Trump Gives RINO’s New Hope

Moderates won’t admit it publicly, but many are chuckling when thinking about who the Republicans will nominate for president this July.

Donald J. Trump, a former big-time contributor to Democrats who used his loud and belligerent voice to become the most centrist GOP presidential nominee in our lifetime.

It’s like a reverse of 1964 with Ted Cruz as the western conservative and Trump as the New York moderate. Except this year the Republican In Name Only (RINO) won.

How in the world did Trump pull this off?

First, as a businessman who has been studying presidential campaigns for nearly thirty years, he went far-right on one central issue that was polling “most important” with conservatives: Illegal Immigration.

Trump came out swinging, promising to build a big wall on the border, make Mexico pay for it, and then round up 11 million undocumented immigrants and bus them back to the border.

An extremely undoable proposal that Trump, who spent seven years on reality television learning how ratings work with the American viewer, sold month-after-month in loud, brash and unapologetic terms.

We in the press bought his sensational statements hook, line, and sinker, as he had predicted nearly thirty years ago:

“One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better…The point is that if you are a little different, a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

Boy we sure did, along with offering him endless hours of free air time on television news.

More conservatives flocked to Trump after his absurd call for all Muslims to be banned from entering the country in wake of ISIS (something he has backpedaled on in recent days). An extreme position that played well as Trump had also predicted:

“I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those that do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole.”

Fearful hyperbole may be more accurate. Concerned about the demographic changes happening quickly in America, and angry that after seven years of Barack Hussein Obama no Republican politician seemed to be doing anything about it, Trump’s rhetoric was all the mostly-white GOP primary voters needed.

SOLD!

If those conservative voters had only read Trump’s book The Art of the Deal they would have known his script.

While Trump pounded away at immigration, his conservative challengers refused to engage him. By the time Ted Cruz went from being in a bromance with Trump, to calling out his more liberal views, it was way too late.

The irony in all this is that for years conservatives have given other GOP nominees the dreaded RINO label. George Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney were never conservative enough for those on the far-right.

Yet on a variety of key issues Trump is to the left of the RINO crowd:

• He backs an increase in the minimum wage.
• He sounds like Bernie Sanders when it comes to China and trade deals.
• He supports universal health care for all and points to the Canadian system as his model.
• He’s financially backed Planned Parenthood.
• He has gone from pro-choice to pro-life, but wants the GOP platform to be amended to be less rigid.
• He backs higher taxes on the wealthy.
• He supports a ban on assault rifles and longer background checks.
• He says he is neutral on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• He is a strong proponent of eminent-domain.
• He says compromise in deal making is acceptable.
• He’s donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates.
• He has said Hillary Clinton was most qualified to make the Iran deal.
• He says Bill Clinton is his favorite president of the last four.
• He has praised former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling her “impressive.”
• He supported the auto industry and bank bailouts.
• He has called himself more aligned with the Democratic Party than Republican.
• He has said “Republicans are just too crazy right.”
• He has said the economy does better under Democratic presidents than Republican.
• In 2000 he came close to running for president as an Independent.
• He has been a registered Democrat, Independent and Republican.

And then there are his foreign policy views.

Donald Trump believes President George W. Bush should have been impeached for taking us to war in Iraq.

Ponder that for a moment.

Imagine any of the so-called RINO’s advocating that publicly. Neo-conservatives would have been livid and they would have withheld their support.

In 2008, I covered several Republican presidential debates where Congressman Ron Paul was booed for his position on the war in Iraq.

As I write about in my book Front Row Seat at the Circus:

Ron Paul stood out—I mean, really stood out. The one-time Libertarian nominee for president was widely dismissed by Republicans in 2008 mainly due to his anti-neo-con views on foreign policy. He had been the only GOP presidential candidate to oppose going to war in Iraq and he was jeered at a live presidential debate in Columbia:

“I think the party has lost its way because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy… Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There’s a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party.”

Paul was then asked if those non-interventionist views still held in the aftermath of 9/11:

“Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years… We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics… I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we’re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, ‘I am glad you’re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.’ They have already now since that time killed 3,400 of our men, and I don’t think it was necessary.”

At this point in the debate Rudy Giuliani, who was making his leadership as mayor during 9/11 the narrative of his campaign, interrupted and chastised Paul’s position:

“That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11th, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th and I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”

At that point, the Republican crowd erupted in large cheers for Giuliani, as Paul tried to have the last word:

“If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem!”

To say Ron Paul was not fully accepted by conservatives as a Republican presidential candidate in 2008 is an understatement. After being booed at this debate he was left out of many others. His point about considering the ramifications of our actions overseas was not selling in the GOP primary even as support for Bush and war in Iraq was quickly dropping in polls.”

Ron Paul stood his ground in 2008 and was booed by neo-conservatives for his position on Iraq. But Donald Trump in 2016 not only shares that view but has gone a step forward saying, “I think it would have been a wonderful thing” if George W. Bush had been impeached for the Iraq War:

“He got us into the war with lies. And, I mean, look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And, yet, Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.”

In just seven months, Trump has blown away the neo-conservative stranglehold on the Republican Party. Even going so far as to suggest the last Republican President of the United States should have been impeached for his decision making.

Can you imagine what would have happened had John McCain or Mitt Romney ever suggested that?

When the dust from the primary season in 2016 settles, history will note that Donald Trump snookered a whole bunch of conservative voters. By hammering home one or two issues, he successfully avoided answering dozens of others.

He has emerged as the Republican nominee to the left of Bush, Dole, McCain and Romney. (None of whom plan to be at the convention this summer to watch his coronation.)

Trump wrote in his book: “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you can’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

Some conservatives have already caught on. But for GOP moderates, thanks to Trump’s positions, they finally have some footing after being in the political wilderness for forty years.