To explain the inexplicable rise of Donald Trump is to calibrate the anger of a fed-up crowd that is enjoying the comeuppance of an elite that never pays for the ramifications of its own ideology. The elite media, whose trademark is fad and cant, writes off the fed-up crowd as naïve and susceptible to demagoguery as the contradictory and hypocritical Trump manipulates their anger. In fact, they probably got it backwards. Trump is a transitory vehicle of the fed-up crowd, a current expression of their distaste for both Democratic and Republican politics, but not an end in and of himself. The fed-up crowd is tired of being demagogued to death by progressives, who brag of “working across the aisle” and “bipartisanship” as they ram through agendas with executive orders, court decisions, and public ridicule. So the fed-ups want other conservative candidates to emulate Trump’s verve, energy, eagerness to speak the unspeakable, and no-holds barred Lee Atwater style — without otherwise being Trump.
This is one of VDH’s best recent columns and explains well the appeal (for now) of Donald Trump to conservative voters. Worth reading.
VDH is right (as he often is) but that doesn’t mean that Trump isn’t as much an adolescent asserting himself with all the uncertainties and easily manipulated wild ideas of an adolescent. The grown ups (like say Perry) have tried to deal with the border and know its complexities.
Richard Luger thought he was one of the anointed – until he got beat. He and his staff childishly worked against his Republican rival (Rodney Dangerfield). How do you make these guys care, when they have jobs for life and with all the power to do anything.
“The grown ups (like say Perry) have tried to deal with the border and know its complexities.”
I have to disagree.
I don’t think it’s complicated at all. Build a fence and guard it, if nothing else. This alone seems to work for many other countries around the globe. Of course, since the US has an army it could also be sent to the border, and use actual armed force to prevent people from crossing into the country without permission. Plus, the United States government also has a wide variety of tools it could use against the Mexican government itself, with the goal of forcing it to end its policy of encouraging emigration to the US.
But none of that gets done, somehow.
What the US lacks is a government with the will to enforce the existence of the US border, among its many other failings.
It’s surprising to me that there hasn’t much “praising by faint condemnation” of Trump by R. hopefuls. With the exception of a comment or two by Carly Fiorina I haven’t heard sound bytes saying things like “this negativity and insensitivity has no place in the Republican Party!…but he does have a point…blah, blah, blah” It would seem a natural for a party-man to borrow some of that popularism.
Trump’s campaign organization is oddly interesting.
His campaign manager previously worked his way up through Americans for Prosperity. Say what you want about that organization (Koch Brothers money seems to be the biggest complaint), but they’ve been unflinchingly consistent advocates for Tea Party policies since their founding.
His chief of operations just graduated from college last month.
He has a couple others that worked for Romney’s campaign and also some of his former employees. All of his top people are on the youngish side, 20s, 30s & 40s.
If I may add to Dr. Hanson’s argument, there is this post today by Ben Domenech at The Federalist.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/27/why-does-the-republican-party-exist/
It is an examination of the purpose of the Republican party, and what they are fighting for now that their original purpose [ending slavery and preserving the Union] has been accomplished 150 years ago. It is revealing.
I kind of like what Angelo Codevilla has to say.
Trump has hardly scratched the surface and may not be able to do more than that. Yet our rulers know the list of things divide them from the American people is long. They want to avoid like the plague any and all arguments on the substance of those things. They fear the rise of an un-intimidated leader more graceful and precise than Trump, someone whose vision is fuller but who is even more passionate in championing the many resentments the voicing of just a few channeled so much support to Trump.
Here are some examples: Justice Kennedy’s majority opinions in Windsor and Obergefell preemptively accused anyone who opposed redefining marriage to include homosexuals of being “offensive,” “hateful.” Refusal to honor homosexual unions, he wrote, is not “explicable by anything except animus.”
What he says is that Trump is hitting a spot that others could find and exploit. Others who seem more stable than Trump.
two things that are not a priority at all for Republican voters, mind you, but for the corporatist constituency the Republican Party actually serves, are near the top of the list.
This is also excellent and explains much; from the Federalist piece.
Here is the Trump campaign’s chief of marketing. She previously worked as the boardroom secretary on The Apprentice, and she had the line, “Mr Trump will see you now’ or something like that.
