2016 Feb 24^th

Trump has won again and the Republicans are beginning to realize they can’t stop him. Now we’ll have a chorus of pundits claiming that he’s not really all that bad.  The right wing establishment hasn’t gotten there yet, they still have some hope, if either Cruz or Rubio would just drop out they say, then it’s a two man race and just maybe…. This is a bit like, “If I could just win the lottery, well, not win the big prize but just a 50 thousand dollar prize, I’d be OK.” I believe the chances of winning a big lottery prize are about the same as the chances of the Republican establishment beating Donald J. Trump…or maybe less!

Political parties win adherents by making promises; then they get into office and find out they can’t keep them and their supporters get mad and go elsewhere, usually to someone else who makes more attractive and equally unfillable promises. Supporters rarely ask how the candidate can actually keep the promises, which is fortunate for the candidates. Candidates are always salespeople; they, like all salespeople, are selling themselves. For the Presidency they are selling their platform and their ability to keep their promises. Trump is by far the superior salesman on the Republican side. His promises are so luminous that few ask him how he’ll keep them; for the few who do, he quiets them with vague answers and that’s OK because they really, really want to believe him. This is much like your four year old having some doubts about Santa Claus but not wanting to ask too many questions because he doesn’t really want to know the answers. Trump is truly a wonder; married three times, divorced once for adultery, he still takes votes from poor Senator Cruz who has been reduced to a series of dirty tricks. What’s an evangelical to do?

This is the problem with political parties: they have opponents who desperately try to discredit them and stop them from keeping the promises they’ve made. President Obama wanted to close Gitmo but in spite of the enormous cost of keeping the few prisoners who are still there, the Republicans insisted that those prisoners are so evil, indeed much more evil than the most evil American  that they could not be allowed into the United States. That is obviously nonsense. No less an American than George Washington warned the country about the disastrous effects of political parties on the body politic. The citizen’s loyalty has been, until now, to the Party rather than the country, or the two were simply conflated. Now we find that, like a nasty habit, once we have these parties we can’t get rid of them.

The change, and it’s a significant change, is that many people, mostly Republicans, are disgusted with their party because the party has not kept its promises to them. The budget has been approved so the government has not been shut down; the Affordable Care Act is undamaged, abortion remains legal, if difficult, and the Iran agreement is intact. The result is that many have turned to Donald Trump who promises to “Make America Great Again.”

Trump’s megalomania seems limitless; his name is on a huge airplane in huge letters. His name is on a casino in Las Vegas and on a hotel/apartment complex in New York City. If he becomes President it will be interesting to see what parts of the federal government will undergo a name change. Even though there are many buildings of various sorts that carry the Trump name, none that I know of are named “The Trump Children’s Hospital,” or “The Trump Cancer Center,” or “The Trump Veteran’s Rehabilitation Center.” Why is that do you suppose?