Democrats who not-so-quietly cheered for Sarah Palin to emerge as the 2012 GOP presidential nominee were pinching themselves when the increasingly shrill Palin seemed to fade and the erratic Michele Bachmann displaced her.
Now that Donald Trump has elbowed his way into the spotlight among the potential Republican nominees, giddy Democrats can’t believe their good fortune.
With polls showing The Donald as a legitimate contender – and one survey putting him at a tie as the GOP frontrunner – the Dems now see the opportunity to pounce. And Republican Party political pros are getting nervous.
It’s important to point out that Trump made noises in 1988 about running for president as a Democrat. Then in 1999 he sounded like he would be a contender as an independent. Now, in 2011, he’s transformed himself into a conservative Republican.
It’s as if every 11 years he rears his ugly head (I won’t comment on the hair) and pretends that he wants to rule this nation – an exercise designed to massage his ego.
Though The Donald was a longtime pro-choice advocate on the abortion issue and supported pro-choice causes, he now says that he is pro-life.
He once supported a big surtax on the wealthy, a public option in a universal health care system, and limited gun control.
Today, he panders to the Tea Partiers who exalt him and pretends that he’s a solid conservative who never held those positions in the past.
The political newbies in the Tea Party movement can be forgiven, to some extent, for quickly latching onto Trump’s political sideshow. But one Republican strategist recently warned that, over the years, the real estate mogul has taken “every side of every issue.”
When Trump received an adoring response in a speech to Florida Tea Party supporters the other day, it was, as one reporter put it, “part campaign attack speech, part self-promotional manifesto and part laugh-inducing sideshow.”
What Trump did not mention in that speech was his support for the 2008 bank bailout, an action that the Tea Party movement despises. He also did not mention that he has donated campaign dollars to Democrats and traditional Republicans for the past two decades.
Another factor that probably has the GOP strategists worried is that Trump is reportedly considering Ralph Reed as his campaign manager, if he does declare his candidacy. Reed became a national figure in the 1990s as the executive director of the Christian Coalition before he showed his true stripes.
Reed got caught up – though never indicted – in the scandal that led to the imprisonment of his longtime friend, sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff. At the time, Reed was piously lobbying against an Indian tribe’s plans for an Alabama casino.
When the facts came to light, it was revealed that Reed was not acting on religious or moral grounds against gambling. He was secretly working for another Indian tribe which ran a Mississippi casino and paid him $82 million to quash the potential competition emerging in their neighboring state.
One other consideration: For Tea Party types who are tired of politics as usual, Reed has flaunted his hunger for nasty, partisan campaign battles. He once said: “I do guerilla warfare. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag.”
What concerns me most is that this is Trump’s first pseudo-foray into politics at a time when foreign policy is an overriding issue. Based on his flamboyant statements, it sounds like Trump has adopted his foreign policy views by listening to his barstool buddy.
Commenting on the past high-seas attacks by Somali pirates, Trump said recently that he would “wipe them off the face of the earth.” Sounds macho. But the pirates are a bunch of rag-tag thugs, thieves who are not associated with any nation’s agenda. Nonetheless, Trump apparently wants to label a cruise missile for every little pirate boat bobbing off the coast of Africa.
Second, Trump says he would be more willing to help out the Libyan rebels if, after the fighting is over, we take over their oil fields. After all, why should we let them sell their oil to China? Right? (Wrong – Libyan oil is sold to Europe.) Imagine what kind of a message that would send to the freedom fighters across the Arab world: If you rise up and try to break free of your nation’s dictator, if you do all the fighting and dying, we will provide a no-fly zone. And then we’ll confiscate the only economic resource your country has.
Realistically, despite his strong Tea Party support, it’s hard to imagine the billionaire Trump successfully navigating the GOP primary season. It’s even harder to imagine him winning more than a handful of states in November 2012.
Can anyone picture The Donald in a flannel shirt sloshing around a hog farm in Iowa and talking about farm price supports?
How would a candidate who has been divorced three times and has an admitted history of womanizing play with the Religious Right conservatives of Iowa and South Carolina?
In 2007, Trump said George W. Bush was the worst president in American history. Now, he downplays his Bush criticisms and says Barack Obama is the worst president the U.S. has ever seen.
At this point, I think Democrats are confident that they can convince the American people that Donald Trump would be the worst president ever.
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This is the first post in a three-part blog.
