I'm a Tea Partier. I detest Obama and the Progressive hoard that has Washington, DC and large portions of America in a death grip. So why don't I like Donald Trump?
Honestly, sometimes I wonder what the hell is wrong with me these days. Why can't I get on the bandwagon along with so many others with whom I agree about most everything?
We've got a President who is slowly turning America's economy into that of a Third World nation, not by accident, but by design. Under his malign domestic stewardship, nearly 95 million otherwise able-bodied adults are no longer in the work force, many having lost hope, and many others having by now availed themselves of destructively generous welfare and disability benefits, provided by Uncle Sam via a shrinking base of struggling taxpayers.
Abroad, Obama has succeeded in alienating our friends and embracing our enemies, while ensuring that Russia, China and ISIS rush in to fill the vacuum created by his abdication, and ours. The world is almost literally simmering to a full boil, while Obama stands before the United Nations of Thugs and Autocrats, chin in the air just like a certain Italian leader of the last century, poking his finger in the air and promoting the idea that the greatest threat the world faces today is not Islamic radicalism or the rise of nuclear-armed totalitarian world powers but instead, something he calls "violent extremism", which sounds meaningful until you realize he might just be talking about
you.
And with an American presidential election on the horizon, along comes this man - this great, self-made business genius, as he'll be the first person to tell you, who gleefully ignores the punditocracy and the Democrat Monopoly Media while whipping adoring throngs into paroxyms of ecstasy with his blunt, no-holds-barred style of public speaking. Of course there are a slew of others running for the same office, but it has been Donald Trump who has dominated the headlines and the airwaves and who now leads all the polls.
And, as he'll also be the first to tell you, Donald has a "vision" and a "plan" for America, by which everything is going to be made not just better, but "incredible" and "amazing". He has even gone so far as to propose changes in our tax law, largely favoring, as it turns out, people who already pay little or no taxes, but let's not go there quite yet. The tax code is broken and he's proposing to change it, and that's a good thing.
As for his foreign policy, Trump
may not know the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas, but he assures one and all that everything will be super once he's in the White House because "I'm a delegator. I find great people. I find absolutely great people, and I'll find them in our armed services, and I find absolutely great people." Well, okay then. Problem solved.
Trump also says that if elected, he's going to
renegotiate all of America's trade deals and military agreements: "We protect everybody and we don’t get reimbursement. We lose on everything. We lose on everything, so we’re going to negotiate and renegotiate trade deals, military deals, many other deals that’s going to get the cost down for running our country very significantly.”
Now there's admittedly a lot to like about a Republican candidate who finally admits what many in the rank-and-file have long been saying: America always seems to screwed while other nations benefit at our expense. But which treaties and which military arrangements are to be changed? What are his priorities for effecting these changes, since they quite obviously cannot be undertaken all at once, or even in less than a few years' time? Once again, Donald is a bit short on specifics.
Negating trade deals and military operations is far easier said than done. The next American president can’t simply take office and declare them null and void, not without chaotic results.
A number of Trump's competitors for the GOP nomination have not only spoken about their domestic and foreign policy, but have done so at length, in detail and evincing a knowledge of people, places and powers that Trump claims simply doesn't matter, as though the sheer force of his will would be sufficient to right a sinking ship. Just to name a few:
Marco Rubio,
Carly Fiorina, and
Ted Cruz have all taken detailed policy positions explaining what they believe, what they intend to do, and more to the point, when asked by the usually hostile media sources, have all been able to answer clearly and without hesitation. For proof, simply watch the last Republican debate. Even Ben Carson, who can himself be a bit light on specifics, was able to handle himself with clarity and dignity.
For his part, Donald Trump appears to spend more of his time attacking his fellow candidates and others than he ever does President Obama or his radicalized Democrat Party, and again, more to the point, he always,
always does so not in substantive, but in personal terms. To wit:
Jeb Bush is “weak” ...
Bobby Jindal is at “zero” in the polls.
Lindsey Graham is a “total lightweight.”
Rick Santorum: “I have a big plane. He doesn’t.”
Fox newscaster Megyn Kelly after the Republican debate on Aug. 6: “Fox viewers give low marks to bimbo.”
Really now. Who in public life ever speaks this way? Sure, we've got all kinds of liars (Hillary Clinton) and deceivers (Barack Who's Sane? Obama) and master manipulators (Hillary's Hubby) in politics, but they not only reserve their bile for the opposition, but are almost invariably predisposed to couch their language so as to not reflect badly on their judgment. It's not a matter of character, clearly. But it
is about judgment and self-control.
So what's the problem with Trump? In a nutshell: judgment, or rather a deficit of it, which in turn ought to make reasonable people otherwise inclined to agree with him to perhaps, think a bit harder about the consequences of their support for him in a precarious and dangerous world.
Have you not noticed by now that Trump's natural instinct is not to respectfully disagree, but to offer angry, personal disdain for others? He appears to believe that he can change things by mere force of his Trump Towering personality, and that substantive, detailed knowledge is for policy wonks and losers. But in the real world, Trump's unshakeable conviction in his own greatness will not trump his shallowness of comprehension nor his impatience with the ideas of others; in the real world, they will trump Trump.
In the final analysis, I believe that Donald Trump's focus is not on helping America or solving problems, but on promoting himself. And as I've said before: as far as Presidents go, we've already got one of those.
In all candor, I do not know who I will vote for next year.
But America is in dire straits, and I will vote for the GOP candidate in 2016, irrespective of who it is.
I would only hope that, once again, I don't feel like washing my hands after leaving the booth.
