Donald Trump: The Political Snowmageddon
As Winter Storm Jonas descends on DC, another storm is brewing that is frightening people in our nation’s capital.
Day after day, Donald Trump gets closer to the GOP nomination. How can someone who seems so unqualified and ill-suited to be Commander-in-Chief by traditional standards make it this far?
It’s simple really. Just as the right conditions come together to form a blizzard, conditions in the country have created the perfect environment for a nationalistic (some might call nativistic) candidate to ascend to a major party’s nomination, if not the presidency.
But before we cast blame on the nearest member of the GOP establishment, let’s take a look around. There is no doubt that the GOP establishment, whatever that means, shares a significant chunk of the blame. Same goes for the Democrats. Both parties have failed to effectively solve the problems facing America in the 21st century. Thanks, Obama (and Reid, and Pelosi, and Boehner, and McConnell).
But where is the intellectual “Conservative Movement”? What’s the supposedly free market “Tea Party” been up to? Let’s face it: conservative intellectuals have very little influence on the GOP base, and the Tea Party abandoned its “grassroots” roots a long time ago to become a brand for a few people to make money and get on cable news.
Meanwhile, as the intellectuals and activists wrote white papers and waved Gadsden flags, respectively, millions of apolitical Americans continued to feel disenfranchised and left behind in 21st century America. All the policy briefs and creative protest signage in the world won’t change the fact that millions of Americans are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it anymore!
And what have these disenfranchised Americans been doing? Watching reality television, tweeting angrily about obscure outrages, complaining that there is no difference between any politicians of either party, failing to study up on important policy issues, and so on.
People in high places thought they could co-opt the Tea Party and get grassroots conservatives to support free market policies. The intellectuals thought they could convince these protesters, who were mostly change-wary baby boomers, that they should support bold measures like entitlement reform and a flat tax.
They were wrong.
Instead, these people have been taken in by a celebrity they used to watch on an NBC reality show and who tweets as incoherently as they do. Someone who, like them, sees no difference between either political party, isn’t particularly ideological, and doesn’t really care about the details of public policy or the intricacies of constitutional government.
That actually sounds like a lot of Americans. Most people don’t seem to care about conservative (or liberal) principles, they just want someone who is going to make their lives great again! They don’t care that Trump was pro-choice (even opposing a ban on partial-birth abortion). They don’t care that he was for a so-called “assault weapons” ban. They don’t care that he supported government-run healthcare, advocated for higher taxes, and supported and donated to Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.
People are angry about trade with China. They are pissed about illegal immigration. They’ve had enough with political correctness.
Never mind that trade isn’t a zero-sum game. Forget that immigrants tend to contribute more to society than they take. And political correctness? You don’t have to use the language of a schoolyard bully to buck the PC culture, but that doesn’t matter to people who are sick and tired of the status quo.
Beyond Trump supporters, America has become a celebrity-obsessed, social media overloaded society with a superficial understanding of politics. It’s not just Trump supporters who have created the right conditions for his candidacy to emerge.
Even if Donald Trump isn’t the candidate you want, he’s probably the president America deserves.