“I’ve been very lucky in life. I’ve made it into the outer fringes of the protected class. But I’m one generation out of the unprotected class and my heart is still with them. I share their values and, perhaps most important, their religious beliefs. The secularism and “progressive” values of the new elites have no appeal for me. So I get why Trump emerged.”
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How many of us can share in or relate intimately to this writer’s sentiments? It is one of many thoughtful and important observations from Clarice Feldmann’s latest column.
We don’t believe it is necessary to be a supporter of Donald Trump to agree with the writer’s main point. The emergence of a Donald Trump at this moment was perhaps inevitable and similar such events have occurred throughout history. In many cases, though, it has not turned out well.
There are recent alarms raised by the more agitated opponents of Mr. Trump, likening him to Adolf Hitler, whose rise to power was a result of some conditions vaguely similar to current national and global failures of leadership.
The emergence of a figure like Donald Trump is always fraught. The outcome can usually go either of two ways…that of an Ayotollah Khomeni or a Winston Churchill.
We believe that America is fortunate that at this moment of national crisis, there are other choices than an unknowable path under the leadership of Donald Trump or a certain continuation of America’s distress with a Hillary Clinton.
We believe that Senator Ted Cruz offers a moral compass, a temperament for sober leadership, and a proven commitment to restore America to sound Constitutional governance and adherence to the rule of law.
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More excerpts from Ms. Feldmann’s column follows and may be read in its entirety on the American Thinker website: Dynasty 2016 Episode 2: Romney v. Trump
Feldmann quotes from last week’s Peggy Noonan column:
If trends continue — and political trends tend to — Mr. Trump will win or come very close to winning by the convention in July. If party forces succeed in finagling him out of the nomination his supporters will bolt, which will break the party. And it’s hard to see what kind of special sauce, what enduring loyalty would make them come back in the future.
If, on the other hand, Mr. Trump is given the crown in Cleveland, party political figures, operatives, loyalists, journalists and intellectuals, not to mention sophisticated suburbanites and, God knows, donors will themselves bolt. That is a smaller but not insignificant group. And again it’s hard to imagine the special sauce — the shared interests, the basic worldview — that would allow them to reconcile with Trump supporters down the road.
[snip]
Party leaders and thinkers should take note: It’s easier for a base to hire or develop a flashy new establishment than it is for an establishment to find itself a new base.
[snip]
The GOP elite is about to spend a lot of money and hire a lot of talent, quickly, to try to kill Trump off the next two weeks. There will be speeches, ads — an onslaught. It will no doubt do Mr. Trump some damage, but not much.
It will prove to Trump supporters that what they think is true — their guy is the only one who will stand up to the establishment, so naturally the establishment is trying to kill him. And Trump supporters don’t seem to have that many illusions about various aspects of his essential character. One of them told me he’s “a junkyard dog.”
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Feldmann also quotes from another writer,
The Trump phenomenon is neither a disease nor a symptom – he is instead the beta-test of a cure that the American people are trying out. It won’t work. But this is where our politics are going: working and middle class Americans are reasserting themselves against a political and cultural establishment that has become completely discredited over time and due to their own actions. …
In other words, Trump is the unprotected class’ beta test for a cure for the revolt of the elites. And its [sic]about damned time. Which leads me to hope Domenech is right about his next point:
This is not a temporary adjustment. It is a new reality, as Codevilla writes today. “America is now ruled by a uniformly educated class of persons that occupies the commanding heights of bureaucracy, of the judiciary, education, the media, and of large corporations, and that wields political power through the Democratic Party. Its control of access to prestige, power, privilege, and wealth exerts a gravitational pull that has made the Republican Party’s elites into its satellites.
“This class’s fatal feature is its belief that ordinary Americans are a lesser intellectual and social breed. Its increasing self-absorption, its growing contempt for whoever won’t bow to it, its dependence for votes on sectors of society whose grievances it stokes, have led it to break the most basic rule of republican life: deeming its opposition illegitimate.”
Democrats and Republicans who still think that this is a phase – a fever they just need to wait out before a return to normalcy – are utterly delusional.
To the establishment, this breakdown looks like chaos. It looks like savagery. It looks like a man with a flamethrowing guitar playing death metal going a hundred miles an hour down Fury Road. But to the American people, it looks like democracy. Something new will replace the old order, and there are a host of smart, young leaders on all sides who must prove they have the capability to figure out how to create or retrofit institutions that can represent and channel this new energy.
I’ve been very lucky in life. I’ve made it into the outer fringes of the protected class. But I’m one generation out of the unprotected class and my heart is still with them. I share their values and, perhaps most important, their religious beliefs. The secularism and “progressive” values of the new elites have no appeal for me. So I get why Trump emerged.
DLH
