump) about high-profile
cases like the tragic murder of Kate Steinle, but actual figures for illegal
alien crime are hard to find because, as a 2015 Fox News story laments:
“The government agencies that crunch crime numbers are
utterly unable — or unwilling — to pinpoint for the public how many illegal
immigrants are arrested within U.S. borders each year.”
According to the Fox News story, which examined data from
several unaffiliated sources to come up with the numbers the government doesn’t
want to give, the nation’s approximately 11.7 million illegal immigrants are
responsible for 12% of all murder sentences, 20% of all kidnapping sentences,
16% of all drug trafficking sentences, and 13.6% of ALL sentenced offenders in
the U.S.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Additionally, according to the Heritage Foundation,
American taxpayers are on the hook to the tune of almost $20,000 for every
low-skilled immigrant household, which pays roughly $10,000 in taxes while
using $30,000 in government services.
(*BLOOD PRESSURE SKYROCKETING*)
In fact, 57% of all immigrant household with children use
at least one welfare program.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Twenty-two million Americans are currently looking for
full-time work while at least 8 million full-time jobs are held by illegal
immigrants. But... but... but... our "elites" tell us we must bring
in more, and in ever increasing numbers, yet ordinary Americans wonder why -
and side with Donald Trump.
* GO, TRUMP, GO! GO, TRUMP, GO! GO, TRUMP, GO!
Indeed, if immigration were Trump’s main issue, it
[alone] would be a winning one, but it doesn’t stop there.
Trump’s second major policy position, and again one that
clearly pivots away from the Establishment line of both parties, is trade, and
again he nails it. Lecturing Carrier employees who’ve just lost their jobs to
Mexico about the finer points of David Ricardo’s theory of comparative
advantage is almost akin to telling a grieving mother who just lost her child
that “God works in mysterious ways.” But that’s essentially what is happening.
Come hell or high water, free traders are going to stick to their dogma until
it sinks us all.
* YEP. THEY'RE INSANE. THEY'RE ABSOLUTE FOOLS. TOTALLY
INCAPABLE OF RECOGNIZING REALITY EVEN WHEN IT STARES THEM IN THE EYE.
And what is this dogma we are asked by our leaders to
believe? That, according to the CATO Institute, “free trade is its own reward,”
and any efforts aimed at trying to level trade imbalances should be maligned as
“mercantilist.”
(*SNORTING AS I SPIT ON THE GROUND*)
It all sounds good in theory, of course... if it weren’t
for those stubborn facts.
Sure, if the playing field between nations WERE level,
countries specializing in what they do best and trading with other countries
for the things they want but can’t produce as efficiently certainly benefits
everyone more than they would otherwise benefit. Trade certainly CAN be a good
thing.
Problem is, the playing field is far from level.
Aside from the United States, many other countries,
particularly China, actually attempt to protect their workers - [often] at our
expense - keeping their protective tariffs while we lower ours.
Additionally, some countries, like ours, overload their
industries with expensive and burdensome regulations while others, like China,
barely regulate anything at all.
It is an open secret among outsourcing companies that,
while cheap labor is often cited as the reason for a move overseas or below the
border, the primary reason some industries move, particularly the ones more
prone to pollution, is actually to escape our costly environmental regulations.
(*NOD*)
Free trade does help some, especially the Top 1% to whom
many of the Republican beltway elite are beholden.
(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)
Of these, Pat Buchanan writes “[these] masters of the
universe fly Gulfstream Vs to Davos and Dubai to dine with titled Europeans,
Saudi princes and Chinese billionaires. These are America’s winners from "free
trade." The losers? Middle Americans. The average U.S. family has not seen
a rise in real wages in 40 years. This is directly traceable to the loss of
more than one-third of all U.S. manufacturing jobs. And that loss, that
deindustrialization of America, is directly tied to the $10 trillion in trade
deficits since Bush I.”
* GO, PAT, GO! GO, PAT, GO! GO, PAT, GO!
And so, middle America continues to wake up.
In fact, based on the percentage of voters who supported
both Trump and Bernie Sanders, an increasingly significant percentage of
American voters aren’t buying what their leaders are selling them when it comes
to trade.
* LET US PRAY!
For example, while Paul Ryan and indeed most Republican
lawmakers, pundits, and Party donors champion the "free trade"
mantra, primary exit polling showed a whopping 54% of Wisconsin voters believe
trade deals take away U.S. jobs.
