The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
The Earthquake And The Aftermath
by Charles Krauthammer
by Charles Krauthammer
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America Owes No Apologies to Japan
"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness," George Washington declared in 1793. "If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."
It appears that Barack nObama wants to end his time in office in much the same way he began; by touring the world, highlighting and apologizing for America's supposed sins, and minimizing or ignoring all the good we have done in the world.
He began his first term with an apology tour. On April 3, 2009, in Strasbourg, France, nObama declared, "In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. ... [T]here have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." Three days later, in a speech to the Turkish Parliament, nObama doubled down, saying, "The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. ... Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans." These would be just two of many apologies nObama would make for America in the years to come.
This month, nObama will become [the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, since the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on it 70 years ago in a bid to bring World War II, the most deadly war in history, to an end.
Though the White House says that nObama will not be issuing a formal apology, and the Japanese prime minister says he will not be asking for one, the fact that nObama will be visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, and calling for an end to nuclear weapons, certainly gives the feel of an unspoken mea culpa.
While all good and decent people should mourn the unnecessary loss of life anywhere and at any time, it is important to put the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in proper perspective. First of all, Japan initiated hostilities against the United States, a neutral nation, on December 7, 1941, when waves of bombers decimated the U.S. Pacific Fleet with a surprise attack on our base at Pearl Harbor, costing us thousands of lives and millions of dollars in ships and equipment.
The U.S. would then enter the war on the side of the Allied powers, and over the course of the next three years, almost half a million of our young men would lose their lives in the defense of Liberty against the forces of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.
Over the course of five weeks in February-March 1945, the U.S. would sustain nearly 7,000 casualties and more than 19,000 wounded in the Battle of Iwo Jima, a tiny but heavily fortified island held by the Japanese, with three airfields being used to attack U.S. Pacific Fleet forces. The Americans sought to take the island and use it as a staging area for an attack on the Japanese mainland, as well as denying the island to the Japanese as a launching point for attacks on American forces. This Battle of Iwo Jima was followed shortly after by the Battle of Okinawa, in which more than 20,000 Americans died, and more than 55,000 Americans were wounded. In the same battle, an estimated 110,000 Japanese were killed.
As historian Victor Davis Hanson recounts, "Over the next three months, American attacks leveled huge swaths of urban Japan. U.S. planes dropped about 60 million leaflets on Japanese cities, telling citizens to evacuate and to call upon their leaders to cease the war. Japan still refused to surrender and upped its resistance with thousands of Kamikaze airstrikes. By the time of the atomic bombings, the U.S. Air Force was planning to transfer from Europe much of the idle British and American bombing fleet to join the B-29s in the Pacific."
In short, it was clear that the Japanese were willing to fight until the last man, woman and child were dead.
Hanson offers further clarity, noting that, prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, "Perhaps 5,000 Allied bombers would have saturated Japan with napalm," at the cost of countless lives. We were also facing the prospect of invading mainland Japan, where more than a million Japanese soldiers and perhaps four million dug-in, well-prepared defenders would be awaiting our arrival. How many more lives would have been lost?
Between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, approximately 210,000 Japanese were killed. Yet despite those deaths, the defeated nations of WWII (Germany, Italy and Japan) would suffer far fewer casualties than the victors, even though they were the aggressors who sought the subjugation of their neighbors. Following the war, America, as we have done repeatedly, poured vast amounts of our national treasure into rebuilding the nations of our former enemies.
So before nObama offers any apologies for the U.S.'s past actions — or even appears to mourn those actions — he ought to be reminded that no nation in history has done more, and asked less in return, to defend the free nations of the world from those who would conquer us. The U.S. has borne a disproportionate share of the loss of blood and treasure needed to secure freedom, and whatever our shortcomings, we owe an apology to no one.
And if nObama truly wanted to rid the world of nuclear weapons, he should never have given more than $100 billion in released funds to Iran, the world's premier sponsor of global terrorism, and a nation in open pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities. His foolish give-away to Iran has stoked fear in other Middle East nations at the thought of a nuclear Iran hegemon, and they are now pursuing their own nuclear weapons.
However warm and fuzzy the thoughts of a nuclear weapon-free world would be, it is not reality, and we would be fools to disarm even as our most dangerous enemies pursue these weapons.