I don’t know if this is a campaign or a bad made-for-cable movie.
Depending on how the debates go, this could all blow up into a big joke, but on the other hand it could be one of those times when it’s just crazy enough to work.
A nicely appointed flying machine, that. The boardroom apprentice is also a welcome breath of life, after seeing the parade of baritone harridans, fops and beard queens associated with this dark carnival. (how did Ernest Moniz escape from my ’74 HS yearbook?!?) But seriously, I cannot fathom where it’s going either, traps of every sort are being set, and I just can’t imagine…
But, I was quite sure that someone with ties to the Weathermen and Black Panthers would never get close either. I just hope he keeps sayin’ stuff and pays his security detail well.
“The grown ups (like say Perry) have tried to deal with the border and know its complexities.”
Right
“I don’t think it’s complicated at all. Build a fence and guard it, if nothing else. This alone seems to work for many other countries around the globe. Of course, since the US has an army it could also be sent to the border, and use actual armed force to prevent people from crossing into the country without permission. Plus, the United States government also has a wide variety of tools it could use against the Mexican government itself, with the goal of forcing it to end its policy of encouraging emigration to the US.”
Wrong. 2/3 of the illegal immigrants entered the country legally and over-stayed their student, work or visitors visas. Putting up stronger fences and deploying the military is a gross over-simplification that would do little good.
Many (most perhaps) of the 2/3 that over=stayed their visas have applied and will eventually be allowed to stay, but the same bumbling incompetence and bureaucratic delay that is the hallmark of everything else the government does causes the legal immigration process to be a train wreck.
Why is it that we conservatives clearly see the inability of big government to get anything done with accuracy and efficiency, yet we push for greater government spending and action in the immigration process and somehow expect them to get it right?
Bottom line – The grown ups do, in fact, have to deal with the complexity of the immigration issue.
“2/3 of the illegal immigrants entered the country legally and over-stayed their student, work or visitors visas. Putting up stronger fences and deploying the military is a gross over-simplification that would do little good.”
Well, in your own words a secure border would have prevented 1/3 of the illegal aliens here now from entering, which in my view is absolutely not a small reduction. Plus, the open borders maniacs presently ruling the United States seem to disagree with your assertion that a secure border is of little significance, because their fight against it has been endless and bitter.
“Many (most perhaps) of the 2/3 that over=stayed their visas have applied and will eventually be allowed to stay, but the same bumbling incompetence and bureaucratic delay that is the hallmark of everything else the government does causes the legal immigration process to be a train wreck.”
Excuse me, but if someone overstays their visa and illegally remains in the country then this has absolutely nothing to do with the legal immigration system. This is a matter for law enforcement.
“Why is it that we conservatives clearly see the inability of big government to get anything done with accuracy and efficiency, yet we push for greater government spending and action in the immigration process and somehow expect them to get it right?”
In other words you believe that the present US government is absolutely incapable of preventing the unauthorized entry of foreigners into the United States, regardless of how much money is deployed for the task. Good to know. But it follows from that assertion that the US government is also incapable of preventing a foreign invasion of the United States, because border security and pass-port checking are infinitely easier than preventing foreign invasion.
In fact, I bet nation-states that don’t even have armies are capable of securing their borders and checking up on and removing foreigners lacking permission to be there.
“Bottom line – The grown ups do, in fact, have to deal with the complexity of the immigration issue.”
No, the actual bottom line is that the supposed grown ups have failed miserably to deal with the immigration issue, and on every level. They’ve failed to secure the border, obviously. They’ve failed to fix the legal immigration system, obviously. They’ve failed to prevent criminal illegal aliens, deported multiple times, from killing Americans. They’ve failed to prevent the entry of jihadis, who go on to kill Americans. They’ve failed to convince the American people that the de facto open border policy we have now is correct. They’ve even failed to get that policy written into law, despite controlling the government, which would at least allow them to stop having to make stupid and obviously false arguments in favor of it.
Failure. That’s the hallmark of the present regime- and and regimes so thoroughly marked by failure, endless failure, don’t tend to last, one way or another.
So spending billions to secure the border knowing full well that 2/3 of the illegals will still be here strikes you (and Mr. Trump) as an effective solution to the immigration problem?
