-By Warner Todd Huston
I was at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland this year but I was not yet at the event on Thursday morning, so I missed The Donald’s speech. I watched the video later because I heard a lot of people wondering what the heck this guy was talking about. And after seeing the video, I have to say this: can we finally be done with Donald Trump in GOP politics, now?
Trump started out his speech talking about how the country was in trouble. Not a big newsflash, that. He also noted that the GOP was in serious trouble. Another newsflash. But then came a slap in the face. Here he was at a conservative gathering and what was the third point he made?
“The Republican Party, I can almost want to say it’s going to be a little bit tough and especially as you get more and more conservative. They get nasty. They don’t like to hear what we have to say.”
Um… what?
Who is “we” and is everyone in your audience is a closed-minded, nasty, creep, Mr. Trump?
He went on to say we have to “get it back” but then wandered on without saying what the heck “it” was.
Next he went on to say we should forget about reforming Medicare and Social Security and just “build a great economy” to fix it all. This, of course, is the kick-the-can-down-the-road sort of thinking that got us here in the first place.
He rambled a bit about immigration said all the Hispanics will vote Democrat, and then started advocating to “get more people from Europe” as if inviting supposedly “white” people from the socialist-inspired countries in Europe would vote any differently than the Hispanics Trump was discouraged about.
Then he talked about tents at the White House and carped that Obama wouldn’t let him build a ballroom for Obama for $100 million and was upset the administration didn’t get back to him–“that’s the problem with the country, you don’t hear from people,” he said.
Uh… what?
One has to wonder what the heck this guy was talking about. Why was he here? What was his point? Was he giving us action items, laying out an agenda?
There was talk of “super hero ads,” an accounting of his making eight billion dollars, whining that he was criticized by “total lightweights,” and said that his critics can’t buy a clean shirt.
Next he beat up Mitt Romney, talked about a resort he bought in Florida, and next went on to say Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan doesn’t respect us.
Er… huh?
That was a whiplash-inducing topic change.
My point here is that Trump just walked up there to wing it. He had no direction, no real theme, no cogent point. He wasn’t making to lead anything, he hasn’t built any political movement, and wasn’t launching any concerted political effort
I am not a supporter of Chris Christie and I understand fully why he wasn’t invited to CPAC. But I’d much rather have listened to Christie than Trump. Christie is a cogent speaker and funny, to boot.
So, come on, Republicans. Can we finally be done with Donald Trump? Pretty please?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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