Indiana’s Republican Presidential primary Tuesday will either continue Donald Trump’s unlikely march to the GOP nomination in this strange election year or slow him down and make a contested convention more of a painful reality in Cleveland.
Either way, Campaign 2016 will go down in history as the election of hate, racism and misogamy.
Trump is a racist, a liar, a con artist and a sordid and sorry example of what politics in America has become.
The same could be said for Texas Senator, a Joe McCarthy wannabe who seeks to degrade those of color, differing sexual orientations and just about anyone with a mind and ability to think independently.
Democrats have their own example of politics gone wrong — aging socialist Bernie Sanders, who really isn’t a member of the Party of the Jackass. He ran for the House of Representatives as a socialist and independent in 1990 and served 16 years in the House before election to the Senate in 2006.
Some point to the rise of a Trump or a Cruz or a Sanders as the end of a realistic political system in America.
That point could be argued. It’s harder to dispute the sad fact that hate drives Trump, Sanders and Cruz. The claim to hate the Washington “establishment.”
Their hate is much broader. They hate America.
Trump’s campaign slogan of “Makes America Great Again” is just his latest con, an elaborate pattern of deception that has left investors in his real estate shenanghans bankrupt, robbed thousands who drained their savings accounts and maxed out their credit cards to participate in “Trump University” and moved from wife to wife, discarding each for the latest flavor on the month — normally models with a penchant for dropping their garments for photographers.
“Donald Trump has more in common with the neofascist parties in Europe than with any great party that has ever led our nation. He would not make America great. He would make America hate,” writes Brent Budowsky in The Hill, Capitol Hill’s newspaper.
Cruz is no better than Trump. In too many ways, he’s far worse — an ultra right-wing zealot who uses political obstruction and tea party extremism to drive his self-serving agenda.
“The greatest political sleight of hand in the 2016 campaign has been Sen. Ted Cruz’s remaking himself into the reasonable, establishment candidate in the GOP race,” reports Julian Zelizer on CNN.
“For a politician seeking power at any cost, there are few tricks in the handbook more effective than the employment of innuendo, false implication and guilt by association—tricks that were once perfected to devastating effect by Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who rose to extraordinary power through his mastery of these dark arts as he led the United States down the path to one of its darkest hours,” writes Rich Ungar in Forbes. “Ted Cruz has elected to follow the darkest of all political paths in his quest for advancement. Let’s hope they do so as the last thing we need is to suffer another era of McCarthyism.”
David French of National Review says Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump “have risen from the wreckage of a broken culture.” To make matters worse, both have helped break the culture.
He adds:
Sanders and Trump are merely sailing the cultural currents the radicals created, perfecting the message that they’ve prepared the nation to receive. As William Butler Yeats wrote at another time of existential crisis, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” We’re left with a world where “the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
When a culture breaks, so does a nation.
Which leaves us with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Even conservative billionaire Charles Koch, who with his brother, has dumped millions into the campaigns of Republicans and who now says Clinton would be the best choice for President in 2016 and hints he might support her.
It’s been that kind of year.
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Copyright © 2016 Capitol Hill Blue
4 thoughts on “Trump, Cruz & Sanders: Hating America”
If there’s one thing old man Sanders and orange man Trump are good at its attracting the nuts in this country. But thankfully there are not enough of them to get either Sanders or Trump elected.
You keep throwing in Bernie Sanders alongside the Trump and Cruz and Clinton with no accusations; nothing beside ‘socialist’. No evidence of anything, just the term, and somehow that damns him? Is merely caring about the people more than the economy so evil to you?
Just curious,
Jon
Well, Doug my friend, I have concluded that Hillary is the best choice, and surprise surprise my explanation as to why went somewhat viral (small scale) when I put it on Daily Kos. It’s been up for half a day and has generated over 500 comments and 66 shares on Facebook, and is their number one community comment of the day. Now granted in the glory days when I was one of your regular columnists typically we each hat 1000-3000 hits for each essay, with one of mine being the second most read with 20,000 – Blackwater, God’s Christian Army.
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/02/1522226/-I-changed-my-mind-Why-I-m-not-voting-for-Bernie-in-the-Oregon-primary
Except it’s not quite true. No Trump supporter, if he lost the nomination, would ever support Clinton. But some would support Sanders. No Trump supporter will ever support Ted Cruz, if he were the nominee. But some would support Sanders.
Polls have shown (I’ll leave you to Google them, and inspect them for authenticity) that Bernie Sanders would win against any of the Republican field by a landslide.
I’ll also add that Ms. Clinton’s ‘shift to the left’ came about entirely through political pressure. Her statements along those lines are properly classed in the basket of ‘campaign promises’, while Bernie Sanders’s remarks along the same lines came from deep-seated conviction.
In short, Dr. Brown, I believe you are wrong.
A friend of mine said awhile ago that “It matters not who wins. 45% of the people are going to hate them, whoever it is.”. That’s true of Trump, Cruz, and Clinton – but not of Bernie Sanders. Ah well… “May the best man win” has never been American politics.
Have fun,
Jon
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