23 December 2015

The Case for Trump: Trump vs. the Establishment on Amnesty, Interventionism, and Collaboration

Stephen Kershnar
Why Should People Consider Donald Trump?
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December 21, 2015

Donald Trump is well ahead in the national polls for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is an undisciplined, unfocused, and unpredictable, so it is worth considering whether voter support for him makes sense. While Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are better choices, support for Trump makes sense for three reasons.  

The argument is that if one’s values freedom, respect for the Constitution, and a non-interventionist foreign policy, Trump’s positions are likely better than his competitors, aside from Cruz and Paul.

First, Trump will likely oppose amnesty and in the long term without such a position most, if not all, of the other libertarian and conservative positions will lose. The argument is that in every recent national election, Hispanics have voted for leftist (Democratic) candidates. Amnesty will result in many more Hispanic voters, enough to result in leftist positions winning across the board. Leftist positions include more government spending, taxes, and regulation, fewer civil liberties, and race preferences, policies that libertarians and conservatives oppose.    

Amnesty will permanently change the country. Even the pandering George W. Bush got no more than 40% of the Hispanic vote in the two elections. Other polling results, show that Hispanics are ideologically committed to the left's agenda. Their voting pattern is similar to that of blacks and Jews. The estimate for the number of illegal aliens is usually 11 million, but is plausibly 20-30 million. Even the lower number will likely be enough to flip Texas, Florida, and a number of state legislatures. Voting for a pro-amnesty candidate, then, is in effect voting for Barack Obama’s and Chuck Schumer’s long-term vision for America.

Democrat support for much larger government can be seen in Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s opposition to any attempt to reduce the size of government and their rabid opposition to tax cuts, a flat tax, tax simplification, etc. Despite his reputation as a moderate, Bill Clinton tried to increase the size of government, but ran head-on into the Republican Congress in 1994. Consider, for example, the Hillary-led attempt to further socialize medicine and how he had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into signing welfare reform.  

Democratic opposition to civil liberties (social freedom) can be seen in that despite the high profile activities on the Michael-Brown-type cases, neither Clinton and Obama, nor the Democratic Congressmen and women have done much to restrict data collection, warrant-less searches, highly aggressive policing (reputation aside, Obama backs the police in most of use-of-force and forfeiture cases), eminent domain, or restrictions on free speech on campuses and in political contexts. With the important exception of abortion, they almost always support expanding government power.

Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Lindsey Graham all have supported or would support some type of amnesty. Why they do so is unclear. Illegal aliens are not especially poor compared to tens of millions of people across the globe would love to live in America. There is little to no indication that they identify with America and even less reason to believe that they would make current American citizens freer or wealthier than they would be were the aliens to leave. They’re not even assimilated to American life as can be seen in their differences with much of America in terms of language, education, and family values.    

Second, Trump also shows some indication of avoiding the fanatical interventionism of other candidates. Candidates who backed, or likely would have backed, most of the following: overthrow of Libya, Egypt, and Syria and boots on the ground to combat ISIS have a Woodrow-Wilson-type view of foreign policy. The view is that foreign policy and the military need not serve American interests, but should instead serve ideals, such as democracy. In the past, this view can be most clearly seen in the United States’ participation in World War I and the Vietnam War, as well as the two U.S. wars against Iraq. Support for the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is a particularly good tests for the Wilsonian view as he was neither a threat to American interests at the time he was overthrown, nor a threat to slaughter civilians.

The candidates’ war against all monsters is arguably inconsistent because the pursuit of the various policies: aggressively confronting Russia, overthrowing Syria’s Bashar Assad, and defeating ISIS conflict with one another.  

This Wilsonian view can also be seen in candidates who want to aggressively confront Russia. Consider, for example, interventionists who want to set up no-fly zones over Iraqi and Syrian airspace when both have given permission to Russian to fly its planes there and who, in the past, supported expanding NATO to include the Baltic States, thereby threatening U.S. involvement were hostilities to erupt.  

The interventionist program can also be seen in candidates who so value the military that they are willing to eliminate the budget sequester, thereby trading increased military spending for allowing Obama to increase domestic spending. It can also be seen in candidates that want to continue NSA dragnet collection of email and cell phone data that violates the Fourth Amendment. 

Establishment candidates such as Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich generally have the Wilsonian view of foreign policy, support the breaking of the sequester, and the trampling on the Fourth Amendment. They support ever deepening military involvement in the Middle East. For someone who thinks American policy should serve American interests, opposes deepening involvement in the Middle East, and prioritizes liberty over military prowess, Cruz and Paul are the best bets. Trump is unpredictable, but shows some signs of being less interventionist. Voting for establishment guys is setting the country up for more wars similar to George W. Bush’s Iraqi and Afghanistan wars and accompanying nation-building.  


Third, the Republican Congressional leadership (John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell) has repeatedly signed off on funding and thereby authorizing the commanding heights of the Obama economic platform (Obamacare, amnesty, debt increases, spending increases that broke the sequester, and increased taxes on businesses and the wealthy). It is reasonable to think that establishment candidates would do the same in office. They likely would value approval from Republican donors, mainstream media, and the other prissy types who get offended at every Trumpism more than cutting government down to size. Were the establishment candidates chosen, this sends the Republican leadership that they should keep on selling out the Republican base. Trump sends the opposite message.

No comments: