I have long believed that there is a global power elite that manipulates the political process to its advantage. This strikes me as a “no duh” assertion. What separates me from some of my more conspiratorial brethren, is that I don’t believe this power elite is omnipotent. They cannot foresee or control for every contingency. The success of Donald Trump’s campaign is one such contingency they didn’t foresee, and the rather ham-handed way they have responded to it demonstrates that the conspiracy is not all powerful.
Now that the Republican primary is essentially down to Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, it’s time for conservatives to give some serious thought to the choice they now face. I believe it is fair to say that both Trump and Cruz are anti-Establishment candidates, and both have tapped into the anger of voters who are tired of the status quo and the GOP Establishment, but they are anti-Establishment in different and important ways.
When did “low information” become the new political slur de jour? People need to stop. Even Ted Cruz, who should know better, foolishly used it to describe Donald Trump’s supporters. Well guess what, Einsteins, low information likely describes 95% of the voting population compared to political hobbyists who argue about politics on FaceBook, Twitter, political websites, etc. the way others talk about sports or their kids.
If the Donald Trump campaign has done nothing else, it has revealed some serious fault lines in the American movement that calls itself conservative. Trump advisor Stephen Miller correctly assessed that the rise of Trump (and to some degree Bernie Sanders) has made this election about globalism both left and right vs. nationalism.
A common theme I have seen lately is the contention that Donald Trump is too uncouth and his populism too inchoate to be worthy of support from serious conservatives. This was a major theme of the recent National ReviewAgainst Trump issue. His behavior is not Presidential and his policies are not coherent enough we are repeatedly lectured by the self-appointed gatekeepers of movement conservatism, often derisively (but accurately) referred to as Conservative Inc.
I have previously made the policy case for why I believe conservatives should support Donald Trump. Briefly, the two main pillars of Trump’s campaign, support for immigration restriction and opposition to global “free” trade deals, are conservative in effect and in the most basic sense of the term, contrary to the protests of some free enterprise uber alles “conservative” ideologues.
One of the raps against Donald Trump frequently trotted out by some of his conservative critics, often supporters of one of the more traditional conservative candidates, is that he is not really a conservative. Some even call him a liberal. Yet despite this charge, Trump continues to gain the support of prominent conservatives whose conservative credentials it is difficult to impugn.
A strange thing happened on the way to the Donald Trump vs. Ted Cruz showdown that the CNN panelist wanted to provoke at last night’s debate. It didn’t happen. Instead, Trump praised Cruz and refused to engage. Trump is combative, but he is also very clever.
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