Friday, March 29, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

The Left’s War Against Trump

June 29, 2016 --

Last November, a Dartmouth College administrator told students that conservatives are not very nice.

LPR, these past weeks, has seen columns by so-called conservatives, effectively declaring that Trump’s voters in the primaries are, well, not very nice, Peter Wehner’s diatribe against Trump, in the New York Times, June 12, being only the most recent. Last March The New York Times estimated that Trump has gotten nearly $2 billion in free publicity. LPR does not expect The New York Times to estimate the dollar value to Hillary Clinton of the media’s war – and it will only increase in volume and virulence – against Trump. Republican officeholders who think they are smart to join the left’s war against Trump ought to reflect that when it comes to “the vast rightwing conspiracy” Hillary Clinton makes no distinction between Donald Trump and other Republicans. Her July 13, 2015 speech to the La Raza national convention attacked Trump for his remarks on undocumented workers, but, in addition to a general attack on the GOP’s candidates, she also attacked, by name, Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Scott Walker, accusing him of “stomping on workers’ rights.” This November, the California race for U.S. Senate will be contested by two Democrats. That, LPR believes, is the GOP’s future if Hillary Clinton is elected president.”

The Wall Street Journal began its lead June 15 editorial: “President Obama has run roughshod over Congress, and most of the media give him a pass.” Does the Wall Street Journal think President Hillary Clinton will restore constitutional government to the people? In her speech to La Raza, Ms. Clinton promised to extend the Obama precedent of issuing executive orders when Congress “refuses to act.”

A New York Times article on class divisions in the Republican Party, last January 10, suggested that GOP voters were staging “a people’s coup” in seeking a candidate against the wishes of “wealthy donors and elected officials.” The article went on to say that these voters wanted to confront the political establishment, not acquiesce to it. Actually, LPR believes these voters want the Republican party to confront the left, not defer to its aims.

So, how much in dollar value to the left is the media’s War on Trump? This campaign seems to borrow not only from the Saul Alinsky guide to demonize your opponent, but also from the insight of F.A. Hayek that totalitarianism is most effective when the people accept the aims of the leaders as their own aims. The war against Trump seems headed to propagandizing Trump as the most evil person in human history, by July 18, when the Republican National Convention convenes. This, of course, will make it far easier for the aggrandizing left and their allies among “Republicans,” come next January 20, to bury constitutional government and return the masses to the poverty, misery and squalor they enjoyed in feudal times.