{"id":86706,"date":"2016-01-29T15:53:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T23:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=86706"},"modified":"2016-01-29T15:53:30","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T23:53:30","slug":"politico-donald-trump-is-shocking-vulgar-and-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=86706","title":{"rendered":"Politico: Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tucker Carlson writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you\u2019d have to consider it wasted.
\nPretty embarrassing. And yet they\u2019re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents \u201can existential threat to conservatism.\u201d
\nLet that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They\u2019re the ones who\u2019ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they\u2019re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don\u2019t, they\u2019re liberal.
\nIt turns out the GOP wasn\u2019t simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy. That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too.
\nOn immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn\u2019t appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it\u2019s hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don\u2019t go to public school. You don\u2019t take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It\u2019s all good.
\nApart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn\u2019t said anything especially shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals \u2014 these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the \u201cghost of George Wallace\u201d that a Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder their voters are rebelling.
\nTruth Is Not Only A Defense, It\u2019s Thrilling
\nWhen was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn\u2019t been long. That\u2019s not just a talking point about political correctness. It\u2019s the central problem with our national conversation, the main reason our debates are so stilted and useless. You can\u2019t fix a problem if you don\u2019t have the words to describe it. You can\u2019t even think about it clearly.
\nThis depressing fact made Trump\u2019s political career. In a country where almost everyone in public life lies reflexively, it\u2019s thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe he\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s especially exciting when you suspect he\u2019s right.
\nA temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past 50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven\u2019t assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed. What\u2019s our strategy for not repeating it here, especially after San Bernardino\u2014attacks that seemed to come out of nowhere? Invoke American exceptionalism and hope for the best? Before Trump, that was the plan.
\nRepublican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country.
\nEvangelicals understand this better than most. You read surveys that indicate the majority of Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch this: How could they be that dumb? He\u2019s so obviously faking it.
\nThey know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the Nicene Creed, or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What they\u2019re looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How\u2019d that work out for Christians, here and in Iraq?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tucker Carlson writes: Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791,29752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-donald-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86707,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86706\/revisions\/86707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}