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Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
What Trump Has Wrought
As Wisconsinites head for the polls, our Beltway elites are almost giddy. For they foresee a Badger State bashing for Donald Trump, breaking his momentum toward the Republican nomination.
Should the Donald fall short of the delegates needed to win on the first ballot, 1,237, there is growing certitude that he will be stopped. First by Ted Cruz; then, perhaps, by someone acceptable to the establishment, which always likes to have two of its own in the race.
But this city of self-delusion should realize there is no going back for America. For, whatever his stumbles of the last two weeks, Trump has helped to unleash the mightiest force of the 21st century: nationalism.
Transnationalism and globalism are moribund.
First among the issues on which Trump has triumphed — “We will build the wall — and Mexico will pay for it!” — is border security.
Republican candidates who failed to parrot Trump on illegal immigration were among the first casualties.
For that is where America is, and that is where the West is.
Consider Europe. Four months ago, Angela Merkel was Time’s Person of the Year for throwing open the gates to the “huddled masses” of the Middle and Near East.
Merkel’s Germany is now leading the EU in amassing a huge bribe to the Turks to please take them back, and keep them away from the Greek islands that are now Islam’s Ellis Island into Europe.
Africa’s population will double to 2.5 billion by 2050. With 60 percent of Africans now under 25 years of age, millions will find their way to the Med to cross to the Old Continent where Europeans are aging, shrinking and dying. Look for gunboats in the Med.
If immigration is the first issue where Trump connected with the people, the second is trade.
Republicans are at last learning that trade deficits do matter, that free trade is not free. The cost comes in dead factories, lost jobs, dying towns and the rising rage of an abandoned Middle America whose country this is and whose wages have stagnated for decades.
Economists who swoon over figures on consumption forget what America’s 19th-century meteoric rise to self-sufficiency teaches, and what all four presidents on Mount Rushmore understood.
Production comes before consumption. Who owns the orchard is more essential than who eats the apples. We have exported the economic independence that Hamilton taught was indispensable to our political independence. We have forgotten what made us great.
China, Japan, Germany — the second, third and fourth largest economies on earth — all owe their prosperity to trade surpluses run for decades at the expense of the Americans.
A third casualty of Trumpism is the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus among liberal interventionists and neoconservatives.
Trump subjects U.S. commitments to a cost-benefit analysis, as seen from the standpoint of cold national interest.
What do we get from continuing to carry the largest load of the defense of a rich Europe, against a Russia with one-fourth of Europe’s population?
How does Vladimir Putin, leader of a nation that in the last century lost its European and world empires and a third of its landmass, threaten us?
Why must we take the lead in confronting and containing Putin in Ukraine, Crimea and Georgia? No vital U.S. interest is imperiled there, and Russia’s ties there are older and deeper than ours to Puerto Rico.
Why is it the responsibility of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to defend the claims of Hanoi, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Brunei, to rocks, reefs and islets in the South China Sea — against the claims of China?
American hawks talk of facing down Beijing in the South and East China Seas while U.S. companies import so much in Chinese-made goods they are fully subsidizing Beijing’s military budget.
Does this make sense?
Patriotism, preserving and protecting the unique character of our nation and people, economic nationalism, America First, staying out of other nation’s wars — these are as much the propellants of Trumpism as is the decline of the American working and middle class.
Trump’s presence in the race has produced the largest turnout ever in the primaries of either party. He has won the most votes, most delegates, most states. Wisconsin aside, he will likely come to Cleveland in that position.
If, through rules changes, subterfuge and faithless delegates, party elites swindle him out of the nomination, do they think that the millions who came out to vote for Trump will go home and say: We lost it fair and square?
Do they think they can then go back to open borders, amnesty, a path to citizenship, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and nation building?
Whatever happens to Trump, the country has spoken. And if the establishment refuses to heed its voice, and returns to the policies the people have repudiated, it should take heed of John F. Kennedy’s warning:
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
a load of bullshit
Ugh, what a load of bullshit. That opinion piece conveniently forgets that there's an equally radical movement on the left that has at least equal and from the latest national polls larger support with the general population. Fact of the matter is that beyond further polarization between the two parties (and between the two extremes in both parties) there's really nothing new under the sun. Trumps success isn't a reflection of the nation, it's a reflection of the republican party.
Nationalism is an affliction, nothing more than an excuse for the unwashed masses to claim superiority because the country they happen to be born in happens to be good at something.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
Whatever you think of nationalism, you can't deny that Trump has awoken a large part of the country to his cause. Nobody predicted this, and the only reason he is the current front runner is because he appeals to something in the public.
True, there is also a leftist movement. But that movement has a lot of establishment support. A lot. Trump is basically grass roots, and imo because of that, a purer representation of the public will.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
True, there is also a leftist movement. But that movement has a lot of establishment support. A lot. Trump is basically grass roots, and imo because of that, a purer representation of the public will.
Wait... what? Bernie has more establishment support than Trump? Bernie's campaign is not grass roots? Trumps disapproval ratings are through the roof, yet he's somehow a better reflection of the will of the people?
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
polluxlm wrote:True, there is also a leftist movement. But that movement has a lot of establishment support. A lot. Trump is basically grass roots, and imo because of that, a purer representation of the public will.
Wait... what? Bernie has more establishment support than Trump? Bernie's campaign is not grass roots? Trumps disapproval ratings are through the roof, yet he's somehow a better reflection of the will of the people?
I haven't seen any negative Bernie stories in the European media, but I see one on Trump every day. Sure, he is no establishment favorite, but they're not going after him either. Where he is out of tune he is often appealing to the same things as Trump. Like protectionism and scaling back the foreign wars.
Trump is a better reflection because he is more popular. There is definitely a demographic split in their appeals though, and I would say they represent two sides of the same movement. A populace fed up with bad governance.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
I haven't seen any negative Bernie stories in the European media, but I see one on Trump every day. Sure, he is no establishment favorite, but they're not going after him either. Where he is out of tune he is often appealing to the same things as Trump. Like protectionism and scaling back the foreign wars.
I don't think the European media matters to an American election. Nor should it.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
polluxlm wrote:I haven't seen any negative Bernie stories in the European media, but I see one on Trump every day. Sure, he is no establishment favorite, but they're not going after him either. Where he is out of tune he is often appealing to the same things as Trump. Like protectionism and scaling back the foreign wars.
I don't think the European media matters to an American election. Nor should it.
I can only go by what I see. I also read some US papers though, and they aren't much better. I have however seen more support there.
That there is a general slant against Trump I don't think can be argued.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
Lomax wrote:polluxlm wrote:I haven't seen any negative Bernie stories in the European media, but I see one on Trump every day. Sure, he is no establishment favorite, but they're not going after him either. Where he is out of tune he is often appealing to the same things as Trump. Like protectionism and scaling back the foreign wars.
I don't think the European media matters to an American election. Nor should it.
I can only go by what I see. I also read some US papers though, and they aren't much better. I have however seen more support there.
That there is a general slant against Trump I don't think can be argued.
You're right. I'm in Europe and I seem the same. There is a liberal bias in the European media in comparison to American media that's for sure. I don't think European media is a very good predictor of American politics however.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
I think what Polluxlm is saying in a way is that the support for Trump is more like "We don't like any of the other candidates or politicians at all. So we choose you" whereas the support for Bernie is "We like your ideas & views moreso than Hillary's".
Not saying Bernie is "establishment" per se, but he has a foundation & background whereas Trump is more like throwing darts in the dark.
