Let's Talk Trump

First a disclaimer: RedStateVT has - to date - not endorsed any Republican candidate for president. Our preferred candidate, former Vice President Dick Cheney, decided against running, no doubt due to health problems. So now let's take a look at the current front-runner, Donald Trump.

Here are a few things that give people - Republicans and Democrats alike - pause about Trump.

• First, he may not even be a real Republican. He used to be a Democrat, has given money to Democrats and has held policy positions that Democrats hold.
• Second, Trump says some seemingly outrageous things. Witness the uproar over his comments about immigration and abortion.
• Third, Trump has never held political office before.

Wow! With baggage like that one would think that Trump would have long ago (think Rick Perry) have fallen by the wayside and now be planning his next reality TV show. But - somehow - Trump has convinced MILLIONS of people to vote for him. We will opine in a minute on how that is likely to have happened, but first let's examine the items enumerated above: the reasons why Trump should NOT be where he is today.

Yes, it's true that Trump does not have that Republican feel about him. Neither the Republican-lite of a John McCain nor the Republican- noir of a Ted Cruz. Why it sort of reminds us of another candidate garnering millions of votes who - for his entire decades-long career - has eschewed the label of the party for which he is now running. Who could this be? If you said Comrade Bernie Sanders you would be correct! Sanders has labeled himself an Independent for as long as one can remember. Now he is running as a Democrat. The state-controlled media never questions him about this anomaly. So Trump's party affiliation apparently should not bother us any more than that of Sanders.

The Donald certainly gets a lot of attention whenever he speaks. His most outrageous comments were - apparently - on the subject of immigration. Trump dared to say - in the aftermath of a mass murder attack by Muslims - that maybe the country should reconsider its policy on Muslim immigration. For this apostasy, he was labeled a bigot and a hater. Apparently, suggesting that a country that had allowed the entry of 1.5 million Muslims since 9/11 and had seen an influx of tens of millions of Mexicans hit the pause button offended the Liberal elites. Of course, the record shows that Hillary Clinton once had a more aggressive position on immigration. Sorry, but rational minds (e.g. not Liberals) could hardly call Trump's comments controversial.

Finally, there is the question of Trump's experience. The only thing that Trump has been able to accomplish in his adult life is to grow his family fortune to north of a billion dollars. How did that happen? Meanwhile, Barack Obama rode to the presidency on a resume that includes the following: his brown skin, his experience as a community organizer and his abbreviated political career in which - when face with difficult decisions - he voted "present." No, previous political experience no longer matters. 

Trump's success is based on reading the political mood of the country. Namely, mass immigration, coupled with foreign policy appeasement is destroying America. Bill Clinton's advisers sold a deeply flawed candidate to the country with the tag line: It's the economy, stupid. Trump's tag line is: Make America Great Again. After almost eight years of Barack Obama, that sounds about right.