It's funny, because I thought that the "TEA" in Tea Party stood for, "Taxed Enough Already". And now here is their latest hero, calling for the biggest confiscation of wealth in American history.
Oh, but don't worry, he has a "conservative" veneer to slather over it: It'd be as part of a "comprehensive, omnibus, bipartisan budget deal". See, folks? That'd make it aaaaaaall better:
Has Donald Trump really backed away from the gigantic wealth tax he proposed over a decade ago?
In 1999, Trump supported a one-time 14.25% tax on wealthy Americans and trusts over $10 million in order to sure up the social security trust fund and erase the national debt, which at the time was just under $6 trillion. As Trump began to flirt with running for president as a Republican four years ago, he began to distance himself from his proposal. He has certainly not made it a cornerstone of his current presidential campaign.
But in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday night, Trump seemed to suggest he had no philosophical problem with the wealth tax. In fact, he claimed the proposal was “a very conservative thing.”
Go to the 3:55 mark for this particular exchange. How such a ham-handed, iron-fisted, larcenous, statist, fiscally disastrous, economically ruinous proposal could possibly be considered "conservative" is a strain of mental disorder I pray I never contract. It can't be leavened by assurances of the usual BS "ten dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases" nonsense or promises of a fantasy Balanced Budget Amendment that will never materialize under any circumstances. It would be sheer policy and political insanity that might actually be capable of sending the GOP the way of the Whigs if they actually signed off on it, even as the Democrats were popping champagne corks.
And yet even today, Trump's only lament is that with the (on-books) national debt being triple what it was fifteen years ago, his proposed raping and pillaging of job-creaters wouldn't make more than a small dent in it. He still has no ideological or philosophical problem with the crazy notion.
Is this opening any Tea Party Trumpsters' eyes? Apparently not:
Look.
This is all a tactic of Trump to confuse the left.
Trust me, pal, it's not the Left that is confused. Why should they care if he steals all their ideas? That ought to make him unnominatable on the GOP side, right? So why would they even pay any attention to his lunatic doggerel since he's not going to be a factor in the Republican primary race? And if touting Democrat/liberal-left ideas will carry Trump to Cleveland next summer, don't you think that that is what would have lefties confused? In which case I would be sitting right beside them, heaving repeatedly into a barf bag.
It keeps his name in the leftist media....
Trump doesn't need to preach Planned Parenthood funding or wealth confiscation to do that. He just needs to show up "wherever".
....it keeps squishy GOP people on the defensive....
How does touting leftwingnut proposals that EVERY TEA PARTIER SHOULD REFLEXIVELY LOATHE put RINOs on the defensive? Doesn't that make Trump an even more gigantic, substantive target?
....and meantime he’s getting tons and tons of free press.
Which, again, doesn't require him to ape the Democrat platform.
Donald know what he is doing. When he’s done, he will be the perfect conservative nominee, a Tea Party dream.
More like a nightmare. But then, the Tea Party itself, or at least the Trump-sucking part of it, is becoming a nightmare for the GOP with its angry delusionalism that, to borrow a turn of phrase from Allahpundit, "believe[s Trump would] possess some sort of magical power as president through the force of his personality or his wealth or whatever that would somehow force Republicans and Democrats in Congress to bend to his will, [and] that his defense of Planned Parenthood and tax hikes now will lead to the end of both once he takes power."
Or he really does support Planned Parenthood, he really does support huge tax increases, he's lying about enforcing the border and a BBA and every other faux "conservative" stance, and he'd be worse than Hillary Clinton if he ever actually got elected. Or he's her stalking horse that will get her elected, assuming she can stay out of the slammer. I wonder on whom TPTers would blame their raging dismay and buyer's remorse then.
You know what Donald Trump is, ladies and gentlemen? He's the Tea Party's answer to Barack Obama. I used to think that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio fit that description - young, inexperienced, wet-behind-the-ears, minority freshman senators looking to parley all of those traits plus outsized ambition into a presidential run. Turns out it's The Donald, who, just like the Left viewed The One eight years ago, is seen by many Tea Partiers as an almost messianic figure who can (somehow) work miracles, and whose actual background and character and expressed policy stances and views and beliefs don't matter to them. With O it was, "No 'red' States, no 'blue' States, just the United States"; with Trump it's, "He'll destroy 'em all and wipe the slate clean".
How'd Obama's iteration of this dynamic turn out for the country, TPTers? And what makes you think that Trump's would pan out any better?
One thing's certain: If your hero ever did get to the White House, and pretty much picked up right where his big-eared predecessor left off, you'd never admit how badly you got played, and the perdition into which you'd have sold the rest of us.
Which would guarantee that I would still have an occupation in endlessly reminding you of it.
Count on it.
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