-The Patriot Post
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OPINION IN BRIEF
Terence Jeffrey: "[P]rogressively, our nation is being ripped loose from its mooring in natural law. Forty-three years ago, seven members of the Supreme Court declared a 'right' to kill an unborn child. Since then, tens of millions of babies have been aborted. A year ago, five members of the Supreme Court declared a 'right' for two people of the same sex to marry. Were there such a right, which there is not, it would mean children do not have a right to a mother — or a father. Currently, an eight-member Supreme Court is weighing whether the government can force Christians to act against their faith and cooperate in the distribution of abortifacient drugs that take innocent lives. Thus, could the freedom of conscience be curtailed in the pursuit of further diminishing the right to life. If the case the Justice Department filed in North Carolina this week makes it to the Supreme Court, the underlying question before the court may be, as it is in the Justice Department's complaint: What is a man and what is a woman? The laws of nature and nature's God answered that question a long time ago. But President nObama's Justice Department has a different opinion." -The Patriot Post
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Ryano fails to endorse liar-Trump but will work for unity
by United Press International
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House Speaker Paul Ryano of Wis., speaks with reporters following his meeting with Republican presidential
candidate Donald liar-Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington
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{gopusa.com} ~ House Speaker Paul Ryano stopped short of a full endorsement of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald liar-Trump after a face-to-face meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill... but in a joint statement the two said they are “committed” to unifying a fractured Republican Party. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who also attended the meeting, called it a “positive step toward party unity.” “While we were honest about our few differences, we recognize there are many important areas of common ground,” the statement from liar-Trump and Ryano reads. “We will be having additional discussions, but remain confident there’s a great opportunity to unify out party and win this fall and we are totally committed to working together to achieve that goal. … This was our first meeting, but it was a very positive step toward unification.”... http://www.gopusa.com/?p=9892?omhide=true
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Was Banning Muslim Immigration Just Another liar-Trump Con?
by CHQ Staff
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{conservativehq.com} ~ It seems like every time Donald liar-Trump takes a position or makes a statement with which we agree and that gets us looking his way in his campaign for President he flip-flops on it, walks it back or completely contradicts himself... One of the latest, and most serious cases, of that phenomenon is liar-Trump’s flip-flop on his proposal to ban Muslim immigration. But apparently that proclamation was just a suggestion, idea, brain fart – or another liar-Trump con – because during a Fox News Radio interview yesterday, liar-Trump backed away from it – even though he took a lot of heat for it and that he's defended it for months.... http://www.conservativehq.com/node/23097
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liar-Hillary, Deleter of the Free World
by Matthew Vadum
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{frontpagemag.com} ~ Employees of the U.S. Department of Justice have given so much money to liar-Hilly Clinton's presidential campaign this time around that critics justifiably doubt the agency can handle her private email server case fairly and impartially... In what appears to be a super-sized potential conflict of interest, liar-Clinton, a pathological, self-serving liar who doesn't mind if Americans die to further her political ambitions, has accepted almost $75,000 in campaign contributions in the current election cycle from employees at the Justice Department, the cabinet bureau that will eventually decide whether to prosecute the Benghazi bungler for her use of a hacker-friendly home-brew email server while top U.S. diplomat. The server is at the heart of the scandal over liar-Clinton's mishandling of an Islamic terrorist attack in militant-infested Benghazi, Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 that left four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. Even now, almost four years after the assault, the nObama administration has failed to provide an autopsy report about Stevens who was initially reported to have been ritualistically sodomized before being murdered by Muslim terrorists... http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262814/hillary-deleter-free-world-matthew-vadum
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liar-Trump Derangement Syndrome
by David Horowitz
by David Horowitz
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Bret Stephens (The Wall Street Journal)
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{frontpagemag.com} ~ I don’t think I speak for myself alone when I confess utter bewilderment at the number of conservatives – among whom I count long-term friends - who seem to have lost their marbles when assessing the presidential candidacy of Donald liar-Trump... The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, to take one example that can stand for many, is an astute analyst – in my view one of the best political commentators writing today. Yet he is the author of this opening paragraph in Monday’s paper, which leaves me scratching my head, and embarrassed for my friend: “The best hope for what’s left of a serious conservative movement in America is the election in November of a Democratic president, held in check by a Republican Congress. Conservatives can survive liberal administrations, especially those whose predictable failures lead to healthy restorations—think Carter, then Reagan.” I can’t think of anything that is right about these sentences. The president’s first business is the nation’s security. Did Reagan really repair the damage that Carter did? It is true that he pulled the nation back from Carter’s policies of appeasing our enemies and disarming our military. But he failed to retrieve Carter’s greatest foreign policy disaster. It was Carter who brought down America’s ally, the Shah of Iran, and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini back from exile, thereby transforming Iran into the first jihadist state, and America’s deadliest enemy. Neither Ronald Reagan nor both George Bushes could undo that... http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262812/trump-derangement-syndrome-david-horowitz