What exactly do you and Mr. Trump suggest we do about the remaining 2/3? Or will that have to wait for the grown-ups to address?
“So spending billions to secure the border knowing full well that 2/3 of the illegals will still be here strikes you (and Mr. Trump) as an effective solution to the immigration problem?”
So now I’m tasked to come up with a complete solution to the massive immigration problem because I’ve noticed that the solution to the border issue is obvious? Of course I am, because the goalposts never stay in the same place for open border maniacs.
I didn’t even make the claim that a secure border fence would do anything at all about illegal aliens already here.
“What exactly do you and Mr. Trump suggest we do about the remaining 2/3? Or will that have to wait for the grown-ups to address?”
I did note, however, that those self-described grown-ups in which you have so much naive faith have failed miserably- MISERABLY- to resolve the border and immigration problems of the country, along with every other problem.
Except, that is, the problem of how to enrich themselves at public expense.
They’ve got that one all wrapped up.
I’m hardly an ‘Open-border maniac”. I do, however, understand that grossly over-simplified solution like throwing up a fence at one extreme to granting across the board amnesty at the other extreme are not solutions at all. They are 30 second sound bites that please the masses but ignore the complexities. If the solution were really that simple it would have been implemented long ago.
The grown-ups – like the governors of Florida and Texas who actually deal with immigration – are shouted down by the simple minded right wingers as being soft on immigration and will listen to nothing but a Trumpesque rant about rapists and sending in the military.
… kind of like what you are doing to me here when I suggest there is more to it than fences and military.
Bill,
Agreed on most of your points. The border-state governors have experience in dealing with immigration issues that many conservative pontificators lack. The nature of the issues varies by state. Many illegals did not come here via surreptitious border crossings. And expecting the inept federal bureaucracy to clean up the problem is unrealistic if not delusional.
However, the conservative activists are also right about some things. The Obama administration appears to be implementing a plan to open the Mexican border as a way to pack voter rolls with new Democrats. There is a problem with illegal-immigrant criminals whom we willfully fail to deport. And there is much demagoguery by leftists and Chamber of Commerce type Republicans that attempts to legitimate illegal immigration and to paint immigration skeptics as racists whose concerns should be ignored.
Conservative anti-immigration people might be more willing to compromise if the Left, the Obama administration and the Republican Party leadership were arguing in good faith. Trump is a phenomenon largely because mainstream Republican officials don’t want to address issues that matter a great deal to their constituents.
Jonathan,
I agree with you entirely.
“I’m hardly an ‘Open-border maniac”. I do, however, understand that grossly over-simplified solution like throwing up a fence at one extreme at one extreme to granting across the board amnesty at the other extreme are not solutions at all.”
The point about a border fence is that is the simplest, most obvious thing that can be done to get control of the whole illegal immigration mess. It works to control illegal entry for many countries, including India, Israel, Hungary, and others. It has worked well at certain locations along the US-Mexican border, such as San Diego, where it reportedly reduced illegal crossing by 90%. It has a rather clear metric for success or failure, limiting the ability for an incompetent bureaucracy to claim success where there is none. It requires nothing from state governors at all. And an armed force already exists with the task of protecting the border written right into its name.
Yet the US government is utterly unwilling to build a complete, secure fence, despite all of the above and more.
I submit that if the government is unwilling to build a such a fence to solve even the problem of illegal immigration via illegal border crossing, then it will also be unwilling to do anything more difficult to solve the problem of illegal immigration as a whole- and hence, there is no point in presenting any more difficult possible solutions, as they will not be acted upon.
“They are 30 second sound bites that please the masses but ignore the complexities.”
Yes, we hear a whole lot about how confounded complex the whole thing is. The bestest government minds paid the mostest money simply can’t figure out what to, what to do…
I don’t buy it. I take the unwillingness of the government to build a border fence as a useful heuristic to conclude that that it has no interest in solving the problem of illegal immigration as most Americans- “the masses-” would consider solving it. That is, by preventing it.
“If the solution were really that simple it would have been implemented long ago.”
Pardon me, but I have explicitly disavowed your idea that I claimed a border fence would be a solution to the whole mess at least once. Quoting myself, “What the US lacks is a government with the will to enforce the existence of the US border, among its many other failings.” I stand by that statement, which I have elaborated upon further in this comment.
