I am happy to say that I was out in front of telling conservatives to rid themselves of the stench of Donald Trump over a year ago. Here is some of what I wrote:
There is no nice way to say this: Donald Trump is a clown. He’s a charlatan who cares about one thing, and one thing only: Donald Trump.
and
I’ve never taken Trump seriously, and I have no fears at all about him winning the GOP nomination in 2016. But it’s increasingly difficult to take seriously the organizations and media outlets that allow this buffoon to pretend he’s actually a conservative.
If they’re stupid enough to buy the snake oil he’s selling, I don’t want any part of it.
I am still not worried about him winning the nomination. Despite his current numbers, the fanfare will wear off after some time. We saw the same thing play itself out in 2011. It may go longer this time largely because people already have a familiarity with Trump. The country is not seeing him for the first time.
Still, the push-back against people who have warned that Trump is a fraud has been ferocious and it comes from people who claim they do not even support The Donald in his presidential bid. They say that, but latch on to whatever stupid thing Trump is spouting like you used to see in those old E.F. Hutton commercials.
Early on, criticism of Donald Trump was limited to Trump himself. Trump is not a conservative. He’s not even really a Republican. He’s an opportunist that has largely supported Democrats and liberal causes in the past and still does today. But he said some things about immigration and that got some people to run around in a tizzy like Lorraine McFly, asking her friends about Marty, “Isn’t he a dreamboat?” It also made their knees jerk in response to criticism, so much so that they took any criticism of Trump personally and started lashing out like you’d said something about their mother.
The problem is not with the critics. If a friend of mine came to me and said, “I got this email. The attorney for some Nigerian price wants me to help them free up funds. If I allow them to deposit some of that money in my account I get to keep some of it,” I’d calmly explain how it was a scam and to stay away. If he told me again that he thought it was a good deal, I’d be more firm in telling him he was going to be ripped off.
If he still insisted and told me he was going to send them his banking information, I’d say to him, “Well then you’re a goddamned idiot.”
There really is not much difference as it relates to Trump. There are only so many times you can tell people what a joke he is before you start to realize the people still buying his nonsense aren’t all that bright.
There has been no shortage of butt hurt coming from the corners of the site that bears the name of Andrew Breitbart. Recently, GOP consultant Rick Wilson has taken to the airwaves and pages of Politico and IJ Review to excoriate Donald Trump and supporters who seem happy to be taken in by the charlatan. Well, that was too much for BannonBart’s John Nolte. He responded by writing up this half-assed piece where he tries to be amusing and also claims that what Rick is doing with respect to Trump is why Republicans lose.
First off, in laying the groundwork for his screed, Nolte remarks the GOP has lost the popular vote in 5 out of the last 6 elections. This is easily dismissed as it has nothing to do with anything he’s whining about:
1. In 2000, Al Gore should have won in a walk. Simple as that. That he lost the electoral college vote was pretty remarkable.
2. George W. Bush did not win in 2004 simply because it was a time of “war.” He won because of a superior Get Out the Vote operation and he came up against a pretty weak opponent in John Kerry. GWB was beatable. It just didn’t happen.
3. Obama would have beaten any Republican candidate in 2008. It was a year for Democrats and Obama was not going to lose.
4. Obama won largely the same way GWB won in 2004. Great GOTV operation and a weak candidate.
If Nolte wants to believe this is all the fault of GOP consultants than perhaps he can point out which candidates would have done a better job. In 2000, GWB’s only competition was…..John McCain. In 2008, McCain’s main competition after Giuliani dropped out was….Mitt Romney.
He then goes on to hit Marco Rubio, proclaiming after he was elected that “the first thing” he did was to join up with the Gang of 8 in their immigration reform plan. I was critical of Rubio on that front but it didn’t happen until 2013, a full two years after Rubio took office and after he was voting against Obama’s spending bills.
And then Nolte gets to the heart of the matter. Whenever you’re talking with a Trumplestiltskin about Trump being awful for the GOP, it won’t be long before they are shouting, “Oh, and who do you support? Jeb?!?!” Sure enough, Nolte went there with Wilson:
Like an embittered Gollum-In-Glasses protecting “My Precious” Jeb, Rick Wilson, a top Republican media consultant, appeared on CNN last night to hurl criticism mixed with a lot of faux-macho ad-hominem at Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
Did you guffaw at the Lord of The Rings analogy? Me neither. Still, leaving aside Nolte’s swipes at Rubio and Jeb, that still leaves 14 other candidates including Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry, etc.
The conversation in these cases almost always turns to “the base” and how RINO hack losers like Rick Wilson cannot stand “the base.” Of course, the base is hard to define these days. I consider myself to be the base. But I think Trump is a charlatan and a clown. Therefore, I am a RINO squish faggot according to some of the “real conservatives” out there.
“The base” has become a spin-off of sorts, similar to the ultra-violent IRA splinter group that Sean Bean was part of in ‘Patriot Games.’ They’re doing their best to kill the GOP from the inside, running around screaming, “IT DOES MOTTER!” (Irish accent) when something doesn’t go their way.
If Nolte wants to get worked up over polls with 300 GOP primary voters, fine. But don’t give us this nonsense that Rick Wilson is the reason we lose. There is more danger of losing not these crank “base” voters, but voters on the fence. Voters who haven’t been a part of the process but see what damage Obama has done. I am more worried about losing those voters than some mythical faction of the GOP that would ignore a candidate like Ted Cruz, who actually brings some conservative bona fides to the table, than a clown like Donald Trump.