Just in case you did not know it, I am not exactly a big fan of one Donald J. Trump and his merry band of Trumpettes.
Don't get me wrong, at one level, I get the frustration that the Donald represents. The political class doesn't really listen to the voters and does what it wants no matter what. Although the Donald's anger is directed at the ossified, incompetent Republican leadership in and out of congress, there is always Bernie Sanders, the vowed Socialist reminding the left-wing base of the Democrat party how they have been betrayed as well.
Sen. Sanders is the left's and Democrats' problem.
As a conservative and Republican, my concern is about the conservative movement and it's place in the Republican party.
My serious opposition to the Donald is that at the end of the day he is not a conservative, does not care about issues-please note issueS-that are of great importance to conservatives, and will govern with the wind if, God forbid, he should win the GOP nomination and or worse, be elected the 45th president of the United States.
The following two articles, first from Ben Domenich of The Federalist and Peter Weber of The Week do sort of get to the same thing.
Mr. Domenich believes that the Donald is playing a dangerous game of White identity politics with his hyperbole on illegal immigration. I dispute that because Mr. Weber states something that I could tell you. That there are a core of Hispanics that actually are for strong border security. Even for the Donald's plan to ship all the illegals, 11,000,000, back to the nation of origin.
OK, I must digress here.
The numbers of illegal aliens is absolutely unknown. 11,000,000 or 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 is just at best a guesstimate. If we actually knew the numbers, it would actually be easy to round em up and ship em out, right? We are putting a number to at best guess a round number for purposes of trying to figure out a lot of different things.
Back to this post.
Mr. Domenich's thesis dovetails to Mr. Weber's article about a core of Hispanics that are none too thrilled about illegal aliens, especially from south of the border, including and especially from Central America. A lot of the opposition is based on people taking a piece of their pie, so to speak. Many Hispanics that oppose the current wave off illegal immigration are actually victims of it. When it comes to such things as in-state costs for illegal children or the so-called anchor babies means that many of the Hispanic children born here are competing with people who were not born here for their space at public colleges and universities. Especially in regards to student loans, grants and scholarships.
I agree with Mr. Domenich that if the GOP and modern American conservatism throws away the fusionist coalition that has been built by people like Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich, we will be no better than liberals and the left in playing identity politics. And he is correct.
What drives the Donald and his supporters, quite bluntly, is his bellicose personality. For whatever reason, the hardcore supporters of the the Donald, the Trumpettes, seem perfectly down with the Donald if he should do end arounds the United States constitution to meet his seemingly indecichperable goals. I ask all over Facebook and the internets if those that support the Donald would be down if he did what the current occupant of the White House, the Dear Leader, President Obama, has done in excessive and questionable executive orders so long as it advances supposed conservative goals. Man do those crickets chirp and chirp loudly.
When I say that the Donald is our Obama, people get incensed but it is true and even worse because we do not know anything about what he would do outside of illegal immigration. Even that is questionable. But the Trumpettes are impressed with his personality and seemingly angry, no nonsense approach to our problems.
Which is why, as Mr. Weber points out nicely, the Donald would be a mini-dictator or caudillo a la Francisco Franco of Spain. No, it will not be by a violent civil war that it would happen but by the fact even elements on the conservative sign are perfectly OK with someone who might not be a leader within the context of the rule of law. Which is what has animated, correctly, a large part of conservative opposition to the Dear Leader, President Obama.
It's one thing to tap into righteous anger about a political class that has become more distant from the voters at all levels. City, county, state and federal. It's great to state the obvious. That they do not listen to their constituencies. They promote policies people have said they do not want. Pet projects the purveyors of big government on both sides try to shove down our collective throats. But it is harnessing that anger into something productive that I do not see the Donald doing. He's just spouting off on his bar stool and saying he can do what he says because now he is incorruptible. After telling all in the last GOP presidential debate how very corrupt he has been. And proudly. The Donald is either not well informed on a variety of issues or deflects a question with some kind of BS. Or he will give one answer to one interviewer/reporter and a different one to another interviewer/reporter. That should turn people off, alas it does not. It simply makes Trumpettes even more invested in their dude.
And that leads to people believing that we need a supposed conservative strong man as opposed to one that can clearly express and govern as a conservative.
It is one of the scariest aspects of the Trump candidacy.
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