Why Donald Trump Is Right By: Jeffrey Lord

[Raya @ REAL CONSERVATIVES]

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According to media accounts, business mogul Donald Trump, while in Iowa addressing a possible presidential run at the Iowa Freedom Summit, received thunderous applause when he said it.

"...Many in the room applauded and cheered at the idea that Romney and Bush should not run.”

What “it” did Mr. Trump verbalize that was so overwhelmingly received?  Reuters headlined the story this way: “An Iowa Crowd Had A Surprising Reaction When Donald: Trump Bashed Mitt Romney And Jeb Bush.”

The story noted that “the reaction from the crowd was noteworthy. Many in the room applauded and cheered at the idea that Romney and Bush should not run.” 

Over at Politico the story was reported this way:

Donald Trump on Saturday slammed Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush as potential 2016 presidential candidates — a move that delighted the crowd of Iowa conservatives and demonstrated the two candidates’ potential liabilities in a GOP primary. The conservative real-estate magnate, speaking at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines hosted by Republican Rep. Steve King, spent several minutes criticizing both Romney and Bush and labeling them as weak candidates. ‘It can’t be Mitt — he ran and failed. He failed,’ Trump said, to applause….. ‘You can’t have Bush,’ Trump later added, a line that drew even more applause from the crowd.’

And on NBC’s Today Show reporter Kelly O’Donnell covered the event, with NBC reporting that “it’s what Donald Trump had to say about potential candidates Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush that really got people talking.”

Three different news stories reporting exactly the same perceived reaction. Clearly Donald Trump struck a sensitive nerve inside the grassroots base of the Republican Party. Sensitive enough that when Karl Rove was asked about Trump’s remarks on Fox the following Monday morning, the ex-George W. Bush aide bristled and lashed out defensively. Said Rove:

I love Mitt Romney being lectured by Donald Trump on choking. Trump is the guy who constantly chokes on the idea of becoming a candidate. He says he’s gonna run and then, like in 2012, goes out and gives a lousy speech in Las Vegas and ultimately decides his TV show is more important than his presidential campaign.

But why the visceral nature of the Rove response to Trump?

To which Mark Levin tweeted in classic “get-off-the-phone-you-big-dope” style: “Shut up Karl. You've been so wrong for so long, if you were an attorney you'd be sued for malpractice.”

But why the visceral nature of the Rove response to Trump? Beyond any animus that Rove holds for him? And he surely does.  Well, aside from the fact that Trump is no Bush fan, after the losing 2012 campaign when the results-oriented Trump saw failure, the disbelieving billionaire offered the following advice to GOP donors: “Why are people giving money to Karl Rove when he just wasted $400M without any victories. Use your head. Karl Rove is a total loser. Money given to him might as well be thrown down the drain. Karl Rove’s strategy and commercials were the worst I have ever seen.” Ouch.

Appearing on Mark Levin’s radio show a couple years back, Trump hesitated not a moment to challenge Rove’s record and elaborate:

Karl Rove is bad news for the Republican Party….If the Republicans are going to win, they’re going to have to break away from the Karl Rove’s of the world and, frankly, get more about you know the tea party… they are great Americans, they love this country, they work so hard, and they have been so mistreated by the liberal press, the liberal media. They have been just so mistreated and made to look so bad.

The answer that so terrifies Inside the Beltway Republicans is that, in fact, Republican “moderates” (like Romney and Bush) have an absolutely abysmal history of winning presidential elections.

And right there is what one of those news stories cited above was “notable” about the nature of the response Trump’s Iowa words – words received with an abrupt burst of applause.

The reason for the response to Trump’s statement is as plain as it could possibly be – a reason that terrifies Establishment Republicans like Karl Rove to death. (It clearly terrifies the Washington Post as well. Just yesterday they “covered” this story making the moderate-conservative fight all about Trump and Rove. The story puzzles, headlined as it was “Trump vs. Rove: Battle of the Titans?”  The Post story began: “In case you missed it last week, everyone’s favorite orange-haired political sideshow slammed a potential Mitt Romney rerun.” My two questions? Trump aside, who is the other “titan?” And when did Karl Rove dye his hair orange? Just asking. 

The reason for this skirmish is not only that “moderate” or “centrist” or “progressive” or “liberal” or “RINO” Republicans – however you wish to label them – are Establishment Republican favorites. The answer that so terrifies Inside the Beltway Republicans is that, in fact, Republican “moderates” (like Romney and Bush)  have an absolutely abysmal history of winning presidential elections. An absolute historical fact that the Establishment insiders prefer to ignore, trying always to give the impression that it is conservative X who is really the “unelectable” candidate.

So let’s do some quick history homework. Let’s go back and highlight the facts that those Iowans applauding Donald Trump understand in their political bones, even if they may not know the history in detail.

The so-called “progressive movement” in American politics dawned just before the turn of the twentieth century. The Civil War era and the post-war era that followed had come to a close. From the election of the very first Republican president – Abraham Lincoln – in 1860, all the way through the election of Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888, the GOP had become the dominant political party in America. It was branded, to use a 21st century term, as the “Party of Lincoln” – which translated in the day to support for liberty and the Constitution. As it were: conservatism.

