The Plot To Dump Trump

Watching and reading the MSM for the last few weeks, it’s become obvious that frustration is setting in among establishment talking heads who would love to be rid of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. Despite the Donald’s rudeness in ridiculing the media and establishment candidates in both official parties, this pesky contender just won’t go away. His poll numbers continue to rise in the face of venomous hatred. Every time GOP old guardists  George Will and Michael Gerson call for “marginalizing” the influence of Trump and his followers, his popularity surges even higher. Not even the snobbish insult that his supporters never went to college (unlike Scott Walker, for whom Will’s wife works and who dropped out of Marquette University after one semester) has halted Trump’s march toward the GOP nomination. A supposed candidate of the illiterate, who graduated from from the Wharton School of Business, Trump has double the poll numbers of his nearest rival, who is Ted Cruz or Ben Carson, depending on who’s doing the polling. The onetime favorite of the GOP establishment Jeb Bush, seems to be fading in proportion to the megabucks that billionaires and the Mexican government have been throwing at him. the Zionist lobby, and wants to get tough with all our presumed enemies abroad. But since Guy is a big star in the Murdoch-GOP Empire, perhaps I shouldn’t challenge his credentials as a scholar of conservatism. The term means what he and his bosses say it does.

If “conservative” doesn’t mean that, then very few people will ever know what it really means. Unlike Guy and an even more influential denier of Trump’s conservative credentials, Glenn Beck, true scholars of conservatism have no media resources to speak of. Still, I would note that Trump is not the only Republican or Democratic presidential candidate who has changed his or her views. Both Fiorina and Trump have gone from favoring George W. Bush’s amnesty plan to vigorously opposing the same proposal when presented by W’s younger brother. Kasich admits to having grown in his loving acceptance of gay marriage, a path already blazed by Hillary and Obama. Why should Trump be singled out for moving toward the right after holding other positions? If shifting around in one’s views is a scandal, then let’s notice this tendency in other candidates as well.

For full disclosure: I am far from an unqualified fan of Donald Trump and find his showmanship and digressive speaking style to be deeply unsettling. But I applaud Trump’s attacks on the political establishment, which may be even more contemptible than he suggests. And I am profoundly annoyed by how the duopoly affects deep outrage over an outsider who dares enter their quadrennial contest without media approval. Although Trump does not go far enough in scorning political correctness to please my taste, to his credit, he does ridicule it. And, oh yes, lest I forget this, I would gladly vote for him as a third party candidate, with the hope that he would send a message to at least one of our two official parties.