Why Trump?

[LowDown]

[David] Brooks is, of course, horrified at Trump and his supporters, whom he finds childish, thuggish and contemptuous of the things that David Brooks likes about today’s America. It’s clear that he’d like a social/political revolution that was more refined, better-mannered, more focused on the Constitution and, well, more bourgeois as opposed to in-your-face and working class.

The thing is, we had that movement. It was the Tea Party movement.

Tea Partiers were cheerful, respective of authority, peaceful, they even picked up their own trash after their protests, but they were falsely smeared as racist, fascist and violent, and harassed with impunity by the IRS. Brooks looked down his nose at them. They gave Republicans victories in 2010 and 2014 and then the Republicans broke their promise to shrink government and block Obama's initiatives.

So now we have Trump, who tells his supporters to punch counterprotesters rather than picking up trash.

People who are unhappy with the things Trump is saying need to understand that he’s only getting so much traction because he’s filling a void. If the responsible people would talk about these issues, and take action, Trump wouldn’t take up so much space.

And there’s a lesson for our ruling class there: Calling Trump a fascist is a bit much (fascism, as Tom Wolfe once reported, is forever descending upon the United States, but somehow it always lands on Europe), but movements like fascism and communism get their start because the mechanisms of liberal democracy seem weak and ineffectual and dishonest. If you don’t want Trump — or, perhaps, some post-Trump figure who really is a fascist — to dominate things, you need to stop being weak and ineffectual and dishonest. . . .

I think it's much too late for any of that. People are not suddenly going to start doing the right thing. We are doomed to play this year out and then live with the consequences.

For years moderate Republicans were painted as the second coming of the KKK. GWB was practically a grand dragon who owned slaves. Romney was the most mild mannered and liberal GOP ever nominated. He has a black grandchild. Yet Romney was painted as a KKK loving racist who killed little old ladies with cancer for fun.

So now we have Trump, who won't take that crap, who fights back hard. For every absurd accusation people throw at him he throws two absurd accusations back. They lie and he lies back. They punch and he punches back twice as hard. And, after so many years of Republican ineffectiveness, people love it.

Democrats don't know what to do. For now they are just doubling down with absurd lies and accusations, and it has escalated to the point that they are claiming the Russians are involved.

I suspect that no matter what happens Trump will be a model for candidates to use in the future.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/239692/