The Trump Temptation

Everything about him seems both genuine and fake at the same time and this would have me running for the hills normally.  

And yet, here I am, transfixed by his every media appearance and awed by his ability to brush off the backlash from his own rhetoric that would fell mere mortal politicians.[read_more]  Over the last several years I’ve transformed into a pretty hardcore libertarian but still hoping that the Republican Party can still be the voice of liberty and peace it once was.  Rand Paul is the candidate I support, whose name is on my bumper.  Yet, I watched last week’s debate not carrying a lick about Rand Paul and instead I was just waiting with glee to see who Donald Trump would piss off next.

Call it the Trump Temptation.

There isn’t any rational reason for supporting Donald Trump in the conventional political sense.  It’s why so many bloggers and commentators committed to America’s arcane political traditions are so at a loss about how well he’s doing.  And this is where it starts.  

Forget Donald Trump and instead look at his supporters.  For this, you have to throw out all notions of politics that you subscribe to.  You have to understand that over the last 14 or so years there is a large chuck of conservative voters that have been let down by promise after promise, beaten down both by the social issue success of liberals under Barack Obama, the failure to fulfill campaign promises of the Republican Party, and the betrayal of people like John Roberts who they were told over and over were sound.  
From George W. Bush’s expansion of government through Medicaid Part D and No Child Left Behind to the failures of post-Bush congressional leaders to follow a conservative agenda to the point of punitively punishing conservative members doing what they told their constituents they would do, there is an enormous anger at politicians in general within the GOP.  

No doubt there are actual elected Republicans addressing these concerns from Ted Cruz to Rand Paul to Bobby Jindal, concerns that range from gay marriage to religious liberty to immigration to the growth of government to surveillance.  But no matter how outside they position themselves, nobody is taking on the system with the charisma and vehemence of Donald Trump.

The key to understanding this is to stop looking at it from a conventional conservative versus liberal outlook. Trump blurs the lines.  He appeals to an emotion more important than partisan loyalty.  During the debate, many Republicans wrung their hands that he said he would not pledge to support the eventual nominee, but those same Republicans need to understand that their is a huge swath of voters in their party who feel the same way.  I count myself as one of them, having refused to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012.  

And don’t think these doesn’t extend to the Democratic Party as well.  Bernie Sanders just said the Democratic Party is morally bankrupt, then packed in 28,000 people in Seattle, and is surging in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire.  The Democratic Party is about two election cycles behind the GOP in dealing with this because President Obama has been so successful from a progressive point of view.  

The fact that Trump has given to both parties, that he has no party loyalty, and is vague on issues concerns these folks not at all.  Because it’s not like our elected officials have followed through on their promises, so at least Trump is honest.  He’s a billionaire who can’t be bought and who has exposed a system he himself has openly talked about exploiting.  It’s refreshing, quite frankly, to hear him talk about giving money to politicians to get things he wants.

I tell people that I would dismiss Trump more vehemently but he makes all the right people mad.  While vulgar and borderline-racist in many of his appeals, the sureness in his manner and celebrity of his character is protecting him in a way that would never a work for a traditional politician.  He doesn’t bow down to the traditional political penance when someone messes up, instead he digs in and plows forward.  It’s a resilience many people appreciate at a time when so many conservatives are told they need to get over their social beliefs.  

Our political system, with the two parties so entrenched and in control of our “democratic” process, has created a choking effect to those who don’t tow the line.  Look at what happens when a young conservative representative like Justin Amash or a veteran liberal senator like Chuck Schumer strays from the herd?  The average folks are tired of it, they are tired of being told to get in line or else.  In the past the call for unity centered around the fear of a liberal boogeyman.  

But there are so many now simply asking “what’s the difference between a Bush and a Clinton?”  They are tired of being called stupid, a pestilence, or whatever nasty phrase comes up in order to get back in line so the consultants can make their money and everyone else can eventually get their nice salary from the government they claim to want to shrink.  This emotion is real and it’s not going anywhere whether Trump continues to rise or he falls.  It’s something whoever the GOP nominee is must deal with or they will lose.

As for me, I still don’t’ know what I’m going to do with Donald Trump.  My guy Rand has been quite disappointing.  Like I said above, every rational thought tells me that this would be a giant mistake to do anything to help Donald Trump.  He’s not a libertarian.  But all the choices we’ve made base on our rationality hasn’t worked out that well.  Government grows, wars continue, and any kind of independence is punished.  To those who support Trump, I get it.  And the sooner the rest of the GOP and our political masters get it, the better off we will be.  Because the absolute worst thing they can do is marginalize and try and destroy you, because they will just destroy themselves in the process.

Thomas Jefferson famously said with no doubt a touch of hyperbole that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
 
As usual with Thomas Jefferson, he’s not wrong.