* HERE'S HOW TO DONATE TO NEHLEN FOR CONGRESS!
Instead, Donald Trump asks the same questions
middle-class America asks, and on this issue especially the guy who’s supposed
to have changed his mind at least forty times on every issue has been
remarkably consistent. "Why should we be sacrificing our high paying jobs
on the altar of globalism? Why can’t we have FAIR trade that benefits everyone
instead of job killing, wage destroying “free” trade?" And especially, "why
has America’s most prosperous eras been when she has been the most protective
on trade?"
* GOD BLESS DONALD TRUMP!
On foreign policy, Trump again finds himself with
ordinary Americans.
* YEP! DAMN STRAIGHT!
What does protecting a Europe which refuses to pay for
it, or policing the borders of Iraq, or toppling dictators only to replace them
with ISIS have to do with making Americans secure?
Why do we need to thumb our nose at Russia when they are
fighting ISIS harder than anyone else?
Our elites would have us entangled everywhere in the
world, and yet Trump asks the same question we do – "Why not consider
putting America and Americans first?"
That’s populism in a nutshell, taking the people’s side
against the power elites who clearly do not have our best interests at heart.
Donald Trump wants to put America first!
* DONALD TRUMP WANTS TO PUT AMERICANS FIRST!
The Establishment and the elites hate him for it, but
Americans love him and are willing to overlook a whole host of other gaffes and
even personality defects not because they don’t think those things aren’t
important in and of themselves, but because they understand, unlike the
conservative nit-pickers who still refuse to back him, that he is right and
consistent on the issues that affect them personally.
* SANITY, FOLKS... THAT'S ALL I'M ASKING FOR... JUST...
SANITY...
The conservative movement in America has, for all intents
and purposes, been a complete failure.
* YEP. HIJACKED BY THE RINOs. PAUL RYAN IS SPEAKER. MITCH
MCCONNELL IS SENATE MAJORITY LEADER. AND SOMEWHERE... PERHAPS AT 40,000 FEET IN
A G6... JEB BUSH AND MITT ROMNEY ARE SCHEMING TO ELECT HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
TO THE PRESIDENCY.
(*SHRUG*)
* NO. MAYBE NOT LITERALLY... BUT YOU "GET" THE
POINT. THERE IS LITERALLY A 6TH COLUMN WITHIN THE GOP.
"Conservatives" have bowed at the altar of
“free trade” while watching our manufacturing base disappear.
They’ve surrendered to the oligarchs who want cheap labor
and the ‘churchians’ who see it as their God-given duty to ‘rescue’ the world
by letting the world come here by throwing our borders open to anyone who wants
a free ride.
They’ve let the warmongering neocons get us involved in
more and more foreign places where we’re neither needed nor wanted.
[Bush/Ryan/McConnell "conservatism"] ... has
failed to “conserve” bathrooms that are safe for little girls, much less
anything else of note! Could this be because conservatives have abandoned the
issues that Americans, particularly middle-class Americans, care about and are
truly affected by? Where in all this is the concern for middle-class America?
(*SILENCE*)
Populism, on the other hand, is making a resurgence in
America and indeed in increasingly significant pockets across Europe because it
puts our people first - FIRST! That is why it is winning. That is why the
elites hate it so much, and it’s ultimately the root of why they hate Donald
Trump.
(*NOD*)
As conservatives, our reality is this: In the words of
retiring Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, the architect of the
Volunteer State’s massive shift from dominant Democratic to overwhelmingly
conservative Republican government, “It matters who governs.”
(*NOD*)
* AND IT MATTERS WHO IS APPOINTED TO FILL THE SEAT ON THE
SUPREME COURT ONCE HELD BY JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA!
#NeverTrumpers want the perfect candidate, or at least
one more perfect than Donald Trump. After the 1964 Goldwater debacle, William
F. Buckley wrote, “Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs
become prohibitive.”
Of Buckley’s paradigm shift, Joe Scarborough wrote in
Politio, “Goldwater’s disastrous defeat in 1964 taught WFB that lesson all too
well, and Reagan’s pragmatic conservatism over the next two decades would also
show Buckley just how effective a conservative politician could be if he was
more interested in persuading voters than posing as an ideological puritan.”
(*NOD*)
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