The Wall Street Journal is having a breakdown right before its readers’ eyes. The utter anguish, despair, and frustration the publication’s editorial board is suffering is becoming difficult to watch. Day after day, the Journal’s “star” columnists take turns cranking out disparaging anecdotes, insulting characterizations, and plain nasty commentary regarding GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump.
“Unhinged” is indeed an apt term to describe the state to which their whole staff is descending toward. The more bitterly they denounce Trump the higher he goes in the polls and in the primary elections.
Yesterday, the Journal took it to a new (lower still) level. Holman Jenkins was the designated “assassin” and clearly the Murdoch-owned paper has exhausted its arsenal of conventional invective and it was up to Jenkins to launch THERMONUCLEAR VITUPERATION, and “collateral damage” be damned!
In fact, “collateral damage” became the target of Jenkins’ barrage.
The Journal, as every informed observer, inside and outside the Beltway acknowledges, IS the mouthpiece of the GOP Establishment…indeed, the ‘Washington” establishment. And Mr. Jenkins is quite sensitive about that characterization as indicated in today’s column.
Here’s the opening to today’s piece by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.:
“Trump supporters are disappointed in America’s leadership elites (otherwise known as “establishment types”).
“They have this feeling even if they lack clear thoughts. Yet this late moment is not too late for some political types to insist that Trump voters must be understood, even though Trump voters have been easy to understand all along.
(snip) “To be honest and impolitic, the Trump voter smacks of a child who unleashes recriminations against mommy and daddy because the world is imperfect.
“The blaming of elites has gone too far.The American voter has a big hand in his own disappointments.”
Briefly Mr. Jenkins has had enough! It’s not the establishment’s fault that the nation is in decline , economically, diplomatically, militarily, in its social structure, its education system, and in virtually every other way.
“No sir!”, Jenkins seems to suggest, “it’s the stupid voters”!
His thesis is that voters either elected people who promised to give them stuff, or stood “idly by” while politicians loaded up regulations and economy killing institutions and now they’re all mad. And, worse yet, they blame “immigrants” and Chinese trade negotiations, and institutional “racists’, and other “scapegoats”.
Jenkins concludes with his analysis that Trump is the “latest vessel of denial” for voters who don’t want responsibility…they “want mommy and daddy”.
And that’s the incisive, thoughtful analysis by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
To wit: There you go you hopeless childlike masses. Daring to blame the smart folks…the “elites”, who are too busy doing great things for America and voting for people like Trump or Cruz because you’re in a snit and it’s all your fault anyway. Shame on you. You need to know your place!
DLH
