Donald Trump: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

 

By Tom Trinko
AmericanThinker

The Good:

Have you ever heard a Republican politician call Hillary a racist for opposing school choice for inner-city black children?

Have you ever heard a Republican politician call Hillary anti-woman for her support of sex-selection abortions, where it's almost always an unborn girl who is killed?

Of course not.

But Trump has changed that.  Trump has shown that voters like it when Republicans don't act as though they have to be afraid of telling the truth, in harsh terms, about Democrats.  That's why his stand on immigration gained so much attention; he was using Democrat-style rhetoric, but he was a putative Republican.

What the "intelligentsia" miss when they talk about Trump is that real people will be polite at first, but after they've been insulted over and over again, they want to take off the gloves and tell the guttersnipes who've been insulting them what they think.

After literally decades of liberals calling them haters and Nazis, after several years of being told that if they don't support welfare for life for anyone who can sneak into the U.S., they're selfish monsters, a lot of Americans want politicians who will verbally fight back, not milquetoasts who turn the other cheek.

That's the good Trump has done.  He's shown that it's okay for conservatives to be verbally aggressive when dealing with liberals.  Cruz is picking up on this, as can be seen from his last debate performance.  While the "smart" commentators were sure that Cruz taking the moderators to task for going after him was a bad thing, a lot of Americans probably thought that calling out when the moderators have an agenda is a good thing.

The Bad:

As far as anyone can tell, Trump doesn't really have a set of core beliefs.

He flips and flops on issues to the extent that it's possible for comedian Stephen Colbert to make a Trump vs. Trump debate video.

While the reality is that politicians can and do change their mind on issues it's usually on a time scale greater than a few weeks.  Yet at the same time he's declaring that he's become pro-life – and we should trust him on that – Trump says that his sister, the judge who ruled that partial-birth abortion is legal, would make a great Supreme Court justice.

A lot of Trump's support is due to his refusal to bow to liberal speech codes.  Yet now he's said that if he is elected, he'll be very P.C. in his speech.

This should lead Trump supporters to wonder what else he'll change once he's elected; perhaps he really will let all those illegals he says he'll deport back in.  Take away Trump's willingness to speak truth to power, often in a very blunt way, and you're left with a Cruz clone, except lacking tact and a proven track record of consistently pro-American policy positions.

Further, Trump has made it clear that one of his self-perceived strong points is that he'll make deals with the Democrats.

In the old days, pre-LBJ, when the two parties both agreed that the Ten Commandments were good rules and that partisanship ended when it came to foreign affairs, it made sense to make deals with the Democrats.  Today, when the Democrats are the party of socialism, hatred of religion, gay marriage, and ever growing government power, we're past the time for making deals.

The voters gave Republicans control of Congress not because Republicans said they'd make deals with the Democrats.  Instead, voters responded to Republicans' cry to end Obamacare, reduce government intrusion, and take steps to end illegal immigration.

Trump's success is due to Republicans going to D.C. and acting as though they'd run on the promise to work with the Democrats to make deals about implementing Obama's agenda.

The Ugly:

Hair and complexion.  Just kidding!

The ugly aspect of Trump is his willingness to hurt others to achieve his goals.

Lots of "little" people were hurt in his four bankruptcies while he continued to live a lavish lifestyle.  Trump says that his ripping off the average Joe and Jane, whom he didn't pay what he owed, demonstrates his good business sense.

Trump says he'll use the same techniques to fix the huge national debt, but a lot of that money is owed to anyone who buys U.S. bonds, which includes many average Americans.  If Trump uses the same techniques he used in his bankruptcies, Americans who bought bonds backed by the U.S. government may not get their money back.  Is that what anyone wants?

Similarly, Trump used the full power of government to try to force an elderly woman out of the home she'd lived in for three decades.  Trump used his political connections to get the government to compel her to sell her home.  Luckily, after five years of litigation a judge ruled in the old lady's favor.  But what sort of very rich man uses the government against an old lady?

Another ugly aspect of Trump is his willingness to subvert the democratic process to further enrich himself.

In that context, it's important to remember that Trump is a card-carrying member of the donor class that the Demicans in D.C. serve.

Trump often speaks of how he's bought politicians.  He argues that since he's rich, he can't be bought, but that is unclear at best; men who lust after wealth the way Trump does never seem to have enough, and it would be overly optimistic to think that Trump couldn't be bought if the price was right.

Trump's own words and actions have shown that he's very comfortable with crony capitalism, where the power of government helps the businesses that are nice to the incumbents, such as with ethanol subsidies.

Trump's name-calling is a sign of a vindictive and insecure person – a real bully, not the fake ones that liberals always whine about.  It's one thing to call Hillary anti-woman after she'd falsely accused Republicans of being anti-woman.  It's another to attack other Republican candidates with names.  Even worse, Trump has no problem using Democrat attacks on Cruz.

It's clear that Trump's first loyalty is to Trump.

Sadly, it appears that Trump has nothing but contempt for those good people who support him. 

He's said that he could murder an innocent person, and his followers wouldn't care.  What sort of monsters would Trump supporters be if they would ignore him murdering an innocent person? 

While it's clear that Trump's claim is false, the fact that he made it speaks volumes about how Trump thinks about those who support him.  To him, they're people to be used to further the Trump agenda, just like that old lady who wouldn't sell her house or the workers who didn't get paid when Trump preserved his opulent lifestyle by using the bankruptcy laws four times.

We need a candidate who will end the Demican tyranny in D.C., and Trump has told us who that is when he, Trump, told us that "everybody [in D.C.] hates him [Cruz]."

Trump is on record as saying that the Demicans view Cruz as the enemy.  Isn't that the sort of endorsement we want for our next president?

You can read more of Tom's rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious, and feel free to follow him on Twitter.