“The grown-ups – like the governors of Florida and Texas who actually deal with immigration – are shouted down by the simple minded right wingers as being soft on immigration and will listen to nothing but a Trumpesque rant about rapists and sending in the military.”
Hilarious! Your idea that the governors of Florida and Texas are being “shouted down” is ludicrous. If anyone is being “shouted down” it’s the people who object to the present open border policy of the national government, who are tarred (for example) as “simple minded right wingers as being soft on immigration and will listen to nothing but etc, etc.”
“kind of like what you are doing to me here when I suggest there is more to it than fences and military.”
No, I have no power to “shout you down” here at all, which should be obvious, and if you think someone disagreeing with you is “shouting you down,” I disagree there as well. Plus, I thought it was so blindingly obvious that there was more to “it” than fences and military that I had no need to explicitly state that there was more to “it” than fences and military.
I was wrong there, at least.
“are shouted down by the simple minded right wingers as being soft on immigration and will listen to nothing but a Trumpesque rant about rapists and sending in the military.”
This sounds a lot like the closed system of the Progressives.
“Right wingers” Check.
“simple minded.” Check.
“rant about rapists” Check.
Sounds like Obama about Republicans who doubt his Iran policy.
What som of us simple right wingers are concerned about is any evidence that our betters have any intention of doing anything until the problem is insoluble. Sort of like the Labour minister admitting they were wrong when it is too late.
The documents also contain revelations that immigrants from all countries into Britain are more likely to be out of work than the native population – and are less likely to engage in any form of “civic participation.”
More than one third of London’s population, moreover, has now been born outside the UK.
The release will turn the spotlight once again on the party’s controversial record on immigration. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, used a weekend interview to admit the party had “got things wrong” on the issue.
At this point what does it matter ?
So you and The Donald knew all along that the fence wouldn’t really solve most of the illegal immigration problem? I stand corrected – I must have missed your comments and his speeches about building the great wall that acknowledged that fact.
I’m sure you also know that there has not been a single known incidence of a Muslim terrorist attempting to enter the USA through the Mexican border, but there have been several through the Canadian border, so is it safe to assume you end The Donald have a plan to also build a great wall along that border? Otherwise you wouldn’t be using the national security argument to justify the fence. Right?
the governors of Florida and Texas who actually deal with immigration – are shouted down by the simple minded right wingers
IF ONLY
“So you and The Donald knew all along that the fence wouldn’t really solve most of the illegal immigration problem? I stand corrected – I must have missed your comments and his speeches about building the great wall that acknowledged that fact.”
I don’t speak for Donald Trump, obviously, and if you haven’t understood what I was trying to say by now more words from me won’t help you.
“I’m sure you also know that there has not been a single known incidence of a Muslim terrorist attempting to enter the USA through the Mexican border, but there have been several through the Canadian border, so is it safe to assume you end The Donald have a plan to also build a great wall along that border? Otherwise you wouldn’t be using the national security argument to justify the fence. Right?”
However, I would like to comment on all this, which is new.
First off, I didn’t make any comment on the national security aspect of the illegal immigration problem, except facetiously. If the government won’t build a fence secure enough to keep out casual migrants it follows logically that it also won’t build a fence secure enough to keep out determined infiltrators. Hence, there wasn’t any point for me to bring up the national security aspect because it was covered when I noted that the government wouldn’t do the most obvious thing to control illegal immigration- building a secure fence.
I will now, since you brought it up. Bluntly, the US government has no idea who is in this country or where they are from. There could literally be a full division of armed Iranian troops inside the United States, with their families, receiving welfare payments, and the government would have no idea. I recall that a GOP candidate in Texas once marched a mariachi band across the border in a vain attempt to highlight the complete and utter lack of security, so I see no reason why that division couldn’t at least bring in such weapons as a rocket propelled grenades or heavy machine guns, plus ammunition.
Or perhaps even a nuke, or several. Perhaps that explains to oddly intense desire of Obama to reach a deal with Iran, but in any case the national security implication of a lack of border security are a lot more serious than a few dimwits who manage to drive over from Canada.
But if it takes a great wall to prevent terrorist attacks from that source, then yes I’m all for it.
The consequences of not building that wall could be very ugly- not that the US government seems to notice or care.