What has become of the Republican Party?

This is the title of an article by Economist which has bitched incessantly over Trump as President every since his election.  As one who is a fairly pure conservative, I too was abraded by his early popularity.  Now I see an unusual personality but still a conservative.  Economist sees the R’s as organizing around, not issues, but a personality cult.  But they strangely don’t see the interplay of the bat guano psychotic Democrats who funded a propaganistic dossier, used bureaucratic allies in the FBI to present it as realistic to a judge, got a FISA spying warrant on the Trump campaign.  Then when he unexpectedly won, instead of honorably accepting the result, they demanded impeachment before he ever took office, used the dossier to get Comey rightfully fired, then used the leverage in public opinion to demand a special prosecutor.  And the media seems to constantly harp on innuendos from the investigation to promote some sort of removal of the President. 

            When a bystander observes such shenanigans, he wonders if the press has become a shill for these crazed leftists.  Has the left lost all moral compass and resorted to sneak tricks? Surely politics is a dirty game but does it have to turn into a war?  Thus Trumps inconsistent tweets seem more like that old guy you used to work for who ranted and raved and said startling things, but at the end of the day was quite good at the business he did.  R’s have gotten defensive of the President and his approval ratings have gone up since he was inaugurated. 

             But of course this is exactly what drives the media and the left crazy.  For politicians and media types make their living in smooth, seemingly knowledgeable speak.  I am reminded of my days as a physics instructor grading papers that journalism students had written about a simple experiment.  One of my colleagues said about them, “I wish I had an enormous BULLSHIT stamp that I could grade their observations with.”  Little study, lots of unknowing prose. You doubt this analysis?  Then ask, “WHO predicted Trump’s win of 30 states in 2016?”

            Nonetheless, Economist brings up familiar points.  Trump won’t share his tax returns, has ignored conflict-of-interest rules, has run a business for profit as he was President, and nepotism. But a thoughtful parsing of these problems is that Trump is rich.  He has huge businesses, not just stocks and bonds.  So is such a person outlawed from serving as President?  According to all the Swamp rules he is.  But Trump has basically said, hell no, you won’t make hay out of my tax returns.  They are so complicated that some journalist would easily misrepresent their true meaning. And no, I will not sell the ‘farm’ for a pitance just for the pleasure of serving as President.  Keeping the biz under outside management, does not constitute conflict of interest.  And I continue to rely on sons and daughters for guidance, just as Bill Clinton did his wife.

            The critics see Trump as firing anyone who disagrees with him.  I see him as a public personality who doesn’t like disagreements to become public.  Critics say that anyone who stands in his way are deemed enemies. Well, in fact numerous R’s in Congress have obstructed him and he remains friends.  Hence the critics see him riding roughshod over rules, but upon close examination, these are not constitutional rules but unwritten rules of the Swamp. 

            Yet all this wouldn’t explain the growing popularity of the man.  He gets things done.  That is anathema to the Swamp who just want re-elected and to see the continual growth of their bureaucratic empires.  The bureaucrats of Washington have a slang term for elected officers—the summer help. They are the eternal mandarins.  Elected people come and go.  The Democrats with their love of big government have latched onto this Swamp or Deep State and see no danger whatsoever.  Yet the rest of us do.  Read the 6 planks of Mussolini’s National Socialist Platform and it reads like a checklist of Democrat programs.  Compare his group (Italian: fasci) politics with that of the Democrats and it will give you chills. 

            Still the R’s don’t judge simply by getting things done or some personality cult.  Trump espouses conservative concepts in his own rough way.  He’s not against free trade, just wants fair trade deals, not Smoot Hawley tariffs.  He’s not against globalism, just wants USA to keep its powder dry for those conflicts that really threaten us.  And his reliance on more generals and less state department proves that he wants truly professional advice.   His acceptance of a badly  unbalanced budget was to secure Defense spending which was dangerously inadequate.  The rest of his agenda, the tax reform, the repeal of Obamacare mandates, conservative judges, revamping of wildly damaging EPA and Labor Dept. edicts, shows a guy who is fundamentally conservative. He stopped Obama’s program to kill coal and oil.  His foreign policy trips to Saudi Arabia and Poland promoted American democracy.  His hard lines with ISIS and NK was long, long overdue and perhaps effective.  In other words, there is a lot to like in the guy I once opposed, even worried about at the time of the Republican Convention. And, he has shown a way to appeal to labor union members and others who were dispossessed by Dems.

            So what shall I make of Economist?  They are Europeans who have had a gay time using USA as a duty free zone while loving their own protective tariffs.  Threats against their exporting scheme scares them to death.  They think like Europeans who cannot see the danger in importing Muslim terrorists or larding on the socialism in their own economies.  Maybe they will awaken someday to the threats.  For now they can’t see past Trump’s personality.  So while they accuse R’s of being a personality cult, I see them as an anti-personality cult.