Decisive Presidential Policy Differences Are Buried under Malicious Attacks
And so, we can conclude, with confidence, that a determined sleaze attack, if taken up by the press with amoral ferocity, can swing an American Presidential election in the direction desired by the media.
A determined sleaze attack, if taken up by the press with amoral ferocity, can swing an American Presidential election in the direction desired by the media.
A Fox News presidential poll today reported Hillary Clinton’s seven-point lead over Donald Trump. This is outside the poll’s “margin of error” and the many subcategories of poll results confirm consistent gains for Clinton since the press set off the video bomb a week ago.
The video was leaked from NBC to the “Washington Post,” in case you have been hiking in the Australian outback, and was recorded 11 years ago, without the knowledge of those recorded—an accidental “hot mic”—and held for more than a decade before being released two days before the second Presidential debate. The video, taken on a soap opera set, recorded guest Donald Trump and a network staffer, in a private, rather over-excited, boasting session, with Trump saying that given star status a guy could walk up to certain women and “grab their pussy” without preliminaries.
[The video] was recorded 11 years ago, without the knowledge of those recorded—an accidental “hot mic”—and held for more than a decade before being released two days before the second Presidential debate.
Not the sort of macho boast, or joke, any guy would choose to have recorded, and, more than a decade later, become perhaps the most replayed and discussed video clip every released on the world. But there was a logic in the timing of the release and for the sudden virtually exclusive focus on this video by the media to the exclusion of all else. (On a recent day, the front page of the New York Times presented 17 articles and opinion pieces all attacking the candidacy of Trump with a dozen or so about the “pussy attack.”)
In effect, America’s so-called “opinion makers” chose to anoint this the ONLY issue now worth considering in the coming Presidential election. Any voter wishing to consider other matters must turn from the mainstream media to other sources. Play pussy or don’t play at all.
Well, ask of a folly only what it accomplishes. On a forced diet of repeating the story with comments, analyses, and tirades, the American electorate in about a week turned from supporting the Trump candidacy—which had been neck-and-neck with Clinton—to putting Trump well behind. No sooner had THAT been breathlessly accomplished by the media than it launched that nationwide blitz: Trump candidacy defeated.
Hey, Americans. Don’t bother to vote on November 8, the election has been decided. It’s Hillary by a landslide.
What else did the folly accomplish? Well, before the October video surprise, Trump’s supporters were looking at the issues, at what Mr. Trump stated as his positions and his promises. Trump? Positions? Nah! What positions?
The Supreme Court. The next President will make appointments changing the Court for decades. Trump names possible appointees in the tradition of Justice Scalia to uphold the U.S. Constitution. In the second debate, Clinton listed more than a dozen race, gender, and age related social goals for the newly configured Court. She did not mention the U.S. Constitution. Trump said: Uphold the U.S. Constitution.
The Economy. Trump and Clinton both focus on jobs. Trump says cut the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 15 percent, on average, across all businesses. That will give corporations a powerful incentive to stay in the U.S. or repatriate. Hillary lists more than a dozen vague promises such as “equal pay,” fairness,” “minimum wage,” and “make the rich pay”—each with big voter constituencies—without ever showing how they connect with more jobs. Actually they don’t.
Health. Trump says repeal the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), encourage competition across state lines by health insurance companies now protected from competition to offer better plans, and create health care savings plans and tax exemptions for medical expenses. The theme is: Move back toward the private sector. Clinton says revise and strengthen Obama Care and…well, the list is simply too long to reproduce—promising to meet dozens of specific demands of various voter blocs.
Energy and the Environment. Trump says accelerate the huge advance in U.S. and Canadian energy production made possible by technology such as fracking and natural gas storage. Those advances several years ago made America the #1 energy producer in the world for the first time in decades. In sight, after decades, was U.S. energy independence from the Middle East authoritarian regimes. Mr. Trump says that, sure, “global warming” exists, but there is no evidence that it presents a long-term threat; forecasting the weather half a century or more from now cannot justify elimination of our robust fossil fuel economy, dramatically higher energy prices, and casting aside independence. Clinton says that “global warming and climate change” are the single greatest crisis facing America. Ms. Clinton wants to dismantle America’s energy infrastructure and build a gigantic system of windmills and solar panels at any cost.
Education. Trump says education is a state and local matter, but all new funds from the federal government should be directed toward “schools of choice,” charter schools, and other experiments in alternatives to the public education monopoly that is failing its captive students, especially in African-American neighborhoods. Clinton, with almost 100 percent support of National Education Association (NEA) members, who enjoy a virtual monopoly through the public schools, and represent one of the largest lobby groups in America, says permit no competition with the public education system. Just pour in more money; that will solve the problem. The NEA loves it.
