I Was Wrong About Trump. He Didn’t Destroy the GOP, He Saved It
At the RNC four years ago, I thought Trump couldn’t win the White House and that his nomination would destroy the Republican Party. I was wrong.
When the Republican Party formally nominated Donald Trump four years ago at the national convention in Cleveland, I thought the GOP was making huge mistake. It seemed Trump would certainly lose in November, and that every Republican officeholder who climbed aboard the Trump train that summer would be purged from whatever came after his inevitable defeat. It would be the end of the GOP as we knew it. I was wrong about all of that—and in hindsight, I’m glad I was wrong. Like a lot of observers at the time, I thought Trump had no real policy agenda to define his campaign beyond a vague pro-America sentiment and a withering disdain for the political establishments of both major parties. I thought his political inexperience was a liability, that his penchant for insulting his opponents would turn voters off, and that the GOP had missed an opportunity to defeat Hillary Clinton by nominating someone else—anyone, really, besides Trump.
But it turned out Trump was the best candidate to beat Clinton because Clinton embodied nearly everything voters had come to hate about America’s political class: the falsity, the naked hypocrisy, the barely disguised disdain for ordinary people. For all his obvious faults, Trump wasn’t a professional politician, had no record to defend, and was unconstrained by the conventions of ordinary political rhetoric. He was uniquely positioned to call out and exploit Clinton’s faults and shortcomings, and expose the contradictions at the heart of the Democratic Party. For Republican voters, Trump offered the promise of something different from the seemingly endless pattern of politicians who promised one thing and did another, especially on immigration and free trade. For decades, incessant Republican boasting about “securing the border” never actually secured the border as mass illegal immigration continued apace. Expressions of sympathy for the American working class never produced policies that might actually help the working class. Trump zeroed in on these things, and his message resonated because it was true (and still is).
On foreign policy, Trump was nearly alone in his unequivocal condemnation of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The other GOP candidates, especially Jeb Bush, were loath to litigate those wars or criticize Bush-era foreign policy, but Trump jumped right in, saying over and over what most Americans really thought: the wars were a mistake, the U.S. military was overstretched, Americans were getting a raw deal. There was a purge in the GOP, but the ones who were purged were pols like former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the kind of Republican leaders who spent their entire careers politely touting plans for entitlement reform and balanced budgets while ignoring the things voters actually cared about. There’s a reason the newly announced list of two dozen “Republicans for Biden” is comprised of former GOP congressmen, and that Flake, who made a name for himself by criticizing Trump and backing the Democrats’ impeachment fiasco, tops the list. There’s a reason Kasich was one of just three Republicans to speak at the Democratic National Convention last week. Trump didn’t destroy the GOP, he saved it from people like Flake and Kasich.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/25/i-was-wrong-about-trump-he-didnt-destroy-the-gop-he-saved-it/
Cleveland Is The End Of The GOP As We Know It
https://thefederalist.com/2016/07/18/cleveland-is-the-end-of-the-gop-as-we-know-it/
Note:
This is an excellent piece written by the editor of the Federalist, he discusses is change in opinion of POTUS, for context also included is an article on his original postilion before POTUS was elected almost 4 years ago. Nice to see a journalist retract previous statements based on what they believed then versus now. Hat tip to this man!