Tag: Donald Trump

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Extremist Over-reaction Syndrome

SNL, Trump, extremism

As public political discourse descends to new lows, what is a common-sense person to do?

Well, not go over the deep end.

What is that end?

Maybe it is Trump Anxiety Syndrome, the haunting fear that Donald Trump may become the next president.

Hey, I don’t support The Donald, but I always try to avoid syndromes.

Besides, I know many of his supporters. They are not as crazy as folks on the left think they must be. Indeed, East and Left Coast elites think that Trump is Hitler, and that his supporters are Nazis and white supremacists — as per a Saturday Night Live mock TV ad, just aired this weekend.

That’s way off, and those with common sense to apply should stop the demonization. It is not winning over Trump supporters.

Indeed, one plausible theory about the rise of Trump mania is that it is a reaction to previous unhinged leftist sneers and extremist excesses.

Extremes breed extremes. Calling someone who hates Nazis a Nazi might even make them hate Nazis less. Smart people don’t encourage that.

So, you oppose Trump? Seriously? Then, let’s consider emphasizing reason over bile. Avoid ad hominems and demonization. Left, right or center, the only workable Trump opposition will be done with facts and arguments . . . that address the real, legitimate concerns that led to Mr. Trump’s popularity.

And maybe try a bit of charity — at the very least to his admirers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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SNL, Trump, extremism

 

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folly general freedom ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

You Asked For It America!

Donald Trump, HIllary Clinton, You asked for it america, going to get it, meme, illustration

And now you’re going to get it!

Click below for a high resolution version of the image:

Donald Trump, HIllary Clinton, You asked for it america, going to get it, meme, illustration

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folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

That’s Entertainment

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This presidential campaign has been very entertaining.

The three leading Republican candidates could give The Three Stooges a run for their money. Front-runner Donald Trump calls his opponents liars and chokers (or “chockers”) as often as Moe used to smash Curly and Larry in the face.

Slapstick has made a comeback.

Indeed, food fights attract a large TV audience, obviously giving many viewers what they want. And they no doubt produce windfall advertising profits for the television networks that host the debates.

This may be as close to creating economic growth as these politicians will ever come.

No surprise that the media is giddy at the mud-slinging, but why do the candidates go along? Nastiness apparently works.

At least in attracting media attention.

Mr. Trump has dominated the news cycles for months, cycling outrageous statements and cutting remarks, rinse and repeat. As Sen. Marco Rubio explained to those questioning his recent resort to dishing out invective, “I’m insulting Trump because it’s the only thing you [media] guys pay attention to.”

Even the debate rules actively encourage pugilism. By giving candidates additional time to speak when verbally assaulted by name, the ground rules are in place.

No wonder the mostly ignored Dr. Ben Carson interjected during the last debate, “Can somebody attack me, please?”

Neophyte Carson doesn’t understand that the game is tit-for-tat: to be attacked, attack first.

Sure, the critical issues facing our country — terrorism, war, debt, economic stagnation — get short shrift. But what a fun way to choose the next stooge to sit atop the dysfunction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Unfair Reform?

Donald Trump, Presidential, Social Security, illustration

I am sure we all think it would be great, other things being equal, to try to make many of life’s unfairnesses less . . . problematic. But most grown-ups understand (or used to) that “life isn’t fair” is a truism for a reason.

So when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized his competing GOP hopefuls for wanting to reform Social Security and other so-called “entitlements,” I was unimpressed.

“Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security,” Trump said last year, referencing Medicare and Medicaid as well. “And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”

Not fair.

Well, yeah.

But the unfairness is not in fixing the system by raising retirement ages, etc. The real injustices lie in the past, with previous fixes and . . . “unfixes” — that put us in the fix we are currently in.

And not fixing it now will lead to further, more obvious “unfairness” in the future.

Trump is just avoiding responsibility. By not addressing the problem honestly, we do not make things or keep things fair. We make things worse.

Peter Suderman notes that Chris Christie’s endorsement of Trump, last week, puts the lie to the New Jersey governor’s much-ballyhooed seriousness about entitlement reform.

Well, yeah.

But no major politician wants to handle it. For the problem shows how deep the unfairness runs in the American system.

That would require real leadership.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political challengers

Trump Card Trumped

Trump, popularity, polls, president, 2016, illustration

According to poll after poll, Donald Trump is winning. He’s a winner.

. . . of a plurality, anyway.

