By Daniel Greenfield
Trump's ballooning polls are drawing all the predictable reactions. But the debate over Trump misses the point. Why has Trump made such a big splash at all? It's because he's a bold assertive communicator who unapologetically says what so many are thinking. Whether or not he believes what he's saying.
To anyone complaining about how well Trump is polling-- that just shows what's missing. I am not recommending Trump, his business success is mostly myth and he carefully controls and cultivates his image. But as part of his image consciousness, he has hit on exactly what it takes to oppose Obama. The Randian figure of the successful straight talking hard charging businessman, in sharp contrast to Obama's nuances and lack of assertiveness. Obama is an egotist who pretends to be a humanitarian, Trump doesn't pretend.
Trump would not be a problem for either Republicans or Democrats-- if Republicans had their act together. But the shortage of viable candidates has created a vacuum. And the Donald just stepped into that vacuum.
Trump is polling well, because he sticks out in a field of mediocre and not ready for prime time candidates. His image won't stand up too well to close scrutiny, but for most voters that's not an issue. People have an idea of who Trump is in their minds that outweighs the media's image of him. The media was able to shape Palin's public image with their smear campaigns because she was an unknown. They had more trouble doing the same thing to McCain. With Trump they have to work with what they have, which is all the things that Trump admits to anyway.
But as I said before, this isn't really about Trump. It's about us. It's about a lack of leadership.
Conservatives complain about RINO's, but then why does it fall to Northeastern liberal Republicans like Christie and Giuliani to be the rock stars of the party. Where are the true blue conservatives leaders who can take office, dramatically reshape a city or state, take on established interests and maintain an assertive media profile. Palin has come closest to doing the same thing, but as much as I like her, she has yet to move beyond her base.
There was a time when Republicans were thinking of changing the law so that Schwarzenegger could be president. Not because he was qualified, but because he was a rock star. In office, he went another way as soon as his slogans met reality. Trump's appearance smacks of the same thing. He's a rock star and this is rock star politics. We can decry it, but the alternative is to run our own version of Adlai Stevenson or Goldwater, the man who says the right things, but gets creamed by public perception.
But you know Reagan was a rock star too. And a divorced former union president. He had core conservative beliefs, they weren't of the dogmatic variety demanded by some now. But he communicated them in a way that made sense to people, no matter what the media said.
The attacks on Trump from the left have been predictable. The attacks from the right also. Even if we close our eyes and try to pretend that Trump is a conservative or a Republican (he's not), then he's of the Northeastern urban/suburban liberal variety. Which means that he treats universal health care, open borders and gun control as default solutions. That's no different than Romney or Christie. And probably not just them either. Those are all major problems with candidates of that stripe.
Some of the criticisms of Trump are on point. He has a long history of supporting both Democrats and Republicans opportunistically. It's unknown to what extent that's social lobbying, but probably to a large extent it was. "I was telling them what they wanted to hear then, but I'm not doing that to you now", doesn't make for a credible defense. Though it's common enough among politicians. Who is the real Trump? You'll have to elect him to know.
I wouldn't go so far as to call Trump insincere either. He seems to be one of a string of figures in the New York business community lashing out at Obama. I doubt Trump's conservatism, but I don't doubt his disgust at Obama.
Last year his daughter was being critical of Obama. I doubt it was prep work for an unlikely candidacy. Especially since it's what I hear day in and day out from Democrats lashing out at Obama over his mismanagement of the economy. And while it's easy to point to his bipartisan campaign donations, his PAC donations outside the RNC and DNC have been to generally pro-business groups. So I may doubt Trump's position on abortion, but I don't doubt his generally pro-business worldview.
Politically it's most probable that Trump is an independent. He donates to both Republicans and Democrats. He probably doesn't like or dislike either party very much, favoring Republicans on economic issues and Democrats on social issues. Foreign affairs probably mean very little to him. He might be classed as a libertarian, but he's certainly not against government social policies. And so he's making a direct case that the government is being mismanaged. And it's a case that appeals to a lot of people.
His proposal for a one time 14.25 tax on trusts and individuals with over 10 million dollars to close the deficit as a tradeoff for eliminating the federal inheritance tax is loopy, but it's also creative as a perverse method of demolishing a table leg of the greed state. Albeit unserious.
Some attacks though are rigidly dogmatic. Smart Money claims trump is no capitalist because he wants to impose a 25 percent tariff on Chinese goods and is opposed to a German takeover of the New York stock exchange.
Those aren't pure capitalist positions, but they are legitimately American and conservative positions. Otherwise opposing immigration's influx of cheap labor would also make you a traitor to capitalism. Isn't limiting jobs in American companies to people whom the government decides can come here also a case of the government picking winners and losers in the marketplace?
Smart Money claims that barriers to trade are right out of Karl Marx. Then Reagan must have been staying up nights reading Das Kapital because he was one of the more aggressively protectionist presidents. But then he was an American president who defended his country's interests, rather than some abstract notion that we had to respond to Japan's own protectionism by turning the other economic cheek.
Anti-protectionists say that tariffs force consumers to pay more for goods. But what is the real cost of even Wal-Mart Chinese junk when people don't have the jobs to pay for them? With an 80's Japan or an 00's China which uses state subsidized production and control to produce masses of cheap products for export to America-- protectionism is simply self-defense. To a pure capitalist it might not matter much if America survives, or if it loses its manufacturing sector completely, but to an American leader it should.
But there's no real point to the nitpicking. Trump is not an ideal candidate. And we don't have any who are.
As in 2008, far more Republicans know which candidates they are opposed to, than the candidate they support. The ether is full of negative talking points about Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, Pawlenty, etc. Positive reasons to support candidates that are based on reason, not emotion, are much harder to come by. We are either told to support unprincipled candidates who can win or principled candidates who can't win.
Facing such bad choices, Trump should be a wakeup call. Not to elect him, but to think seriously about 2012 before it's too late. We have good candidates or good men. Now we need a good man who is also a good candidate.
Sultan Knish