Immigration. Trump says there are now some 11 million illegal (“undocumented”) aliens in the United States. These residents began their stay by violating our law, are illegal and so cannot legally work within our system, and cannot pay taxes, social security payments, and other obligations, but do enjoy many benefits supported by taxpayers. Trump says that in a country founded on law and equal application of the law, this is intolerable. The illegal must go through the process, now on the books, to become legal; new illegals, pouring into the country every day, must be stopped. Clinton says this is racism, bigotry, cruel, and just plain not politically correct. The solution to illegal immigrants is to declare them legal. Presto, problem solved. And that ought to motivate millions more to enter the U.S. illegally.
Foreign policy. Trump states the principle “America first,” the smear term used to attack those in the Senate and House who resisted our entry into World War II. “America first” always has meant that America’s love for its ideals of freedom, human rights, and democratic processes under a constitution does not imply that American men and women must fight and die all over the world when those ideals are threatened. And so, Trump focuses exclusively on the actual attack on Americans by the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL). To defeat them, he would cooperate with allies such as Russia, Iran, Israel, Iraq, and Turkey. Clinton would oppose head to head the Russian nuclear power in Syria in order to support “democratic forces” fighting the authoritarian regime. She only reluctantly and with qualifications will use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”
If you were opposed to Trump at all costs, and Clinton was your horse in the race, would you want the election to be decided based upon the respective, comparative principles and promises of the two candidates? When, in defiance of the positions you deem obviously right, some half of the American people had gone against you, for Trump, what would you do?
The political establishment, intellectual class, and mainstream media are the righteous keepers of the truth, they view any strategy or tactic as fair in winning over hopelessly misled American Trump supporters.
The right thing might be to concede that Americans who disagree with you might elect the next president. But, if you are a politician, part of the “intellectual elite,” or part of a media with the mission to battle the judgment of stupid American voters you would change the subject. Abruptly and totally. No more arguing based on positions, where the electorate obviously is hopelessly wrong. Instead, appeal to their “morality,” “family values,” “decency”—which, by the way, the media always have scorned—to divert them away from the issues and toward debating a decade-old video, released at the perfect time, about an inappropriate private joke.
The bottom line? Because the political establishment, intellectual class, and mainstream media are the righteous keepers of the truth, they view any strategy or tactic as fair in winning over hopelessly misled American Trump supporters.
The art of the politician—and, in this election season, the media and intellectual elites have become politicians—is to seize the emotions of the voter on the premise emotions if raw enough always will prevail over reason. Isn’t the art of the voter, then, to hear the issues, the principles of the candidate, through the nigh-irresistible siren song of sex, scandal, and righteous scolding?
Penetrating that fog, we see that Republican Party nominee Donald J. Trump wins hands-down on the issues. He defies the Washington establishment and all its cumbrous constituencies—from Greenpeace to the National Educational Association to Black Lives Matter (as a symbol of the movement to create a sense of white tribal/collective guilt).
The assumed truths of the mighty constituencies for Federal Reserve inflation, for EPA attack on fossil fuels, for the religion of public-education spending, and for use the defense budget to bolster the welfare state will have to make their case in the glaring spotlight of skepticism.
On the issues, Donald Trump is the candidate to interrupt the momentum of American decline. He is the monkey wrench in the doomsday machine of business as usual. Electing Trump will put the premises of American fatalism—global warming, socialized medicine, abandonment of American exceptionalism, collective white guilt, “redistribution” over production of wealth—on the defensive.
Suddenly, the assumed truths of the mighty constituencies for Federal Reserve inflation, for EPA attack on fossil fuels, for the religion of public-education spending, and for use the defense budget to bolster the welfare state will have to make their case in the glaring spotlight of skepticism. They opposed a Trump presidency by every dirty trick in the book; they assumed their causes were beyond question. If Trump is elected, they no longer will be Washington insiders.
From the start, that has been Trump’s appeal and swept away the field of Republicans competing for the nomination. An outsider, who never has been a politician, who is entirely of the private sector, who never has been submerged in the suffocating politics of identity and its countless oppressed groups, could arrive in Washington, DC, in January 2017, and none of the anointed “players” would be invited to the glitzy inauguration parties. They could stand in the rain along Pennsylvania Avenue and cheer, or weep, like other Americans.
About the Author: Walter Donway
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