Imagine a Republican candidate for President, on a debate stage, a week before the South Carolina primary, saying the following:
*Planned Parenthood does wonderful things
*The World Trade Center came down under George W. Bush’s watch
*George W. Bush had a chance to stop 9/11, but didn’t
*There were no weapons of mass destruction and the Bush administration knew it
We don’t have to imagine it because Donald Trump said it. He said all of those things – a week before the South Carolina primary. And this is the frontrunner for President. Forget the Planned Parenthood stuff and focus on the Bush stuff. George W. Bush is still a beloved figure in the Republican Party. Trump’s talk reminds people of what liberals said during the Iraq conflict.
Yet, it looks like Trump is still leading in the polls in South Carolina. Are Trump supporters just so loyal that they’re willing to look the other way?
Maybe. Another theory is that, just as only Nixon could go to China, only Trump can criticize George W. Bush and the Iraq war and still retain his credibility. When the Democrats said it, Republicans perceived it as treasonous talk by a bunch of anti-American cowards afraid of our country’s military might.
Trump – who says he is the most militaristic person around – gives Republicans an opportunity to disavow what many consider to be the Bush administration’s greatest blunders without appearing to advocate for a weakened America. And for many of those Republicans, it comes as a relief – defending everything the Bush administration did was really quite exhausting.
Also, Trump is such a force of personality that he can radically depart from the typical Republican platform and still retain his supporters. For example, the consensus in the GOP is that Planned Parenthood is an abortion factory, and doesn’t ever do anything good. Perhaps Trump can change that. It reminds me of when Obama endorsed gay marriage. Observers expected him to take a hit with his black supporters. What happened? A huge increase in black support for gay marriage!
Call it cognitive dissonance, but I think it’s possible Trump could capture the Republican nomination while George W. Bush’s favorability with the party continues to be sky-high. That’s because both Bush and Trump are both viewed as strong on national security issues and strong on the military. Candidates perceived that way tend to run very strongly in South Carolina, so don’t be surprised if Trump’s surprising comments fail to prevent him from achieving a victory there.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
Add this to your reading, John…..
“On Saturday (in SC)……Trump accused George W. Bush of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Trump refused to retreat from a long-ago television interview calling for George W. Bush’s impeachment.
For a decade and a half, Republicans have stifled internal debates about the George W. Bush presidency. They have preserved a more or less common front, by the more or less agreed upon device of not looking backward, not talking candidly, and focusing all their accumulated anger on the figure of Obama. The Trump candidacy has smashed all those coping mechanisms. Everything that was suppressed has been exposed, everything that went unsaid is being shouted aloud—and all before a jeering live audience, as angry itself as any of the angry men on the platform. Is this a functional political party?”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-republican-partys-internecine-fights-spill-into-the-open/462768/
Come on, John. Do some reading (away from The Washington Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or the National Review), consider some polling, and stop with the hyperbole.
“George W. Bush’s favorability with the party continues to be sky-high”? “George W. Bush is still a beloved figure in the Republican Party.” Really?
From the article cited at the end:
“In a March 2015 Washington Post-ABC News poll, fewer than half of Republicans (43 percent) approved “strongly” of Bush’s presidency, while about as many said they approved “somewhat.
A September 2012 CBS News poll, meanwhile, found that just one-quarter of Republicans thought Bush was “one of the greatest” (6 percent) or a “very good” president (18 percent). About three-quarters rated him simply “good” (43 percent) or “fair” or “poor” (31 percent).
“All of these numbers clearly tilt positive, but none of them do so overwhelmingly. By contrast, 41 percent of Republicans say Ronald Reagan was “one of the greatest” presidents, and 28 percent said he was a “very good” president. That’s 69 percent giving Reagan at least “very” strong marks, vs. 24 percent for Bush.
In other words, plenty of Republicans like George Bush just fine and probably will be happy to see him on the campaign trail on Monday alongside his brother.”
BELOVED? Really? Please….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/15/republicans-like-george-w-bush-they-dont-love-him/
What have we come to when truth telling is only something that can be done by a person of Trump’s ilk for it to be accepted? Whether your hypothesis as to why aside, we are in a sorry state when we cannot accept these truths more readily than to be force-fed them by this goon.