Michael Goodwin: Donald Trump’s campaign is betting on another terror attack

[mountaineer]

Donald Trump’s campaign is betting on another terror attack
Michael Goodwin
Dec. 9, 2015
New York Post

My first reaction to Donald Trump’s call to ban new Muslims from entering the United States was that he had simultaneously won the GOP nomination and lost the general election. My second reaction was that events will prove one of those predictions wrong.

If there are no more terror attacks in America before the end of the primary season, most Republican voters will see Trump’s plan as too radical and he will lose the nomination.

On the other hand, if there are more attacks in the homeland, many more voters will move in Trump’s direction and he would almost certainly win the nomination and maybe the presidency.

In effect, Trump is betting his campaign on there being more attacks. I hope he is wrong, but fear he will be right.

To be clear, I don’t support his plan. Singling out all Muslims is vulgar and probably unconstitutional. A religious test is unAmerican.

The idea is so toxic that it has the unfortunate effect of making President Obama look right for once. Obama warns repeatedly about Islamophobia, including in his grating Sunday-night lecture, even though there wasn’t much of it. Jews suffer disproportionately from religious hate crimes, not Muslims.

Trump obliterated those facts in a heartbeat, a development that could, temporarily at least, contaminate all get-tough approaches on terror and boost Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Yet Trump’s proposal does not come out of the blue. Obama and many Democrats actually favor changes in the visa-waiver program to keep some Muslims from entering the country.

The program lets passport holders from 38 nations enter the US for up to 90 days without a visa. But after the Paris attacks, which were carried out by French and Belgian nationals moving seamlessly through Europe’s open borders, the White House began to develop restrictions on who was eligible for the waiver.

One measure would exclude those who had traveled to Syria or Iraq since 2011. Other parts reportedly would focus restrictions on nationalities, such as people born in Sudan or Iran. Clearly, most people in those categories would be Muslims. The disparate impact is why the American Civil Liberties Union, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the National Iranian American Council oppose the legislation, which passed the House Tuesday with more than 400 votes.

Trump’s plan, then, despite its radical nature, reflects the bipartisan trend to prevent attacks by focusing on potential Muslim terrorists.

The timing of his plan also matters — it would have been laughable two months ago. But the Islamic State’s spreading barbarism, and Obama’s tepid response, are changing America’s mood.

Obama’s calling the terror army the “jayvee team” in early 2014 drew little notice until videos surfaced in late summer of that year showing the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

Overnight, the polls flipped and our supposedly war-weary nation wanted Obama to strike back. As the Islamic State released videos of captives being drowned and burned alive, and as the “jayvee team” conquered enough territory to form a caliphate, the public demanded a strategy to defeat this new cancer.

Obama never supplied one, doing the minimum to keep his support from collapsing. Then came the slaughters in Paris and San Bernardino, sending the fear meter off the charts.

The attacks were horrifying. Especially incomprehensible is that the California killers shot the same people who had given them a baby shower, at a Christmas party no less.

Obama’s knee-jerk response was to call for more gun control, so the central issue of the campaign is who will best protect America from these savages.

There are other related facts, too. Our southern border is porous, and Obama won’t close it. His plan to exempt thousands from deportation through a questionable executive order was wildly unpopular and is now before the Supreme Court in a constitutional test of its own.

On top of that, the president wants to let in thousands of Syrian refugees, despite polls showing a large majority of the public is again opposed. Critics argue that a thorough security vetting is not possible, a view buttressed by FBI Director James Comey, who said he could not promise that terrorists would not slip through.

These are extraordinary times, with much of the world on fire. Because Obama’s presidency has been marked by lies and failure, he cannot summon the trust of his country at this crucial moment.

His trust deficit is pushing the political pendulum in the opposite direction. Depending on events, it may swing far enough to carry Donald Trump into the White House.

In that event, a President Trump would be Barack Obama’s true legacy.

[aligncare]

As I said elsewhere, good leaders survey the landscape and adjust their policies to best deal with changes on the ground.

This, Trump has done after Paris and San Bernardino, in regards to emerging domestic threats from ISIS. There were, as accompanies anything Trump says, cat-calls that he flip-flopped after he had criticized Pamela Geller several months ago for 'taunting' Muslims.

However, it appears now more Americans are agreeing with Trump's position, as reflected in his continued rise in the polls, especially in New Hampshire. I guess most people do not see this as a flip-flop but rather as a commonsense response to the danger presented to Americans from domestic terrorism.

[mountaineer]

et Trump’s proposal does not come out of the blue. Obama and many Democrats actually favor changes in the visa-waiver program to keep some Muslims from entering the country.

The program lets passport holders from 38 nations enter the US for up to 90 days without a visa. But after the Paris attacks, which were carried out by French and Belgian nationals moving seamlessly through Europe’s open borders, the White House began to develop restrictions on who was eligible for the waiver.

One measure would exclude those who had traveled to Syria or Iraq since 2011. Other parts reportedly would focus restrictions on nationalities, such as people born in Sudan or Iran. Clearly, most people in those categories would be Muslims. The disparate impact is why the American Civil Liberties Union, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the National Iranian American Council oppose the legislation, which passed the House Tuesday with more than 400 votes.

Trump’s plan, then, despite its radical nature, reflects the bipartisan trend to prevent attacks by focusing on potential Muslim terrorists.

Trump's proposal reminds me of the Monty Python sketch, something about using an elephant gun to kill a mosquito. We certainly need to exclude a heck of a lot more Muslims than we currently do, though.