At a dinner party the other night I was asked the seminal question of 2015-2016, “Why Trump?” Thinking my inquisitor was assuming Trump was my man, I informed her that I wasn’t a Trumpkin. “No,” she said, “I knew that. I’m just asking why you think he’s even being taken seriously.”
If Time Magazine ever did a Question of the Year, “Why Trump?” would be a close second to “Did a man really just win Woman of the Year?” The collective consternation of the American people over what seems to be a world turned upside down is palpable.
That this is the most unserious political cycle in history goes without saying. The Dems are giving their hapless voters the choice between two avowed socialists; one a senile nut job and the other a blithering incompetent who should be up on felony charges. It makes no difference which is which, the monikers are interchangeable. And Republican voters, with ten candidates vying for the nomination, seem to be fated with Trump. And there is a large segment of the American population that just doesn’t get how any of this could be happening.
So, back to the question, “Why Trump?” which also carries with it the implied “Has everyone lost their ever-lovin’ minds?” The following are my own theories as to why I think Trump is getting the nod now and will probably get the official, albeit begrudging, head bob from the RNC.
Trump is a receptical for America’s ever-growing angst.
Let’s face it, Trump is a maverick. He’s saying what most Americans have been shouting at the top of their lungs while standing on their barns, clutching their guns and Bibles in fly-over country for nearly a decade. He’s showing the chutzpah many of us wished Bush would have shown during the Great Hate Bush Campaign.
Americans of all stripes are fed up with the way things are going around here. Thanks to Obama’s pathological fibbing, his glad-handing and enabling the butchers in the Middle East, and those cancelled healthcare plans, even devout leftists are starting to leave the reservation. Right-wingers, who caught on to Obama’s propensity for lying and throwing America under the bus in 2007, just want the nightmare to end. Trump speaks to and for the anger in both camps.
Trump’s often feckless rhetoric includes such popular sentiments as shutting down the border, deporting all illegal immigrants, and building a wall; making our military strong again; defeating ISIS; ending bad foreign trade practices; ending unemployment; fixing social security; overhauling healthcare; getting rid of entitlements; stocking up our nukes; ending Common Core; and rebuilding our infrastructure…just to name a few.
Sounds great. Sounds really great. A right-wing Utopia. However, even a freshman poli-sci major could tell you that no one president could accomplish all that. And any self-respecting right-winger should know better than to fall for campaign promises that sound too good to be true. Think: “Read my lips…”
We all know politicians on both sides of the aisle say what their base wants to hear. It’s as simple as that. We’ve grown accustomed to the bait and switch of campaigning. Heck, we’ve come to expect it. But, because the majority of right-leaning Americans have felt marginalized and betrayed by the candidates they voted for, and left-leaners feel cheated by their Messiah, many in both camps are willing to swallow the Trump Kool-aid and tell themselves he is the answer to this debacle.
Trump has been shoved down our throats by the media.
Last year pundits on the right were screeching from their high horses, “We can’t let the media pick our candidate!” Well, sorry folks, but I think we just did. Using the tactic of overexposure makes the nasty medicine go down, the leftist media has, once again, managed to make us swallow that which, to many of us, is most distasteful.
The media is in the business of telling us what we want. It should be the other way around, but that hasn’t been the case in decades. It’s like the parent who gives their kid the choice between two different shirts to wear from a closet of thirty. The parent limits the options while Junior thinks he’s all big and bad because he got to “decide”.
Even though there are ten hats in the republican ring, the media has fixed its attention, and ours, on Trump. And this is due in large part to the fact that…
Trump is more celebrity than politician.
Let’s face it, pop culture runs this country. And pandering to the politically illiterate Comedy Central crowd is considered a priority among today’s campaign strategists. It’s why we see politicians appearing on such cerebral venues like The Colbert Report,The Late Show, The View, Jimmy Fallon, and that bastion of all think-tank shows Saturday Night Live. I’m guessing the strategy is supposed to work like this: If the Kardashian-watching media gluttons are saturated with copious amounts of Trump alongside Kim…
“Does this woman make my hair look fat?”