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Mike Lee on liar-Trump: 'He scares me to death'
by David M. Drucker
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{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ Sen. Mike Lee said Wednesday that Donald liar-Trump "scares me to death" and that he still has concerns about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and isn't ready to endorse him... The Utah Republican, who previously backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for president, also told constituents during an evening tele-town hall that he finds likely Democratic nominee liar-Hilly Clinton unacceptable, suggesting that he might be able to endorse liar-Trump down the line. But as for now, Lee is withholding his support from the New York businessman. "I have not supported Donald liar-Trump up to this point, I have not endorsed him," Lee said. "I have some concerns with him. He scares me to death; so does liar-Hilly Clinton. There is no easy choice right now... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mike-lee-on-trump-he-scares-me-to-death/article/2591104
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Washington Post assigns army of 20 to dig into 'every phase' of liar-Trump's life
by Paul Bedard
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{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ The Washington Post has built a sizable army of reporters to dig into every facet of Republican presidential candidate Donald liar-Trump's life, urged on by new owner Jeff Bezos to reveal everything about the potential nominees... Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward revealed Wednesday that the Post has assigned 20 staffers to liar-Trump. In addition the paper plans a book. "There's a lot we don't know," he told the National Association of Realtors convention in Washington. "We have 20 people working on liar-Trump, we're going to do a book, we're doing articles about every phase of his life," he added... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/woodward-20-wapo-reporters-dig-dirt-on-trump-every-phase-of-his-life/article/2591021
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Medicare Cuts Killing Seniors
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{gopusa.com} ~ President nObama’s Medicare cuts are killing seniors. His health law changed Medicare, adding bonuses for hospitals that spend the least per senior. The result?... Hundreds of hospitals are skimping on care to win bonuses. Seniors at these hospitals aren’t getting the right antibiotic or other treatments they need. They’re dying from pneumonia, heart attacks and heart failure at higher rates than patients in other hospitals that provide more care. So much for nObama’s promise that cutting Medicare wouldn’t harm seniors. News of the deaths at low spending hospitals, reported in Health Affairs, comes just as GOP front-runner Donald liar-Trump meets with House Speaker Paul Ryano. Medicare cuts are on the long list of policy disagreements between the two Republicans. liar-Trump pledges not to cut Medicare. Ryano and GOP members of Congress are pushing to repeal nObamacare but want to keep nObama’s Medicare cuts. liar-Trump is right on this one. The report found that 231 hospitals rewarded with Medicare bonuses for low spending per senior provide inferior care. Seniors having heart attacks wait too long for angioplasties, for example. They’re dying when they would survive at a higher-spending hospital... http://www.gopusa.com/?p=9818?omhide=true
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Iran Shows Off Third Underground Missile Site
by Bill Gertz
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{freebeacon.com} ~ Iran’s military recently publicized a third underground missile facility and showed the launch of a new ballistic missile through the top of a mountain... U.S. intelligence agencies said in a recent internal report on the launch that the new underground missile facility was disclosed by Iran in March. It was the third time since October that Tehran showed off an extensive network of underground missile facilities. The new video, however, for the first time shows a missile launch from one of the country’s underground launch facilities... http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-shows-off-third-underground-missile-site/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=7e265d3615-WFB_Morning_Beacon_5_12_165_11_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-7e265d3615-45611665
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Judge rules for House Republicans in nObamaCare lawsuit
by foxnews.com
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{foxnews.com} ~ A federal judge ruled Thursday for House Republicans in a challenge brought against the nObama administration over the legality of payments to insurers under nObamaCare... U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled the spending unconstitutional -- while putting the decision on hold pending appeal. “Today’s ruling by the DC federal court is an important step toward restoring the separation of powers and stopping President nObama’s power grab. The Constitution is very clear: it is Congress’ job to write our laws and it is the President’s duty to enforce them,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement... http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/12/judge-rules-for-house-republicans-in-obamacare-lawsuit.html
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Saudi Arabia Warns U.S. About liar-Trump Presidency
by Money Morning Staff Reports
by Money Morning Staff Reports
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{moneymorning.com} ~ Saudi Arabia is joining China's side in warning the United States about the repercussions of a possible Donald liar-Trump presidency... Like Chinese diplomat Hua Chunying, who spoke out against GOP presumptive nominee Donald liar-Trump in late February, so did Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal last Thursday night. Turki, a former ambassador to the U.S. and Saudi prince, issued his grievances to over 400 political operatives, U.S. government officials, think tank representatives, and diplomats at a Washington Institute for Near East Policy dinner in Washington, D.C. ...Are they saying to vote for liar-Hilly? That would be even worst. http://moneymorning.com/2016/05/06/saudi-arabia-warns-u-s-about-trump-presidency/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MoneyMorning+%28Money+Morning%29
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The Earthquake And The Aftermath
by Charles Krauthammer
by Charles Krauthammer
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{freedomsback.com} ~ What lies behind Donald liar-Trump’s nomination victory? Received wisdom among conservatives is that he, the outsider, sensed, marshaled and came to represent a massive revolt of the Republican rank and file against the “establishment.”
