OPINION: Trump flashback
Regan
I wrote this in December 2015, nearly a year before Trump was elected the first time. How did it age?
He is bold, brash, bombastic and has an ego that will barely fit in the marble plated atrium of a New York City skyscraper. He is a self-made billionaire who flies his private 757 to A-list parties, meetings with world leaders and to inspect his multiple real estate holdings. He has owned hotels, casinos, estates, beauty pageants, yachts, golf courses and a national football team. He has thrived while working with one if the most bloated and byzantine bureaucracies, New York City. He is a best-selling author and reality TV star that has gone from boom to bust to boom again, a real life Horatio Alger hero persuading his way to amazing success.
Could it be that Donald Trump is the physical embodiment of the American Dream? You’re thinking “No way! Trump is a clown, a reality show host.” You can almost feel the Europhile limousine liberal elites shudder at the thought of this “ugly American” outlier being a cultural icon or possibly being
Donald Trump routinely takes a chainsaw to the Overton Window when making statements that cause those indoctrinated by the cultural Marxism of political correctness to recoil in horror while uttering knee-jerk condemnation and hackneyed epithets of ‘racist’ or ‘(fill in the blank)-phobe, yet Trump’s standing in the poles inexorably inflates. Why? Has the artifice of political correctness finally run aground on the shoals of common sense or could it be that people are simultaneously repulsed and attracted, disdainful and envious of the man? Is it that deep down there is a guilty secret little room where we want to BE The Donald? Imagine you are Donald Trump. Remember the private 757 jet, hotels, golf courses, football team, casinos and A-list parties. It could be worse, right?
Donald Trump is an enigma to the political class and talking heads because he isn’t a politician, he is an entrepreneurial businessman, so explaining his behavior in political terms is like explaining fire to fish. What the cable show hosts and pundits see is chaos, confusion and gibberish as if Trump were talking in tongues. They can’t understand Trump’s actions OR explain his success because he does not fit the political templates and metrics they use to gauge the actions of political candidates participating in the beauty contest that is campaigning.
As detailed in his book ‘The Art of the Deal’ Trump is not campaigning, he is negotiating with the American people for a deal that will benefit him and us by Making America Great Again. He is applying classical psychological methods of persuasion and appealing to our emotional sub-conscious. With two words Trump took jeb! out of the race, “low energy.” This label hit the mark, it stuck and it ain’t coming off. Similarly for Fiorina, “That Face” now bubbles to the top every time you see her. The most subtle branding happened to Carson who is now a “Nice Guy,” and we all know nice guys finish…
Trump’s early Mexican immigration comments simultaneously brought the problem to the forefront, exposed the media’s dishonesty and gave Trump millions of dollars in free earned media. Everyone was talking about what Trump said, or what they thought about what Trump said or if they agreed with what Trump said.
Likewise Trump’s comments on suspending Muslim immigration, a position with which nearly 2/3 of Americans agree. Repudiation of Trump’s comments was swift and near universal. Cries of ‘racist’ and ‘un-Constitutional’ and ‘not who we are’ rang out. This presents a credibility problem for Trump critics because a religion transcends race and the Constitution does not apply to foreign nationals before they are on our soil. Immigration is a privilege, not a right and immigration law (8 U.S. Code § 1182) gives the President broad authority to exclude ANY Class of aliens, including religious, from securing visas. Furthermore if that alien was a member of a totalitarian party (e.g. parties that require strict Sharia compliance) they would have to renounce their affiliation for 2-5 years and then demonstrate they did not pose a security threat before they could legally be allowed entry.
Of course the political establishment is going nuts because Trump operates outside the political machine that makes Presidential nominee selection much closer to Kabuki Theater than a rational selection of the best candidates. This is on display with the Democratic ticket where we have the anointed Hillary, the not-Hillary not-option (not even a democrat, socialist Sanders) and the other guy (so it doesn’t look too obvious — not). Out of 70 million Democrats, Hillary is the choice Democrats get to make. What happened to the big tent?
The Republican side is better, but not by much. The establishment favorite jeb! heralded an historic Bush v. Clinton rematch to the collective groan of many in the party. Fortunately, over a dozen other candidates offer the voter a wide spectrum of Republican options from the dynastic jeb! to the agnostic Trump. An early attempt to block Trump with a fidelity pledge to prevent a third party challenge seems to be backfiring and will force the establishment to support Trump, should he prevail. A deal is a deal, after all.
In the fullness of time we may come to find that while we may not like the man completely, we will begin to trust and agree with him and to see past the deal where together we make America great again. This isn’t the way of politics, but it is the art of the deal.
END. I wrote this nine years ago. It’s an example of how having an accurate view of reality increases your chances of accurately predicting future events.
It’s just common sense.
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Brent Regan is chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.