Bret Stephens, who writes the “Global View” column in The Wall Street Journal, normally takes a pretty evenhanded view of his topic. But he sure got down and dirty in his recent column about Donald Trump, “The Donald and the demagogues.”
Here’s how that hatchet piece began: “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.”
Pretty harsh, wasn’t he? A few paragraphs later, Stephens seemed to backpedal a bit, when he tried to analyze why Trump has garnered so much support, listing among “several views (that) have been offered to explain his popularity”:
He toes no line, serves no PAC, abides no ideology, is beholden to no man. He addresses the broad disgust of everyday Americans with their failed political establishment.
Sounds like a series of compliments, doesn’t it? Well, don’t believe it. Because Stephens got even nastier in the next paragraph, writing:
And so forth and so on — a parade of semi-sophisticated theories that act as bathroom deodorizer to mask the stench of this candidacy.
Then Stephens gets to the real target of his column. It’s not Trump, but the “vulgarians” who support him. Here’s how he put it:
Mr. Trump is a loudmouth vulgarian appealing to quieter vulgarians. These vulgarians comprise a significant percentage of the GOP base. The leader isn’t the problem. The people are. It takes the demos to make the demagogue.
But Stephens wasn’t the only supposedly conservative columnist to launch an all-out attack on Trump in the past few days. George Will, the Washington Post columnist and frequent Fox News panelist, was just as critical as Stephens. Here’s how he expressed his dismay for what he described as “Trump’s curdled populism” in the opening of his recent column “The havoc that Trump wreaks — on his own party”:
Every sulfurous belch from the molten interior of the volcanic Trump phenomenon injures the chances of a Republican presidency.
Yes, indeed, the neocon columnists are getting very worried by Trump’s appeal — as well they should be. The more he’s attacked, the higher he climbs in the polls.
There was at least one notable exception to all of the tirades against Trump in the past few days. In her recent WSJ column “America is so in play,” Peggy Noonan wrote about a longtime acquaintance — a woman in her late 60s who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. She is now an ardent Trump supporter and even registered as a Republican just so she could vote for him in her state’s primary. She texted Noonan to tell her so.
Noonan wrote, “I asked if she’d ever been one before.” The woman replied, “No, never!!!” Bet that’s happening a lot more often than the media care to admit.
Further on in her column, Noonan had an even bigger surprise for her readers. She described a conversation she had with Cesar, a legal immigrant who works at the deli counter of her local grocery store. Read carefully to the exchange she had with him:
I said: Cesar, you’re supposed to be offended by Trump, he said Mexico is sending over criminals, he has been unfriendly, you’re an immigrant. Cesar shook his head: No, you have it wrong. Immigrants, he said, don’t like illegal immigration, and they’re with Mr. Trump on anchor babies.
Noonan didn’t use quotation marks for that part of the conversation. But she did with what Cesar said next:
“They are coming in from other countries to give birth to take advantage of the system. We are saying that! When you come to this country, you pledge loyalty to the country that opened the doors to help you.”
He added, “We don’t bloc vote anymore.”
Good for you, Cesar. Good for Noonan, too, for relating her conversation with him and for adding this very telling comment:
I will throw in here that almost wherever I’ve been this summer, I kept meeting immigrants who are or have grown conservative — more men than women, but women too.
America is so in play.
Indeed it is, as the Monmouth University Poll just confirmed. It shows Trump and Ben Carson tied for first place at 23 percent in Iowa, with Carly Fiorina in second place with 10 percent. No one else is in double digits. This means the three people leading the polls in Iowa, with 56 percent of the support, have never held elective office in their lives.
Yes, we are sick to death of politics are usual. Maybe there’s a lesson here for columnists Will and Stephens — and for all of the other candidates seeking the presidency.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
–Chip Wood
The post Some Trump attacks — and a pleasant surprise appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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