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This is a powerful point. These times call for a serious President, not a puerile bloviator.
After Paris, Republicans Should Look to Christie
George Will, Washington Post
Paris was for all Americans, but especially for Republicans, a summons to seriousness that should have two immediate impacts on the Republican presidential contest. It should awaken the party’s nominating electorate from its reveries about treating the presidency as an entry-level job. And it should cause Republicans to take another look at Chris Christie, beginning with his speech in Florida the day after the Paris attacks.
Until now, many Republicans have been treating the nominating process as a mechanism for sending a message to Washington. The eruption of war in the capital of a NATO ally is a reminder that the nominating process will potentially send a commander in chief to Washington. This might, and should, hasten the eclipse of Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and especially Donald Trump. His coarse, vulgar and nasty 95-minute effusion last week in Fort Dodge, Iowa, answered this question: When he begins to fade, will he draw upon a hitherto well-hidden capacity for graciousness, or will he become a caricature of his normal persona, which itself is a caricature of democracy’s most embarrassing possibilities?
Watch Trump on YouTube and consider his manner in light of his stupendously unconservative proposal, made one day earlier, for a federal police force. (It would conduct about 500,000 deportations a month to remove approximately 11.4 million illegal immigrants in two years). Then watch Christie on YouTube and pay particular attention to his affirmation of the foundational conservative belief in the indispensability, the sovereignty and the prerogatives of nationhood. . . .
After Paris, Republicans Should Look to Christie
George Will, Washington Post
Paris was for all Americans, but especially for Republicans, a summons to seriousness that should have two immediate impacts on the Republican presidential contest. It should awaken the party’s nominating electorate from its reveries about treating the presidency as an entry-level job. And it should cause Republicans to take another look at Chris Christie, beginning with his speech in Florida the day after the Paris attacks.
Until now, many Republicans have been treating the nominating process as a mechanism for sending a message to Washington. The eruption of war in the capital of a NATO ally is a reminder that the nominating process will potentially send a commander in chief to Washington. This might, and should, hasten the eclipse of Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and especially Donald Trump. His coarse, vulgar and nasty 95-minute effusion last week in Fort Dodge, Iowa, answered this question: When he begins to fade, will he draw upon a hitherto well-hidden capacity for graciousness, or will he become a caricature of his normal persona, which itself is a caricature of democracy’s most embarrassing possibilities?
Watch Trump on YouTube and consider his manner in light of his stupendously unconservative proposal, made one day earlier, for a federal police force. (It would conduct about 500,000 deportations a month to remove approximately 11.4 million illegal immigrants in two years). Then watch Christie on YouTube and pay particular attention to his affirmation of the foundational conservative belief in the indispensability, the sovereignty and the prerogatives of nationhood. . . .