And if Tea Party Trumpsters would only pay attention, they'd realize that it's not coming from the dreaded "GOP establishment" - which is actually pretty conservative itself - but from the very heart of what, until very recently, was the conservative movement. You know, the diehard rightwingers who were doing battle with the Left years and decades before the Tea Party was even a glimmer in the late Andrew Breitbart's eye.
We start off with Michael Reagan, son of the greatest president of the twentieth century:
GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has compared himself to Ronald Reagan, but the Republican icon would be "appalled" at the way Trump acts, Michael Reagan told Newsmax TV.
Trump's personal attacks on fellow candidates, including the recent Rolling Stone report of him talking about Carly Fiorina's appearance, go too far, said Reagan, a radio talk show host and son of the former president.
Reagan said he hopes Trump's actions hurt him not only with women voters, but with all voters.
"What he's done is really appalling," he said. "My father would be appalled. … On behalf of my father and the Reagan family to see someone like this who just personally attacks people time and time and time again is absolutely appalling to me and I hope all the voters start to see through Donald Trump and the kind of candidate that he his and the kind of president he may end up being."
Reagan the Son also made another of my points about Trump and this GOP nominating race in general, his lack of any kind of policy agenda or platform to flesh out how he would "make America great again" - a slogan not all that dissimilar from the Gippers thirty-five years ago, but everybody knew what HE stood for. Whereas there's a murderer's row of Republican governors - Scott Walker,
Reagan had a few choice words for them as well:
Trump's followers are equally troubling, Reagan said. He recently tweeted that one can be either a Reagan Republican or a Trump Republican, but not both.
Quite so. But then I suppose y'all have retroactively recategorized President Reagan as a RINO/squish traitor because he once signed an amnesty bill, right?
Next, Glenn Beck, who was with the Tea Party from the beginning six long years ago, continues to give voice to the disgusted, dismayed incredulity that those of us on the Right who still stand by our principles feel at the inexplicable rise of Trumpmania:
Later, Beck had similarly nasty things to say about Donald Trump, who co-headlined the event with Ted Cruz. “I’m telling you, dealing with Donald Trump is like dealing with a third grader. And I’m not dealing with a third grader anymore because the world is on fire,” the host said. “You want to come on the show, great. You don’t want to come on the show, great. I don’t really care… Enough of the third grade politics. Grow up, Donald Trump. Grow up.”
So I'm guessing y'all will be accusing Beck of being pro-Iranian now. Because he has to be! He criticized your "savior"!
Beck also didn't hesitate or shrink from knocking all of you Tea Party Trumpsters out there, personified by the woman that I've been ripping for her boutique fratricide and past-glory-riding for years:
"Yeah, I'm going to say it," Beck prepared his audience. "I don't care what Sarah Palin says any more. Sarah Palin has become a clown. I'm embarrassed that I was once for Sarah Palin. Honestly, I'm embarrassed.
"Why do I say that about Sarah Palin? How can you say that about Sarah Palin? Because I don't know who she is any more, I don't know what she stands for. I saw a clip of her talking to Donald Trump. What the hell is that? I don't even know who she is any more. I don't know what she cares for. I don't know.
I don't think it's that Mrs. Palin has changed; I think, sad though it makes me to have to say it, that in one sense the Left back in 2008 was right: Sarah Palin was not a serious candidate. And she's proving it now by her sucking up to Trump. And that unseriousness extends to every last ex-conservative Trump supporter. You've all quit and given up and devoted yourselves to spending the rest of your lives in a collective whiny temper tantrum in lieu of hard-headedly understanding that politics is difficult and cannot be navigated unscathed, undefeated, and without compromises. You'd rather cathartically shriek incessantly through your pompadoured hero.
