Thursday, May 05, 2016

Trump is the Republican Party Stripped Naked


I find the hair pulling and garment rending by the Republican establishment over Donald Trump becoming their presidential candidate hilarious and totally disingenuous. You would guess from all of the wailing that Trump had somehow betrayed the Republican Party’s core values or insulted Ronald Reagan, but that’s not what’s going on here. Most of Trumps ideas and ideals are straight from the Republican playbook (“The Art of the Lie”) and probably differ little from Rubio or Kasich or McConnell. So why is Mr. Combover despised by so many in his own party?

Republicans are upset with Trump because he dared to break the golden rule of conservatives campaigning for office: Always talk in code. The Code is a laundry list of words and phrases used by Republicans to convey their true values to the faithful without coming across to the rest of us as obviously racist, homophobic, misogynistic or cruel. For instance, when a politician talks about those who have become dependent on welfare or “the takers” or welfare queens, they’re talking about African Americans. If they talk about people attacking America’s core values, waging war against Christmas or East Coast elites, they’re referring to liberals. And when they talk about almost any issue relating to women, the real message is “we must maintain America’s patriarchy at any cost.”

Trump, however, ain’t playing that game. He has thrown away the codebook and blurts out what every racist, misogynistic, homophobic American wants to hear in one and two syllable words. No more talking in code for Trump. He’s going to tell it like it is, and his fellow Republicans are outraged because their horrible, hateful values are now on full display in every Trump speech and interview.

Trump is the Republican Party naked, revealing every ugly blemish, every deformity, every open sore and it is a truly an ugly spectacle. Mainstream Republicans don’t hate Donald for what he says, but for how he says it, and in the end, it might be the one positive thing to come out of Trump’s run for the White House.

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