http://www.nationalreview.com/node/425010/print Trump Wrongs the Right
From the October 19, 2015, issue of NR
By Rich Lowry & Ramesh Ponnuru — October 5, 2015
It’s almost impossible to fathom what an unusual candidate Donald Trump is. Put aside his lack of political experience (except for his serial flirtations with running for president over the years). Never mind his violation of nearly every rule of thumb of politics: Always shoot up, never down. Avoid throwing reporters out of your press conferences. Pretend you don’t care about the polls. Maintain tight message discipline. Don’t wear hats! Disregard his constant feuds with nearly everyone, his blatant self-contradiction on basic policy questions, and his general outlandishness.
Consider only these facts: Trump has been leading the polls for the Republican presidential nomination for months, and he basically never says “freedom” or “liberty.” He gives no indication of caring about the Constitution. He talks only sparingly about the federal debt. He has, in short, ignored central and longstanding conservative tenets that seemed to have become only more important in the tea-party era — and he has not only gotten away with it, but thrived (so far).
How is that possible? Trump is truly a different kind of political phenomenon. He is supposed to be an outrageous right-winger, but he draws support fairly evenly across all factions of the Republican party and is heterodox or indeterminate on key policy questions.
It is tempting to dismiss him as merely a buffoon, given his routinely buffoonish behavior, and to dismiss his supporters as ill informed and misguided. This is, indeed, the approach taken by many of his journalistic critics and a few of his rivals. But their denunciations of Trump and the Trump phenomenon have frequently been overwrought, taking the momentary enthusiasm of a large fraction of a party to stand for the enduring convictions of the whole.
#share#They have also frequently been unfair to Trump’s supporters. It is important to understand Trump’s draw. If he is wholly unsuited to be the Republican nominee for a myriad of reasons, including that he isn’t a conservative, there are nonetheless lessons to be gleaned from his meteoric, madcap rise, ones that can make the other candidates better and the GOP more appealing.
The most elemental reason for Trump’s rise is that over the decades he has built a nearly universally recognized brand associated with toughness and success, and many Americans worry that we are running out of both. Trump’s business is being famous — and he’s really good at it. To be a media fixture for some 30 years in New York (the media capital of the world), always finding the next new thing even when the last thing hasn’t worked out so well, is no small feat. It speaks to a shrewdness, a drive, and a shamelessness that few can match.
When Trump brought these attributes to the Republican presidential race, it was like the ace major-league pitcher’s getting sent down to Double-A on a rehab assignment, or an accomplished Broadway actor’s showing up at the community theater. He had skills no one else could hope to match and was bigger than the stage. What is an unassuming midwestern governor compared with the star of a long-running TV program, the builder and marketer of skyscrapers with his name on them, and the “author” of multiple bestsellers?
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