Admittedly, he lost the Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz. But he rebounded with a sizeable plurality victory in New Hampshire. Now Trump leads in South Carolina polls.

Among Republican primary voters, that is.

It is a different story in the public and private polls I’ve seen, ones surveying the entire electorate — Republicans, Democrats and independents. Consider the new poll of swing-state Virginia voters by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University.

Again, Trump garners a plurality of Old Dominion Republicans, leading next closest contender, Sen. Marco Rubio, 28 to 22 percent. On the other hand, among the entire voting population, a disquieting 64 percent — nearly two out of three voters — view The Donald unfavorably.

Put another way, Trump’s winning in un-favorability.  Only Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are seen anywhere near as negatively, at 58 and 59 percent, respectively.

Can Trump turn that around? Not likely. Folks already know him. He has the highest name recognition of any candidate — higher than Hillary Clinton.

“Almost all the voters have an opinion about Donald Trump,” explained the Wason Center’s Dr. Quentin Kidd, “and twice as many see him in an unfavorable light as view him favorably.”

Trump starts at a “disadvantage,” according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, because “Most Americans just really don’t like the guy.”

To appoint future Supreme Court justices, one must win the General Election with all the people voting, not merely the GOP nomination.

According to poll after poll, that candidate is not Donald Trump.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Trump, popularity, polls, president, 2016, illustration

 

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Establishment, Always Establishment

Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, primary, election, Common Sense

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders winning in New Hampshire is as good an indicator as any that Americans — or at least Live Free or Die staters — are tired of the bipartisan Establishment. Victories for a billionaire iconoclast and a self-designated socialist.

Both are “players” in their distinct ways: the former a publicity-minded entrepreneur who boasts of having been a briber of politicians, the latter as a long-term senator with a consistently pro-government-growth voting record.

But both are plausibly outsiders, too. Trump speaks off the cuff and in an entertainingly anti-PC manner, and Sanders proclaims a love of government so strong that he willingly embraces a label with a very negative record throughout the last century.

Indeed, Trump’s many words and Sanders’s One Word serve to negate these two candidates’ “establishment feel.”

But if elected, would either rock the Establishment boat?

Based on his voting record, Sanders is liable to continue the bipartisan “War, Always War” strategy abroad, along with the same domestic policy of “Spend, Always Overspend.”

That is Establishment.

Trump is less of a warmonger than Sanders, oddly enough: The Donald has criticized the Iraq War, argued that Russia should take care of its nearby Syria problem, and offered that China should worry about North Korea . . . in other words, he can conceive of foreign areas being outside of American purview.

But Trump is as protectionist as Sanders, and loves taking property from private individuals (with “just compensation”) and giving it to developers . . . like himself. You cannot get more Establishment than that.

Still, New Hampshire voters know something, and that something is undoubtedly that something must change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture insider corruption national politics & policies political challengers

The Anti-Republican Party Establishment

Cruz, Trump, Republican, primary, nomination, president, campaign, Common Sense, Paul Jacob, James Gill, illustration

Yesterday, we decried the rigged superdelegate voting process used by establishment Democrats to Hillary Clinton’s benefit — and party members’ detriment. Today, we switch parties to find the GOP establishment in full panic mode, so terrified at the prospect of a Ted Cruz victory that they’re now rallying around Donald Trump.

Republican Party stalwart Bob Dole, the 92-year-old former Senate Majority Leader and a 35-year Washington insider, called Sen. Cruz an “extremist.” A Cruz victory would lead to “cataclysmic” losses for the party, Dole contends, and by the way . . . “Nobody likes him.”

“Nobody in Washington,” Dole means.

As for Trump? Dole thinks Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”

The right personality?

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a fixture in Congress for the last 41 years, introduced Trump recently by clumsily validating Trump’s campaign slogan: “we have an opportunity, once again, to make America great again.”

And again.

According to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Trump does not have any particular enemies down here. I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning and is irritated with him. That’s not how it is with Cruz.”

Former GOP congressman turned lobbyist Vin Weber says that the establishment’s hated of Cruz “has forced some people to look past all of Trump’s issues and think about what he could offer.”

Offer?

The Republican establishment really, really, really despises Sen. Ted Cruz. But they can live with Donald Trump.

Hmmmm . . . advantage Cruz.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

This is Yellow Journalism

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Washington Post, Bias, video, Common Sense, illustration

Weeks ago, I took Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to task for behaving like rude, dishonest children — she, fibbing about Trump being used in an ISIS recruitment video; he, using a vulgar term to describe her 2008 defeat by President Obama.