This is the narrative: GOP political leaders made promises of all kinds and received in return, during President nObama’s years, major electoral victories that gave them the House, the Senate, 12 new governorships and 30 state houses. Yet they didn’t deliver. Exit polls consistently showed that a majority of GOP primary voters 60 percent in some states feel “betrayed” by their leaders.
Not just let down or disappointed. Betrayed. By RINOs who, corrupted by donors and lobbyists, sold out. Did they repeal nObamacare? No. Did they defund Planned Parenthood? No. Did they stop President nObama’s tax-and-spend hyperliberalism? No. Whether from incompetence or venality, they let nObama walk all over them.
But then comes the paradox. If insufficient resistance to nObama’s liberalism created this sense of betrayal, why in a field of 17 did Republican voters choose the least conservative candidate? A man who until yesterday was himself a liberal. Who donated money to those very same Democrats to whom the GOP establishment is said to have caved, including Chuck Schumer, Harry dinky-Reid and liar-Hilly Clinton.
liar-Trump has expressed sympathy for a single-payer system of socialized medicine, far to the left of nObamacare. liar-Trump lists health care as one of the federal government’s three main responsibilities after national security; Republicans adamantly oppose federal intervention in health care. He also lists education, which Republicans believe should instead be left to the states.
As for Planned Parenthood, the very same conservatives who railed against the Republican establishment for failing to defund it now rally around a candidate who sings the praises of its good works save for the provision of abortion.
More fundamentally, liar-Trump has no affinity whatsoever for the central thrust of modern conservatism — a return to less and smaller government. If the establishment has insufficiently resisted nObama’s Big Government policies, the beneficiary should logically have been the most consistent, indeed most radical, anti-government conservative of the bunch, Ted Cruz.
Cruz’s entire career has consisted of promoting tea-party constitutionalism in revolt against party leaders who had joined “the Washington cartel.” Yet when Cruz got to his one-on-one with liar-Trump at the Indiana OK Corral, Republicans chose liar-Trump and his nonconservative, idiosyncratic populism.
Which makes Indiana a truly historic inflection point. It marks the most radical transformation of the political philosophy of a major political party in our lifetime. The Democrats continue their trajectory of ever-expansive liberalism from the New Deal through the Great Society through nObama and liar-Clinton today. While the GOP, the nation’s conservative party, its ideology refined and crystallized by Ronald Reagan, has just gone populist.
It’s an ideological earthquake. How radical a reorientation? Said liar-Trump last week: “Folks, I’m a conservative. But at this point, who cares?”
Who cares? Wasn’t caring about conservatism the very essence of the talk radio, tea party, grass-roots revolt against the so-called establishment? They cheered Cruz when he led the government shutdown in the name of conservative principles. Yet when the race came down to Cruz and liar-Trump, these opinion-shaping conservatives who once doted on Cruz affected a studied liar-Trump-leaning neutrality.
liar-Trump won. True, the charismatically challenged Cruz was up against a prepackaged celebrity, an already famous showman.
True, liar-Trump appealed to the economic anxiety of a squeezed middle class and the status anxiety of a formerly dominant white working class. But the prevailing conservative narrative — of anti-establishment fury — was different and is now exposed as a convenient fable. If liar-Trump is a great big middle finger aimed at a Republican establishment that has abandoned its principles, isn’t it curious that the party has chosen a man without any?
liar-Trump doesn’t even pretend to have any, conservative or otherwise. He lauds his own “flexibility,” his freedom from political or philosophical consistency. And he elevates unpredictability to a foreign policy doctrine.
