By David French
Monday, February 15, 2016
Saturday’s GOP debate finally clarified the Donald Trump
phenomenon. After months of dominating the polls and millions of words of
analysis, the grueling slog of the primary race is finally bringing the facts
into sharp relief. Donald Trump isn’t a revolutionary. He’s not a conservative.
He’s not even a populist. He’s a Democrat.
In the Greenville, S.C., debate, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz
both got under Trump’s skin, and he cracked. He shouted his true feelings, and
they were ugly to see. Regarding the Iraq War, Trump made it quite plain that
he believes the fever-swamp “Bush lied, people died” narrative of the radical
Left. The transcript could not be more clear.
Trump: You do whatever you want. You call it whatever you want. I wanna
tell you. They lied.
John Dickerson: Okay.
Trump: They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were
none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
Not only is Trump ignorant of the thousands of chemical
weapons found in Iraq, he’s spouting talking points you likely won’t even hear
from Hillary Clinton. But he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.
Regarding the horror of 9/11, only a committed leftist
would pin the undeniable failure of America’s security apparatus on George Bush
and George Bush only, but that’s what Trump did. Again, the transcript is
clear:
Trump: How did he keep us safe when the World Trade Center . . . The
World — I lost hundreds of friends. The World Trade Center came down . . .
during the reign. He kept us safe? That’s not safe. That is not safe.
There is no mention of the failures of two successive administrations,
including the Clinton administration’s wholly inadequate response to the Africa
embassy bombings and the near-sinking of the USS Cole. An alleged Republican can’t even muster up a fair criticism
of Bill Clinton at a GOP debate? Disgraceful.
But, again, he wasn’t done. When the conversation turned
to Planned Parenthood, incredibly he had this to say:
Cruz: You said, “Planned Parenthood does wonderful things and we should
not defund it.”
Trump: It does do wonderful things but not as it relates to abortion.
Cruz: So I’ll tell you what . . .
Trump: Excuse me. Excuse me, there are wonderful things having to do
with women’s health.
These are standard Democratic talking points,
intentionally designed to obfuscate the fact that when you pump hundreds of
millions of taxpayer dollars into a business, you help the entire business —
not just the portion funded. He knows that. Everyone involved in the debate knows
that.
Where’s the Jacksonian populism in those three
statements? Where’s the political revolution? That’s angry leftism, nothing
more.
When you combine fever-swamp leftism with his
protectionism and border policies, Trump looks less like a new sensation in
American politics and more like a famous and talented gene splice of an
old-school Teamster and a millennial Salon.com editor. He’s an old-fashioned
union Democrat and a new-fangled conspiracy theorist. He’s got a chronic case
of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I used to think his public persona was that of a
WWE wrestler. Now I think he’s Pajama Boy with ’roid rage, tweeting until his
thumbs fall off.
Even before Saturday’s debate, he’d already lost any
pretense of being a revolutionary. Aside from his border fence and his
temporary ban on Muslim immigration, his primary policy prescription consisted
of little more than “Put me in charge, and I’ll make things right.” That’s the
oldest piece of political pie-in-the-sky there is, and it doesn’t become
revolutionary simply because it’s accompanied by a barrage of personal insults
and a shock-and-awe media presence.
But after Saturday’s debate, it’s clear there’s a
Democrat in the GOP field. Trump doesn’t threaten the Republican establishment
because he’s too conservative or too populist. He threatens the Republican
establishment because he belongs in the other party. He’s hid it well until
now. But as his family Bible says — in the same Testament as Two Corinthians —
“There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.”
Donald Trump has been revealed. The ball is in your
court, South Carolina. Will the state that prides itself on picking the
Republican nominee select the GOP’s first Democrat?
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