Monday, September 14, 2015

Trump Bashing Becomes Institutionalized

As we get closer to the one-year out mark in the 2016 election, one which is shaping up to be the most interesting (to say the least) in decades, we are finally getting the true intentions and loyalties of what we thought were the independent conservative media. You know, those guys that supposedly were taking the GOP to task and always corrected anyone who dared call them Republican? “I’m a conservative, not a Republican” they would retort or would profess being a registered independent whenever challenged by a skeptical interviewer. As we are beginning to see, these protestations of non-GOPness are nothing more than platitudes to mollify their viewers/listeners/readers.

The “Washington Cartel”, as Ted Cruz calls Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, are known for their bias and can be filtered for it. However other once great publications and commentators have been unmasked for their devotion to the Republican leadership over the concerns of subscribers or conservative voters; National Review, The Weekly Standard and, the relatively new-kid-on-the-block, The Blaze have either openly attacked Trump and his followers or refused to report on his campaign as he “isn’t a serious candidate”. These organizations, along with their writers, commentators or staff, have done nothing but circle their wagons around the GOP leadership in response to the populist support for Donald Trump. Their Twitter Tweets and Facebook posts have one after another hit pieces on Trump while taking it easy on or supporting GOP anointed one, Jeb Bush. While not supporters of Bush the hosts of the Pat & Stu show on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze even hinted that they would be more likely to support a Hillary Clinton candidacy over a Trump one. At one point Glenn Beck himself refused any coverage of Trump but it appears that pressure from his audience is making him back away from that decision. Pat, Stu and Glenn say they only support “Real Conservatives” yet support folks like Rubio and Cruz who have been caught playing go-along-to-get-along political games in the past or Walker, who has proven to a lap-dog of big-business.
Much of this comes from their complete lack of understanding of what makes people follow Trump. These political gurus lament that he isn’t conservative enough or he flip-flopped on issues and so of course he can’t be a real conservative. What they don’t get is that we don’t care, we really just don’t care. We don’t care that Trump may have supported issues or given money to Democrat candidates in order to further his business interests, what we do care about is that we believe he will do what he says he will do now. We can’t trust Jeb, Boehner or McConnell to enforce immigration law; Jeb is an amnesty guy and Boehner and McConnell are too beholden to donors to upset the cheap-labor apple cart. Rubio can’t be trusted on his supposed epiphany on immigration and Paul’s support of a crooked deal concerning the ACA coverage for congress and Cruz’s support for TAA and TPP have made us wonder if they can be trusted at all. We still remember when we had a Republican president with control of both houses of Congress yet nothing was done in regards to stopping illegal immigration.

We are told the Democrats must be stopped because they want illegals to have a path to citizenship, as they will vote liberal their entire lives, the conservative establishment fails to point out that the corporate world loves illegals as they keep wages low, even if a particular company doesn’t actually hire any. Those same corporate interests make sure that GOP is well paid to keep the status quo. There is very good chance Trump will either self-destruct or be destroyed by his own party over the next year but I honestly believe if that happens the totally disgusted conservative voter will flock to a Carson or Fiorina before getting anywhere near those candidates approved by the GOP, National Review, The Weekly Standard or The Blaze and their campaign against the wishes of the conservative base will not be forgotten soon. Trump, Carson and Fiorina finally give us the ability to thumb our noses at Republican Establishment in a way sitting out the election would not.