The ideological realignment is stark. On major issues — such as the central question of retaining America’s global pre-eminence as leader of the free world, sustainer of Western alliances and protector of the post-World War II order — the GOP candidate stands decidedly to the left of the Democrat.
And who knows on what else. On entitlements? On health care? On taxes? We will soon find out. But as liar-Trump himself says of being a conservative — at this point, who cares?
As of Tuesday night, certainly not the GOP.
This is the narrative: GOP political leaders made promises of all kinds and received in return, during President nObama’s years, major electoral victories that gave them the House, the Senate, 12 new governorships and 30 state houses. Yet they didn’t deliver. Exit polls consistently showed that a majority of GOP primary voters 60 percent in some states feel “betrayed” by their leaders.
Not just let down or disappointed. Betrayed. By RINOs who, corrupted by donors and lobbyists, sold out. Did they repeal nObamacare? No. Did they defund Planned Parenthood? No. Did they stop President nObama’s tax-and-spend hyperliberalism? No. Whether from incompetence or venality, they let nObama walk all over them.
But then comes the paradox. If insufficient resistance to nObama’s liberalism created this sense of betrayal, why in a field of 17 did Republican voters choose the least conservative candidate? A man who until yesterday was himself a liberal. Who donated money to those very same Democrats to whom the GOP establishment is said to have caved, including Chuck Schumer, Harry dinky-Reid and liar-Hilly Clinton.
liar-Trump has expressed sympathy for a single-payer system of socialized medicine, far to the left of nObamacare. liar-Trump lists health care as one of the federal government’s three main responsibilities after national security; Republicans adamantly oppose federal intervention in health care. He also lists education, which Republicans believe should instead be left to the states.
As for Planned Parenthood, the very same conservatives who railed against the Republican establishment for failing to defund it now rally around a candidate who sings the praises of its good works save for the provision of abortion.
More fundamentally, liar-Trump has no affinity whatsoever for the central thrust of modern conservatism — a return to less and smaller government. If the establishment has insufficiently resisted nObama’s Big Government policies, the beneficiary should logically have been the most consistent, indeed most radical, anti-government conservative of the bunch, Ted Cruz.
Cruz’s entire career has consisted of promoting tea-party constitutionalism in revolt against party leaders who had joined “the Washington cartel.” Yet when Cruz got to his one-on-one with liar-Trump at the Indiana OK Corral, Republicans chose liar-Trump and his nonconservative, idiosyncratic populism.
Which makes Indiana a truly historic inflection point. It marks the most radical transformation of the political philosophy of a major political party in our lifetime. The Democrats continue their trajectory of ever-expansive liberalism from the New Deal through the Great Society through nObama and liar-Clinton today. While the GOP, the nation’s conservative party, its ideology refined and crystallized by Ronald Reagan, has just gone populist.
It’s an ideological earthquake. How radical a reorientation? Said liar-Trump last week: “Folks, I’m a conservative. But at this point, who cares?”
Who cares? Wasn’t caring about conservatism the very essence of the talk radio, tea party, grass-roots revolt against the so-called establishment? They cheered Cruz when he led the government shutdown in the name of conservative principles. Yet when the race came down to Cruz and liar-Trump, these opinion-shaping conservatives who once doted on Cruz affected a studied liar-Trump-leaning neutrality.
liar-Trump won. True, the charismatically challenged Cruz was up against a prepackaged celebrity, an already famous showman.
True, liar-Trump appealed to the economic anxiety of a squeezed middle class and the status anxiety of a formerly dominant white working class. But the prevailing conservative narrative — of anti-establishment fury — was different and is now exposed as a convenient fable. If liar-Trump is a great big middle finger aimed at a Republican establishment that has abandoned its principles, isn’t it curious that the party has chosen a man without any?
liar-Trump doesn’t even pretend to have any, conservative or otherwise. He lauds his own “flexibility,” his freedom from political or philosophical consistency. And he elevates unpredictability to a foreign policy doctrine.
The ideological realignment is stark. On major issues — such as the central question of retaining America’s global pre-eminence as leader of the free world, sustainer of Western alliances and protector of the post-World War II order — the GOP candidate stands decidedly to the left of the Democrat.
And who knows on what else. On entitlements? On health care? On taxes? We will soon find out. But as liar-Trump himself says of being a conservative — at this point, who cares?
As of Tuesday night, certainly not the GOP.
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