Allahpundit expands on the concept:
It has seemed awfully strange that a guy with many more sins against the Reaganist faith than Mitt Romney would be warmly embraced by people known for eagerly excommunicating RINOs with better records than Trump’s. Beck’s exasperation reminds me of Rand Paul’s incredulous op-ed for the IJ Review a few weeks back wondering how the tea party he knows and loves [well, mostly....] could embrace a guy like Trump. Like Beck, Paul was launched to stardom in 2009 thanks to tea-party support; like Beck, he thought he understood the essence of the movement. He was there at the beginning, after all. And like Beck, he seems genuinely stunned to see Trump, the cronyist Democrat turned Republican strongman, become the new darling.
One more thing on which, for the record, I "stand with Rand".
Meanwhile, Bobby Jindal - one of those GOP governors who actually has made his State great again, and who got a head start on the dogpile yesterday - revised and extended those remarks this morning:
GOP presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, who raised eyebrows on Thursday with a blistering ten-minute speech against Donald Trump, called on conservatives to "not waste this opportunity" to retake the White House.
"We have an opportunity to get America back, a unique opportunity," the Louisiana governor told MSNBC's Morning Joe program. "We have a choice to make. Do we trust conservative principles or a man who only believes in himself? Let's not waste this opportunity."
He said he understands Trump's appeal, as he has "tapped into a genuine frustration with D.C., and the show has been amusing."
But while the "idea of Trump is great," he continued, "the reality is different. It's absurd; he has no policy depth, no substance...he is not for making America great. He's for making Donald Trump great. That's not what we need right now."
Amen and amen, Brother Bobby. I couldn't have put it better myself.
But the terrible truth is that policy depth and substance - you know, all that "boring" stuff - is not what Tea Party Trumpsters want. Nor is leadership or statemanship, which is not characterized by....
Nor is regaining the White House, though they're too metaphorically drugged out to realize it.
No, what Tea Party Trumpsters want is entertainment. And that, by his own admission, is what Donald Trump is giving to them:
Donald Trump says that his controversial comments about Carly Fiorina and other women were made “as an entertainer.”
“It all goes hand-in-hand. And much of the — many of the statements — and, if you notice, I’m leading with women. This is nothing new because a colleague of yours mentioned something during the last debate. So this is nothing new. And yet I’m leading with women,” Trump told Fox’s Greta Van Susteren Thursday night after she repeatedly questioned him about why he was commenting on Fiorina’s physical appearance.
Trump continued: “Many of those comments are made as an entertainer, because I did The Apprentice. It was one of the top shows on television. I decided not to do it again because I wanted to run for president. But some comments are made as an entertainer. And, as everybody said, as an entertainer [it] is a much different ballgame.”
Actually, he stopped doing The Apprentice because it wasn't very entertaining and was probably going to be axed by NBC. Certainly there was nothing remotely clever or witty about what he said about Carly Fiorina's looks. Believe me, if there had been, I would have made note of it even while expressing disapproval and, frankly, puzzlement at what Miss Fiorina ever did to merit such a juvenile attack. Or, conversely, you could say that he decided to take The Apprentice "on the road," as it were, and call it his presidential campaign. And I can tell you confidently that that is the sum total of what his campaign consists of.
How that wins us back the White House and begins the unimaginable damage repair and cleanup after eight years of hardcore Obamunism is anybody's guess. But that's a question that Tea Party Trumpsters quite evidently aren't concerned with, if indeed they ever were. For now, they're being entertained beyond their wildest dreams while, back in reality, the world continues to burn.
Not to worry, though; I'm sure we'll all be able to use Hairboy's rug as a mass fallout shelter. I mean, it does cover his enormous head, doesn't it?
UPDATE: Yeah, it's the Tonight Show, but when Trump tells Jimmy Fallon that he'll apologize "if I'm ever wrong," I don't think that's meant as "entertainment".
And the crowd hoots and hollers and laughs and applauds the man who is - let's be honest - a bully, and has been bullying his way through the GOP field for the past three months. Which is more than a little strange, because I thought that people, as a general rule, didn't like bullies.
I guess if they bully the "right" people and do so entertainingly, the sky's the limit.
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