Our View: Unmask Donald Trump, the two-bit billionaire
Our View: Republican leaders should oppose Donald Trump as a pretender who tarnishes their brand.
Republicans should not acquiesce to the inevitability of Donald Trump. Not this early. The primary process will unmask a man who mocks the disabled and believes he’d keep his supporters even if he committed murder.
He’s not a real candidate. He’s a carnival barker.
Many thinking Republicans firmly believe he will not be the party’s candidate. But that’s no reason to stay quiet while he diminishes the stature of the party.
In the interest of retaining a strong voice for conservatism, Republicans need to show the courage to stand up to Trump and talk honestly with his supporters.
The National Review’s conservative case against Trump was a good place to start.
David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, is one of a group of prominent conservatives who made the case against Trump in a series of articles in the Review.
“Not since George Wallace has there been a presidential candidate who made racial and religious scapegoating so central to his campaign,” Boaz wrote. “I think we can say that this is a Republican campaign that would have appalled Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan.”
Those leaders, cherished by the right, brought conservative ideas into the mainstream of American political discourse. Trump is a pretender, not an acolyte.
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Mona Charen, columnist and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote that “voters who care about conservative ideas and principles must ask whether (Trump’s) recent impersonation of a conservative is just another role he’s playing. When a con man swindles you, you can sue — as many embittered former Trump associates who thought themselves ill used have done. When you elect a con man, there’s no recourse.”
Steven F. Hayward, the Ronald Reagan distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University, argues that Trump might actually hurt conservatism.
Trump’s “inclination to understand our problems as being managerial rather than political suggests he might well set back the conservative cause if he is elected, if not make the problems of runaway executive power even worse,” Hayward writes.
William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, put it bluntly: “Isn’t Trumpism a two-bit Caesarism of a kind that American conservatives have always disdained? Isn’t the task of conservatives today to stand athwart Trumpism, yelling Stop?”
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We’d say that’s exactly the task before today’s serious Republicans: Condemn the excesses of this two-bit billionaire.
It would be unusual for powerful Republicans to interfere in a GOP primary by ganging up on the front-runner. But Trump himself shows no inclination to honor Reagan’s 11th commandment not to speak ill of fellow Republicans.
Republicans need to fight back in kind, but with a clear understanding of Trump’s appeal.
Trump has latched onto a real anxiety in America over economic and social changes. The issues are real. The discussion and the solutions should be complex.
Trump simply plays on those fears. Magnifies them. Projects them onto groups of people without regard for the potential to cause lasting harm.
He’s in this for his ego. Not the country. Certainly not to further the tenets of conservatism.
The right has well-defined proposals that are not being heard. Trump’s outrageous behavior mutes those discussions and tarnishes the party in ways that will also cause lasting harm.
It’s time for more Republicans to stand up to Trump’s narrow band of far-right supporters and make the case against Trump.
Republicans should not allow themselves to be defined by the lowest denominator.