…being “grilled” by Colbert…
Colbert tossing his infamous meatballs at Trump.
…or giving the women of The View the willies…
“Wait…what? You’d date your daughter??
…then they’ll at least recognize one name on the ballot, which ups their chances of voting for him.
It worked for Obama.
According to eonline’s Pop & Politics (I could rest my case right there), the other presidential candidates are scrambling for a piece of Trump’s media real estate.
“They’re [the other candidates] trying to get beyond Donald Trump,” says Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “Appealing to broader audiences through an already established medium like The Tonight Show, or any of them, helps them drive their message to audiences. But also it’s free media. The media will cover what happens on these late-night talk shows. Most interactions that occur end up being news stories the next day.”
To Trump’s credit, he didn’t need a strategist to tell him the importance of the popular culture. He hedged his way into the front of America’s collective psyche years ago. And like any successful businessman, he’s capitalizing on his investment in the E! Entertainment culture.
Trump isn’t part of the Establishment.
Proponents of this argument say Trump hasn’t been worn down, compromised, or jaded by Washington. (That typically happens immediately upon receiving your first horse’s head in your bed.) The irony of this argument is that the very people who excoriated Obama for his lack of experience are now touting that as a selling point with Trump.
But the fact that Trump isn’t part of the establishment carries a lot of weight with both sides of the political divide. If liberals and conservatives can agree on anything it’s that they’ve had enough of the clowns in Washington. The bumbling mayhem that has become the norm in D.C. is starting to give even stalwart leftists the heebie-jeebies.
Nobody likes the “establishment” when their side isn’t running the establishment. But even liberals are fed up with their entrenched cronies. And because, for all practical purposes, the DNC is offering up more of the same with Bernie and Hillary, lefties are warming to the idea of giving The Don a shot. And thanks to Boehner’s and the newly ensconced Ryan’s pathological spinelessness, and the Republican party’s unwillingness to entertain anything even remotely hinting of a conservative policy, right-wingers are more than ready for a guy with some cajones.
Look, Trump or no Trump, one thing needs to be understood: the 2016 election is not about fixing our country, it’s about damage control. It’s about slowing or, please God, halting our country’s wild ride down this Highway to Hell the liberal agenda and republican ankle-grabbing have paved for us. Only then can we begin to start picking up the pieces and work toward fixing this mess.
Even if we get the likes of a Ronald Reagan into office in 2017, the damage that has been done will take more than just one or possibly two terms to fix. The next president will be presiding over Obama’s collapsed policies and a culture that has become increasingly more vapid, entitled, and depraved. It will be a political nightmare of epic proportions. And I contend that this exactly what the democrats are shooting for. They can afford four, maybe eight years out of power while a republican president spends the majority of his time looking inept and out of touch while trying to put out Obama’s carefully timed fires. Democrats, like the authoritarian ideologies they emulate, are a patient and malevolent bunch who know how to make long-range plans.
For the record, if I have to choose between Trump and the socialist felon the democrats nominate, I will vote for Trump. He’s not who I want as our next president for a myriad of reasons, but if Trump gets the nod, we will be in a lesser-of-two-evils situation. And I won’t lose any sleep at night knowing I did my level best to help the lesser win.
And if Trump does win what can we expect? It’s anybody’s guess. He might surprise many of us and actually start us down the road to real recovery, but that would require a republican majority in the House and Senate and their cooperation. If the last few years are any indicator, I really don’t think the republicans have the intestinal fortitude (or the desire) to support even a fraction of the “fixes” Trump is promising. My personal prediction, and I’d be happy to be wrong, is that he’ll usher us into utter chaos, foreign and domestic, with his bombastic rhetoric and breathtaking arrogance.
So, why Trump? Because after all is said and done, we’re going to end up with what we put up with.
The Lynn Richter Blog 