July 25^th

Mona Chare has an entire column devoted to Donald Trump; she scampers away from him as fast as she can. She tells us that Trump got 24 percent of a recent poll “but Jeb Bush and Scott Walker together got 25 percent.” Coming within a point of the next two highest candidates combined is heartening for Ms. Charen. That’s really whistling past the graveyard. Then she says that “54 percent of his views do not represent the values of the Republican Party.”  (How in the world did she come up with “54 percent of his views?”)

She claims that “the very worst way to broach the topic (illegal immigration) is to smear all illegals as ‘rapists’ and criminals” but then acknowledges that talk radio has a consistent “drumbeat about illegal immigrant criminals.” I wonder if that drumbeat represents “the values of the Republican party;” if it doesn’t why hasn’t she said anything about the talk radio hosts?

She says that Trumps balloon ride is fading but is “disturbing nonetheless.” There is no evidence that it’s fading but plenty that it’s disturbing. Mona finds it disturbing because, “It’s evidence that political intemperance is not limited to the left.” The very next sentence has Mona writing, “Thanks to the execrable leadership of the Democratic Party and its allies we have witnessed several years of stoked racial hatred in America.” Later she writes, “Barack Obama rose on a promise of harmony, and has used power to rend the nation along all of its weakest seams. This brand of leadership has left his followers not happier, but more bitter. As for his opponents, they are disbelieving at the… damage he has been able to inflict.” This rant is, of course, not “political intemperance.”

After writing that Trump has demonstrated that political intemperance is not limited to the left, this woman, apparently forgetting what she has just written, proceeds to produce the most intemperate political remarks it is possible to utter in a family newspaper. We are to understand that racial hatred is not the result of a black man running away from a white policeman who murders him for target practice or the murder of nine black worshippers in Charleston by a white racist, that these and other racial outrages are the result of “the Democratic party stoking racial hatred in America,” Reading this, one is inclined to believe that Ms. Charen must be suffering from a mental disorder!

Then she says that “the only answer to hatred and division on the left is …inclusion on the right.” (Did she just give us an interesting example of that inclusion?) She recognizes that the party which “lost the Hispanic vote, the black vote, the women’s vote, the youth vote and the Asian vote has an image problem” Ms. Charen, as long as you and your party believe you have only an “image” problem you will continue to lose these voters. Your problem is not simply image, until you realize that your image reflects reality you will continue to lose elections.