Give Us Liberty

Arnold Ahlert

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0411/ahlert.php3

Trumping the Debate

Arnold Ahlert, JWR.com

Many Americans are apparently fascinated with the phenomenon known as Donald Trump. So much so, that many polls have him trailing only Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s currently. On Tuesday, most likely in an effort to seem reasonable, Mr. Romney tried to undercut Mr. Trump, saying that Barack Obama’s birthplace is irrelevant because his mother was an American. Ironically, such reasonableness is likely to backfire. Why? A lot of Americans are sick to death of “reasonable” Republicans.

First, let me state that I think Donald Trump would make a lousy president. A great king perhaps, but not a great president. This is a critical distinction in that the former is constitutionally constrained, while the latter can do whatever he pleases. Mr. Trump is a shameless self-promoter with a giant ego, and it is hard to imagine the man for whom “you’re fired!” is an integral part of his mindset coping with the inevitable compromises that accompany the job of president. Yet there is something uniquely refreshing abut a man who speaks his mind without worrying about the consequences. Such is what separates him from the typical politician, especially Republican politicians. It is also what makes him enormously attractive to so many Americans.

Even more so when one considers who Mr. Trump would be running against.
Barack Obama is many things, but first and foremost he is a hypocrite. Perhaps the most hypocritical president of the modern era. No other individual occupying the White House has had a verifiable track record of more diametrically opposed positions than Mr. Obama. He was against war in Iraq and took us into Libya without Congressional approval. He wants to cut America’s appetite for imported oil by one third, yet goes to Brazil and promises them that America will be one of their best customers when that country ramps up its own oil production. He is submitting a “deficit reduction” plan less than three months after he submitted the most reckless federal budget ($3.7 trillion with over $1.6 trillion in deficit spending) in the history of the nation. He has completely repudiated his 2006 vote against raising the debt ceiling to $8.9 trillion, which he characterized as a “lack of leadership, even as he proposes to raise it to more than $14 trillion in 2011.

In other words, anyone with the slightest bit of gumption could hammer this president, along with his re-distributionist, America is “just another country” agenda. A real man or woman could take him to task for fiddling with an odious health care bill for over two years while the American economy burned. Someone with a backbone could remind the electorate that free market enterprise isn’t about nationalizing banks, insurance and car companies, and the student loan program.

A strong Republican candidate would tell America that the essence of gangster government is a combination of czars, cabinet departments and agency heads attempting to impose their will on Americans without the input of Congress. A person with genuine convictions could explain that three trillion dollars of stimulus, whether in the form of creating “shovel ready” jobs that didn’t exist (as this president has admitted), Quantitative Easing which is debasing our currency and driving up the price of oil and food, or propping up public sector employment at the expense of taxpayers, is a complete debacle.

Which Republican is that? So far, no one.

Which is why The Donald resonates. And he has done America a great service in one respect: he has demonstrated that the current president is thin-skinned. When Obama campaign advisor David Plouffe referred to Donald Trump’s gyrations regarding the president’s birth certificate as a “sideshow,” such was an indication that the sideshow was front and center in the White House. If it wasn’t, Mr. Plouffe wouldn’t have mentioned it at all. By making Trump visible–instead of irrelevant–Mr. Plouffe has reinforced the notion held by many that Mr. Obama is both insecure and narcissistic, in that he feels it necessary to respond to “baseless” accusations.

Yet the “birther” issue itself reveals one of two things about Mr. Trump as well. If he is not running for president, keeping the issue alive is his way of revealing the hypocrisy of a mainstream media whose incuriosity about Mr. Obama’s entire past borders on scandalous. Even if one subtracts the question of Mr. Obama’s birthplace from the equation completely, the fact that most of his earlier life remains off-limits to the American public is a testament to media bias. It is worth remembering the same media managed to dig up a 24-year-old DUI arrest on George W. Bush five days before the 2004 election, and attempted to pin a bogus extra-marital affair on John McCain during the 2008 campaign–even as a cabal of JournoListers attempted to smear anyone who linked Barack Obama with racial arsonist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, despite the fact that the president attended his church for twenty years. Yet if Mr. Trump is running for president he demonstrates a certain level of naivete. Assuming Mr. Obama has a legitimate birth certificate, he will release it when it is likely to: a) do the most damage to his opponent, b) accrue to his greatest interest, or c) both.
Memo to Mr. Trump: they don’t call them “October surprises” for nothing.

So who is Donald Trump? For a smart Republican presidential candidate, Mr. Trump is a template. He is the antithesis of the Republicans’ last presidential candidate, for whom taking on Barack Obama in no uncertain terms was viewed as undignified or unseemly. The bet here is Americans have had it up to their eyeballs with polite Republicans like John McCain, who refused to engage in anything resembling vigorous debate, perhaps fearful of being labeled racist for daring to do so.
President Obama, who has told his followers “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” on one occasion, and “we’re going to punish our enemies” on another, is hardly deserving of such deferential treatment. This is what Mr. Trump intuitively understands. It is about time other Republicans learned that lesson as well. 2012 is one of the most critical elections in memory, and allowing Democrats and/or their media cheerleaders to frame the parameters of “acceptable” rhetoric is a fool’s errand. The best defense is a good offense. Any Republican presidential candidate incapable of making the president defend his policies is no candidate at all.

Warts and all, Donald Trump calls it like he sees it. Will any other Republican do the same?