The mainstream media is joining the bad behavior, copacetic with “Clinton avoiding the same kind of treatment as Trump,” Callum Borchers informs in his piece headlined: “Does the media have a double standard on Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s embellishments?”

Short answer: Yes.

When Mrs. Clinton made her false accusation, ISIS was actually using her husband, former Pres. Bill Clinton, in a recruitment video. Even with this man-bites-dog angle — astoundingly underreported — Borcher predicts that Hillary will “emerge from this media brush fire unsinged” in no small part because there are “enough . . . supportive media outlets.”

Now the Post reports that a new 51-minute “propaganda video released by the Somali-based al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab includes a clip of Trump calling on the United States to bar Muslims from entering the country . . .”

The story’s lede smears Mr. Trump with guilt by association:

Last month, The Washington Post reported that white nationalists have begun using Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a recruitment tool. Now, the polarizing Republican presidential front-runner has become the recruitment fodder for another group of marginalized extremists.

The Post’s previous article found white supremacists trying to somehow glom on to, but clearly being rebuffed by, Trump. Repeatedly associating the two is gutter journalism. Should we hold our breaths for stories about members of the Revolutionary Communist Party favoring Clinton or Bernie Sanders?

Spare us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture national politics & policies

This Is Not Politics

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, politics, children, illustration, Common Sense

First, Hillary lied. She said that ISIS was using Trump in terrorism recruitment videos. The Donald responded with contemptuous ridicule, using a vulgar word for her 2008 defeat by Barack Obama.

Then, the Democratic Party presidential contender got all teary-eyed and said we had to treat each other with more respect, be nicer.

This is presidential politics?

Mrs. Hillary Clinton and Mr. Donald Trump are both addicted to telling whoppers. Their “stretchers” are now the everyday stuff of our nightly news.

Mrs. Clinton’s fact-less charge that Trump was being used in recruitment videos is all the more ridiculous considering that Mr. Clinton does star in such a video. Maybe she meant merely that Mr. Trump’s call for barring Muslim immigration will help ISIS paint America as anti-Muslim, telling the tall tale because, well, it “ seems true.” Even if it isn’t.

In this, she differs not a whit from Mr. Trump, who not too long ago “remembered” “seeing” “thousands” of “Muslims” in “New Jersey” celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 — a video he cannot produce, either.

Politicians hyperbolize from bigotry to factoid all the time. What’s new is Trump’s foul calumny, in response, and Clinton’s painting of Trump as a bully for belittling her. That’s not how I remember politics. It seems new to adult debate.

But it isn’t new to our experience. It’s children bickering on the playground, then whining and lying all the way to Teacher. Or even Home.

Responsible adults don’t believe every charge lodged by little boys and little girls.

Like Donny and Hillary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, politics, children, illustration, Common Sense

 

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First Amendment rights folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies privacy U.S. Constitution

Our Masters’ Malign Agenda

Constitution, Bill of Rights, Politics, Terrorism, populism, Common Sense

Reacting to terrorism, President Obama’s first thought? Scratch out the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of “due process” from the Bill of Rights. Why? To advance his mania for gun control.

Now comes Republican front-runner Donald Trump, one-upping the president. He wants to block any Muslim from entering the U.S. — whether immigrant, refugee or even tourist.

That’s after advocating a government database for tracking American citizens who are Muslim.

Terrorism is winning.

Ignore the Constitution? Disregard individual rights? Demonize an entire religion? Thus our leaders play into ISIS’s hands, encouraging Muslims worldwide to see the U. S. as their enemy.

Cooler heads must prevail. Or else. A Republican friend posted on Facebook that he “would gleefully vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump.” I just cannot muster any glee.

In fact, I’m beginning (again) to wonder if John Fund wasn’t on to something last June, when he wrote in National Review that “just maybe Trump is a double agent for the Left.”

Think “Manchurian Candidate.”

“It’s all very un-American,” my friend Suhail Khan, an American Muslim and conservative activist, told the Washington Post. “Our country was based on religious freedom.”

No more?

Surely, our experiment in limited government has not ended.

But we need to get serious.

We must demand a real commitment from any candidate seeking the country’s highest office. To be entrusted to execute our union’s laws, he or she must actually demonstrate allegiance to the rule of law.

That is, a willingness to fit one’s ego within the confines of the Constitution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Constitution, Bill of Rights, Politics, Terrorism, populism, Common Sense