'Orange-Hued Makeup on an Orange-Hued Corpse of a Campaign'
Michael Brendan Dougherty, columnist for The Week and sparring partner of our Kevin Williamson, has been somewhat sympathetic to Donald Trump, contending he's a natural response to a Republican party that has forgotten the white working class. Somewhere along the line, he feel out of love with Trump, hard, and he's pretty intensely repulsed by the talk of a Trump makeover: Becoming an establishment creature now would dispirit many of Trump's core supporters. It would wreck any momentum his candidacy had at renovating the Republican Party's stale ideology. Trump will have worse problems than even Mitt Romney did in trying to explain the convenient evolution of his views. Trump's unreliability extends even to his own stunts. Months ago he skipped a Fox News debate to raise $6 million for veterans. They haven't seen the money. Trump cannot succeed in a general election without an unforeseeable intervention from beyond our normal politics -- think a sudden economic crash, a terrorist attack, or the likelihood of war. A little campaign makeover certainly won't change what is now the most well-defined and lustily disliked campaign in modern memory. The Trump reboot will not make Trump viable. It just makes his new campaign manager viable. This is nothing more than another layer of orange-hued makeup on an orange-hued corpse of a campaign. Okay, but . . . some of us saw this from the beginning. Some of us are a lot less surprised by the off-the-charts unfavorable numbers and the disastrous outlook for Republicans in November with a Trump nomination. Some of us put enormous effort into trying to avert this scenario, and some of us never wrote: . . . it seemed that Donald Trump's bid for the presidency contained the seeds of an ideological revolution. Trump had tapped into something that felt like a fresh European import, an ideological right wing motivated by populist nationalism rather than conservatism . . . In Trump we suddenly seemed to have the kind of culture warrior imagined by thinkers like James Burnham, who opposed liberalism not because it offends the Constitution or runs roughshod over the little platoons of civil society, but because it is the verbal justification for the contraction of Western societies: the diminution of their military power and the demographic decline of their native populations. Over in the Federalist, Grant Stinchfield, a conservative talk-show host in Dallas, Texas, suddenly realizes who he voted for: Donald Trump is off the rails. He is a train wreck. It's not just his antics and childish behavior that has me so put off, it's his failure to improve as a candidate. After nine months on the campaign trail, I expected Trump to fully grasp the issues and have in-depth policy solutions to our problems. Yet he still is "winging it." He has failed to surround himself with top-notch, respected experts to craft a legitimate conservative platform. The reality is now clear: Trump has no depth, and he fails to grasp even the most basic conservative principles. I fell victim to my own hatred. Donald Trump offered me a vehicle to stick it to the bloviating bureaucrats I despise. I dedicated my life to exposing self-promoting career politicians and their love of big government programs. Trump was the guy who was going to scare the hell out of the "establishment," the guy who was going to turn Washington on its head. So I voted with anger in my heart. I gave my vote to Trump with expectation he would find his way by putting smart constitutional conservatives by his side. Trump didn't find his way; he got lost. Gee, if only someone had warned him. There Is No New Trump, Continued The "improved" Trump talk is all pretty moot, because you can't change the style of a guy with the impulse control of a toddler. He doesn't like hearing he has to do things differently. There is no point to hiring the "best people" if you refuse to listen to the advice of the "best people." Let's check in with the best people: Donald Trump is bristling at efforts to implement a more conventional presidential campaign strategy, and has expressed misgivings about the political guru behind them, Paul Manafort, for overstepping his bounds, multiple sources close to the campaign tell POLITICO. Trump became upset late last week when he learned from media reports that Manafort privately told Republican leaders that the billionaire reality TV star was "projecting an image" for voters and would begin toning down his rhetoric, according to the sources. They said that Trump also expressed concern about Manafort bringing several former lobbying colleagues into the campaign, as first reported by POLITICO. Now Trump is taking steps to return some authority to Manafort's chief internal rival, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Neither Lewandowski nor Manafort responded to requests for comment, though Manafort on Sunday during an interview on Fox News blamed Lewandowski's regime for shortcomings in the campaign's delegate wrangling operation. Lewandowski's allies responded by privately questioning whether Manafort has done anything to improve the situation. They grumble that Manafort has spent a disproportionate amount of time on television -- just as Trump himself has been avoiding the Sunday morning talk show circuit at Manafort's urging. When you hear anecdotes like this . . . After Trump's resounding victory in last week's New York primary, for instance, Manafort handed the candidate a speech he'd written for him that aimed for a more presidential tone, according to two campaign sources. Trump took a quick look at it and told Manafort he'd consider using such a speech down the road, but in the glow of his huge win in his home state, he preferred to wing it. How long does Manafort stick around? How often does a candidate brag about ignoring his advisers' recommendations during a speech? "If I acted presidential, I can guarantee you this morning I wouldn't be here," Trump told a capacity crowd of more than 3,000 at Crosby High School, where others stood outside, listening to audio provided for the unlucky. The gym rocked. "My wife tells me, 'Be more presidential.' My daughter tells me to be more presidential. And Paul Manafort and Corey [Lewandowski, another top aide] and a lot of them say, 'Be more presidential,'" Trump said. "And now people are starting to say, 'You know, look what got you here." Democratic Governor Cuts School-Choice Program: This Was Predictable! You cannot elect Democrats to enact conservative policies. Take a look at Louisiana, where the allegedly-conservative or moderate Democrat, John Bel Edwards, is taking an axe to school choice: The Louisiana Federation for Children (LFC), the state's voice for educational choice, has released a new television advertisement with Louisiana parents asking why Governor John Bel Edwards is breaking his promise to them by drastically cutting the budget of the Louisiana Scholarship Program. The ad features three mothers who have children enrolled in private schools that participate in the Louisiana Scholarship Program. One of them says of the governor, "He lied to me. He lied to my child." "In his State of the State address, Governor Edwards said he wanted to provide a choice to parents whose children are trapped in failing schools. He said the same thing to voters on several occasions while campaigning," said Ann Duplessis, president of the Louisiana Federation for Children. The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com reported on Dec. 15, 2015, that "Edwards doesn't want to ban vouchers or take them away from students who receive them now." However, Governor Edwards broke that commitment and proceeded to propose a drastic reduction in funding for the Louisiana Scholarship Program in the administration's executive budget. This proposed cut means an estimated 1,000 students would be eliminated from the scholarship program. Why do voters keep falling for this? Why do they elect Democrats and then act surprised when they enact the agenda of the interest groups in their base? ADDENDA: If you think the fights over this primary are bad, the fights about what lessons to take from it are going to be even more intense. I'd like Republican primary voters to learn that experience and a record matters, that a campaign can't count on a giant turnout of previously unmotivated voters to save it, that nationalist populism is even less popular than conservatism in the broader American electorate, and that the most self-flattering explanation for your defeat is not the most likely one. I'm probably going to be disappointed.  | 
Comments
Post a Comment