Donal Trump's Political Comb-Over

 

WashingtonExaminer.com

According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, Donald Trump leads the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Some 27 percent of registered GOP voters named the billionaire braggart as their first or second choice.

Trump's supporters are more likely than other Republicans to associate with the Tea Party and to describe themselves as "very conservative." But Trump's appeal to them is rather surprising. Only a few years ago, he was a man of the Left, both in his own estimation and as revealed by the policy positions he took.

He once described himself as "very liberal" on healthcare and supported a single-payer healthcare system run by the government. In 1999, he proposed a one-time 14.25 percent tax on the wealthy. He also once described himself as "totally pro-choice," saying, again in 1999, "I believe [abortion] is a personal decision that should be left to the women and their doctors."

Trump also has a history of using the coercive hand of government to take other people's property by exploiting lax eminent domain laws -- essentially state-sanctioned thievery.

He has donated money to some of the country's most aggressively liberal Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner, Charlie Rangel, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton. And it was recently revealed that in the mid-2000s Trump and his son donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

The mogul appears to have evolved, if that's the right word, on many of the issues. In 2011, he advocated a tax plan that would drastically reduce individual rates and end the corporate income and estate taxes.

He now says he opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk. "I'm pro-life and I have been pro-life," he said earlier this year. Trump says he changed his view after hearing about the pregnancy experiences of friends.

Parsing what The Donald believes (does he really believe anything other than that he is a great guy?) is tricky. He regularly slams Obamacare but while appearing on the "Late Show with David Letterman" last year he spoke of the wonders of Great Britain's single-payer healthcare system.

His supporters seem not to have noticed his previous liberalism — or, more likely, they don't care. Trump's popularity derives not so much from his ideas as from his aggressive rhetorical style, his fighting-mad message and the fact that he is perceived as not pandering as other politicians do.

But even if he can walk on water for now, we suspect that Trump cannot defy gravity forever. In the unlikely event that his favorable poll numbers continue into primary season, he will have to answer for his past embrace of liberal policies. But it is doubtful he will need to. That's because Trump has so many other problems -- his bluster, divisiveness and weak grasp of the issues, to name a few -- that will doom his campaign long before he needs to venture into the snows of Iowa.