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.
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