by Farouk Martins Aresa
There is nothing Donald Trump has said that Republicans have not said worse. Suddenly they are casting Trump as the devil of all time. Each time Republicans claim they want to reach out to African Americans, Latinos and women, some members utter the unprintable. Indeed, the way the game is played depend on who said or did the most outrageous, in order to appeal to the far extreme. After the primaries, the nominee tones down to get an edge over Democrats.
Richard Nixon with small business loan for minority, Ronald Reagan’s immigration amnesty as well as those considered real Republicans some years ago like Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar and Representative Eric Cantor, the six-term Virginia congressman, were not conservative enough these days. They actually drove Romney, the moderate Republican former Massachusetts Governor of to the extreme, losing the election to President Obama rainbow coalition.
Even their minority Republican presidential candidates follow the same script. Dr. Ben Carson slammed those he left behind as a youth that got into trouble and compared taxes to the usual, Nazi Germany. Marco Rubio, a member of caucus that presented Comprehensive Immigration Reform backed out complaining about border first. Though the border has never been more secured with almost net zero difference between those coming in and going back.
Not to be outdone, Carly Fiorina is against paid maternity leave because some companies are already offering it. Of course you can always find some progressive businesses that others would not follow just to make that extra profit, even if it would hurt their employees. After all, not all companies were involved in child labor and not all whites had slaves. For those reason, the only lady running as presidential candidate, is against paid maternity leave.
While Trump boasts of giving women and minorities important positions in his businesses, the same Republicans are trying everything to deny minorities the right to vote and busting unions that have created middle class for many years. Republican problem is how to curb a spoil brat that carelessly says want most of them think or what appeals to closet and extreme prejudices.
Late Speaker Tip O’Neil claimed he loved people while Republicans champion armed programs. They pride themselves on gutting the budget, kill the beast and shutdowns the government. They hate servicing their own debts, against stimulus even during deep recession; want social security, Medicare and Medicaid replaced; make abortion illegal and deny minorities voting rights. But they would send troops to fight wars without proof of weapon of mass destruction.
As much as some people think Donald Trump is not a serious candidate, he has cunningly separated himself from the Republican obsession with Planned Parenthood. It is all about abortion with consideration for the life of the mother, rape or incest. While Trump “evolved” from Pro-choice to Pro-life, he stuck with the exceptions. The difference between poor women and rich women is that rich women can cross the state and go anywhere for abortion secretly.
In the case of poor women, abortion is a risk to their lives without well-equipped approved and accessible medical clinic. Most Republicans’ wives and daughters appreciate the role of Planned Parenthood for women health issues and no government money is involved in the abortion of last resort they perform. Yet, Republicans want to ban abortion outright. Therefore Trump is holding Jeb Bush to his gaffe on unnecessary half a billion for issue on women’s health.
Republicans are selling and pushing trust against Hilary Clinton by prolonging never ending Libya debacle that they jeered and longed for until it blew up in everybody’s face. They are now claiming the economy is so bad, may be they would love to go back to what it was under their leadership before Obama took over from Baby Bush. If Democrats were anticipating or wishing for another attack the way Dick Cheney and company were, they would be labeled traitors.
Republicans are ready to paint a gloomy picture of the state of the union so that they can be elected to fix what is not wrong. Yet, they claim U.S.A is going down and international communities no longer respect USA, as if they do not know how the rest of the world felt about plunging them into Iraq War. They have now found Donald Trump that is painting even a gloomier picture than them and how easy it is to fix.
In order to derail Trump, they have called him a pseudo republican planted by the Clintons. Their real fear of Trump has to do with contesting as a third candidate like Ross Perot. While they do not want to offend him, Trump realizes that is the only leverage he has. If they keep on hounding him out of their Party, he would run as a third candidate. The fact is the only person Trump cares about is Donald Trump. Ready to smack Sanders, Clinton or any Republican down.
But then, which of them would get the amount of attention Trump is getting only to let it go for the good of the party when they are just as desperate? The more they underestimate Donald Trump, the easier it gets for him. Donald Trump and Ben Carson are not the average politician because they are more intelligent and if by some odd chance get elected, would be reasonable.
Both are even more intelligent than the actor everyone underestimated and laughed at each time he got something wrong or made a mistake. They even claimed, at the time, that he thought he was still in Hollywood acting. It worked to his advantage. Not only did Ronald Reagan finally win after losing primaries a few times, he won as a two time President.
Ironically, as Carly Fiorina target Hilary Clinton as a woman, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio go after Obama that opens the door to their aspiration to become President. This is among those conservatives that show no respect for the President because he is not raised like one of them.