Charles Krauthammer is a prominent neoconservative commentator who has been reliably Republican for as long as I can remember. But he is also one of the few Republicans who have been critical of Donald Trump. In his latest column, he points out some examples of Trump’s ridiculously grandiose claims that I and other commentators have missed, and how his supporters simply lap it up.
Take the most striking — and overlooked — moment of Trump’s GOP convention speech. He actually promised that under him, “the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon — and I mean very soon — come to an end.”
Not “be reduced.” End.
Humanity has been at this since, oh, Hammurabi. But the audience didn’t laugh. It applauded.
Nor was this mere spur of the moment hyperbole. Trump was reading from a teleprompter. As he was a few weeks earlier when he told a conference in North Dakota, “Politicians have used you and stolen your votes. They have given you nothing. I will give you everything.”
Everything, mind you. “I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years.” No laughter recorded.
In launching his African American outreach at a speech in Charlotte, Trump catalogued the horrors that he believes define black life in America today. Then promised: “I will fix it.”
How primitive have our politics become? Fix what? Family structure? Social inheritance? Self-destructive habits? How? He doesn’t say. He’ll will it. Trust him, as he likes to say.
After 15 months, the suspension of disbelief has become so ubiquitous that we hardly notice anymore. We are operating in an alternate universe where the geometry is non-Euclidean, facts don’t matter, history and logic have disappeared.
One thing that Krauthammer and his fellow conservatives, neoconservatives, and Republicans do not acknowledge is the fact that Trump did not materialize out of nothing. It is people like Krauthammer and the rest of the party establishment that created the very climate that allowed Trump to become the leader of the party. He did after all break the record for the most votes ever cast for a Republican nominee. That is not a sign of a hostile takeover but of a warm embrace.
If Jesus has returned, that means the Anti-Christ is here, too.
Who could it be?
“I have the cure for whatever ails you.” Typical snake oil salesman rhetoric.
Fix what? Family structure? Social inheritance? Self-destructive habits?
It never occurs to Krauthammer to include things like racism, police brutality, legacy of slavery & Jim Crow, etc, to a list of things African-Americans need to get fixed.
He may be a moderate Republican, but when it comes down to it -- he’s a Republican. 😛
Krauthammer says all those things like they’re a mistake Trump is making. Hasn’t he been paying attention? Grandiose unfulfillable promises aren’t a bug, they’re a feature.
Trump, right now, has one job: get elected. The evidence of reality is that talking details about policy, dealing in facts and logic and history, all that boring shit is a massive turnoff. The evidence of reality is “Trust me, I can pave your streets with gold” can get you within a percentage point or two of the most qualified and experienced presidential candidate of my lifetime.
I really don’t understand all this complaining about Trump’s style. All the pundits, Krauthammer included, are like fat, sweaty guys standing chugging beer at the side of an athletics track, complaining that Usain Bolt keeps eating fried chicken and sleeping the morning before a race, then acting surprised and outraged when he keeps winning. Do they really think he should change his style to fit their expectations? How arrogant is that?
“We are operating in an alternate universe where the geometry is non-Euclidean”
But it is. Just ask Einstein.
And Trump will deliver on all his promises as long as we buy those band uniforms and instruments he’s selling.
The evidence is that you wouldn’t recognise reality if it bit you in the bum. Sure, Clinton is qualified and experienced. She’s also the most most unpopular Presidential candidate of a major party since anyone began measuring these things -- other than Trump. The “fundamentals”, meanwhile, if anything slightly favour a Republican victory (see fivethirtyeight on this). If Trump was so fucking clever, he’d be well ahead by this time. As it is, the evidence from the polls is that the debate was a clear win for Clinton.
These two sentences directly contradict one another. I have no grip on reality, but oh yes I’m right about Clinton. How? Coincidence?
I never said Clinton was “popular”. In fact, I deliberately said “qualified and experienced” because those two things are undeniably true and unrelated to her massive unpopularity. Rather the point was that she’s unpopular despite her qualifications and experience. That a candidate with such great qualifications and experience can be in such a narrow lead at this point over a blowhard buffoon is deeply depressing.
Here’s a question: why is Clinton so unpopular? More practically -- what can the Democrats learn from this, if anything?
sonofrojblake@8,
You “wouldn’t recognise reality if it bit you in the bum” quite clearly referred to your delusion that Trump is a political genius, a “master persuader” in the words of your other hero, Scott Adams (who I see has now actually admitted he’s a Trump voter). As to Clinton’s unpopularity, this is partly a result of her own limited campaigning skills, but largely because she has been the target of a concerted campaign -- largely consisting of lies -- ever since the 1990s, but in hugely intensified form since she became the expected Democratic presidential candidate for 2016. Polls toward the end of the primary season indicated that Cruz would have done better against Clinton than Trump, and Kasich, much better.
Further to my #9. Another factor in Clinton’s unpopularity -- and in Trrump’s ability to secure the nomination -- is the strong (although sometimes over-hyped) anti-establishment mood in the country. And then, of course, there’s simple sexism. Thus, Clinton is a candidate with multiple serious disadvantages and still, Trump has never got ahead of her in the polls -- and even before the tape of him boasting of his sexual assaults came out, was some 5% down in national polls, and ahead in most of the crucial states. A merely competent Republican candidate would almost certainly be beating her at this point.
@10 -- Trump was of course behind in most of the crucial states, not ahead.
KG,
And somehow, the Republicans have achieved the feat of being unable to put forth even a merely competent candidate.
(O America!)