Mark Levin has a Lincoln quote on the jacket of his phenomenal best seller Liberty and Tyranny (a book then Congresswoman Michele Bachmann credited as the intellectual underpinning of the Tea Party) has this notable – and typical – quote from Lincoln on liberty, delivered at a time Lincoln believed the country sorely needed a specific reminding definition. Said Lincoln:

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny."

The Hughes nomination in retrospect eventually launched what is a long and losing stream of moderate GOP nominees with only an eight-year break.

As a new era dawned in the late 1800’s, an era of increased industrialization and mass production, the progressive movement and its allies surged into both political parties. Republican President William McKinley, the last Civil War veteran to serve in the White House, was a conservative in the mold of all of his Republican predecessors going back to Lincoln himself. Running for re-election in1900, his vice president having died, McKinley gave the impression of neutrality in the selection of his new running mate.  But  the pressure was on for the popular Republican progressive governor of New York – Theodore Roosevelt. The Republican Convention went for TR, a decided celebrity in the day for his famous and heroic charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish American War. Within a year of his election as vice president, TR was president thanks to the assassination of McKinley. The Republican Party’s romance with what is known today as “moderate Republicanism” began.

At first it went swimmingly. Theodore Roosevelt, his outsized personality and colorful family of rambunctious kids, was hugely popular. His “Square Deal” and “trust busting” ways were new to the country, and TR rolled on doing what progressives love to do (then and now) – using the federal government to correct what were seen in the day as injustices.

But the split in the Republican Party surfaced quickly. TR’s handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, essentially tried to return the party to its Lincoln/conservative roots. This infuriated TR. He challenged Taft for the GOP nomination, lost to the conservatives, ran as a progressive in the three-way fall election and lost again, bringing Taft down with him – the banner of progressives being carried back into the White House by Woodrow Wilson.

From that point forward the battle was on between conservatives and Republican “moderates” as they soon began to be called. Moderates carried the day in 1916 – losing to Wilson again with progressive Republican ex-Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. The Hughes nomination in retrospect eventually launched what is a long and losing stream of moderate GOP nominees with only an eight-year break. After winning twice with conservatives in 1920 (Harding) and 1924 (Coolidge) the baton was passed to progressive Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928. When the Depression appeared, Hoover reacted with moderate GOP dogma of liberal-lite programs – and lost spectacularly to FDR. The GOP was now headed with head-banging craziness down this path of nominating GOP moderates. Between 1928 and 1960 all of the Republican nominees from Hoover to Nixon ran as moderate Republicans. Of those nine elections only three were won, two of them by Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of World War II. Hoover’s 1928 win was on the coattails of conservative Calvin Coolidge, the latter observing later that for the entire time Hoover was in his Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce, he had given Coolidge a lot of advice – “all of it wrong.”

Establishment Republicans make much of the Barry Goldwater defeat in 1964, ignoring the trauma of JFK’s assassination less than a year earlier. Goldwater knew no Republican was going to unseat Lyndon Johnson, then hugely popular. There was no appetite for a third president in three years. But Goldwater pursued the race to begin making the case for conservatives and bringing the GOP back to its roots. He succeeded. Two years later the GOP had a comeback in the congressional elections – among other victories was Ronald Reagan as governor of California - and the GOP was on its way back – for a while. Post Nixon – and he was no conservative – there was the Ford disaster in 1976. And post-Reagan (like Hoover, George H.W. Bush was elected on the coat tails of a popular conservative predecessor and then denied re-election) there was the resumed string of moderate defeats, last seen in 2012 with Romney. The two George W. Bush victories for “compassionate conservative” losing the popular vote in 2000 and coming close to defeat in 2004.

They also know that if the Republicans are ever to regain the White House, not to mention steer America back to its winning course domestically and internationally, letting the moderate Republican Establishment yet again pick a nominee is a sure sign of yet another loss to come.

So is this abysmal track record enough to derail yet another moderate nominee in 2016?

Yes, if the gut-level response to Donald Trump’s comments are an indication. There is a reason the blunt speaking Trump or Dr. Carson or Senator Ted Cruz or the hit of this event (according to the media) –Wisconsin Scott Walker – were so well received. All four have track records in, successively, business, medicine, the Senate or a governorship that match words to conservative action. And that audience in Iowa – not mention conservatives across the country – knows it.

Nearby is a column by Daniel Horowitz that gets right to heart of the problem. How Can You Fight When You Don’t Believe? That is exactly the problem – with Establishment Republicans, notably inside Washington.

But as the instant, gut-level response of all those Iowans to Donald Trump’s words about Romney and Bush so vividly illustrates, the base of the GOP gets it. They know they are in fact a majority, as Ronald Reagan long ago assured them when he said (as noted last week):

“ Let us lay to rest, once and for all, the myth of a small group of ideological purists trying to capture a majority. Replace it with the reality of a majority….” 

They also know that if the Republicans are ever to regain the White House, not to mention steer America back to its winning course domestically and internationally, letting the moderate Republican Establishment yet again pick a nominee is a sure sign of yet another loss to come.

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CLICK HERE:

http://tpartyus2010.ning.com/forum/topics/the-gateway-to-liberty

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[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

I can't agree more with the history of Republicanism.

It has as much to do with our failed nation today as the liberal progressive democrat machine.