What Makes Donald Run?

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He’s giving fed-up Republicans something other candidates are not.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Trump greets the crowd in Mobile, Ala., August 21, 2015. (Mark Wallheiser/Getty)
Trump greets the crowd in Mobile, Ala., August 21, 2015. (Mark Wallheiser/Getty)

Donald Trump has at least three things going for him.

One, the mood of the country remains foul and fed-up — and volatile to the point that conventional wisdom is hardly reliable. Two, Trump has turned invective and narcissism into an art form, and his simplistic putdowns seem to garner ever more attention even as they become more monotonous and banal — largely because they are directed at a despised media elite. Three, the Democratic party is in worse shape than the Republican party. Apparently Trump’s attacks can still safely be savored as long as the Democrats are imploding.

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How Illegal Immigration Finally Turned Off the Public

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If there were not a Donald Trump, he would likely have had to have been invented. 

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Shot and chaser: Democrat activist Jorge Ramos of Univison badgers Donald Trump; is (temporarily) deported from presser by Trump’s security. (AP Photos/Charlie Neibergall)
Shot and chaser: Democrat activist Jorge Ramos of Univison badgers Donald Trump; is (temporarily) deported from presser by Trump’s security. (AP Photos/Charlie Neibergall)

Why did the illegal-immigration issue launch Donald Trump’s campaign? Why did his recent tense press conference exchange with Univision’s Jorge Ramos please even some of Trump’s liberal critics? What is it about illegal immigration that has finally turned off so many Americans?

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What Does the Modern Malleability of Gender and Race Mean for the Future of Affirmative Action?

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Caitlyn Jenner at the Espy Awards, July 15, 2015. (Kevin Winter/Getty)
Caitlyn Jenner at the Espy Awards, July 15, 2015. (Kevin Winter/Getty)

In the present postmodern world, we are told that there is no such thing as a biologically distinct gender. Instead, gender is now socially constructed. It can be defined by the individual in almost any way he or she sees fit.

In the old days, many clinical psychologists would have believed that Caitlyn Jenner — who first came to fame as Olympian Bruce Jenner — is experiencing a well-chronicled psychological state known as transvestism, or the innate pleasure in wearing the clothes and assuming the manners and appearance of the opposite sex.

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Donald Trump and the Other Class Warfare

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When democratic masses tire of being condescended to.

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Photo via FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FrontPage Magazine

The rise and continuing popularity of Donald Trump reminds us that “class warfare” is an eternal constant of democracies, for as Plato said, every city is in fact two cities, “one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.” But possession of wealth is not the only factor in this eternal conflict between the few and the many. The masses of course resent the elites’ greater wealth, but even more they dislike the assumption of superior wisdom and virtue that elites have always claimed as justifications for their status. It is this galling assumption and the anger it arouses in people that Donald Trump has brilliantly exploited.

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The Democrats: Too Old and Too White?

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Leftwingers’ taunts in 2008 and 2012 have come back to haunt them.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Photo via NRO
Photo via NRO

In the jubilation of the Obama election victories of 2008 and 2012, the Left warned Republicans that the party of McCain and Romney was now “too old, too white, too male — and too few.” Columnists between 2008 and 2012 ad nauseam berated Republicans on the grounds that their national candidates “no longer looked like America.” The New York Times stable crowed that the Republicans of 2008 were “all white and nearly all male” — not too long before McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running-mate. In reaction to the defeats of McCain and Romney, Salon and Harper’s ran stories on the “Grand Old White Party” and “Angry White Men.”

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Absurd—and Not-so-Absurd—Immigration

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Trump’s plan of mass deportations en masse is unworkable, but that’s not an argument against weeding out criminals and those without work histories in the U.S.

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Photo via NRO
Photo via NRO

In the discussion of Donald Trump’s agenda for dealing with illegal immigration, lots of his proposals are said to be absurd. But are they all?

Mass Deportations?

Targeted deportations are not the same as mass deportations. Trump may want all of the latter, but just as absurdly the Democratic Party seems not to want any of the former.

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As the EPA and IRS Have Shown, with Big Government Comes Little Accountability

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
EPA chief Gina McCarthy on Capitol Hill. (Alex Wong/Getty)
EPA chief Gina McCarthy on Capitol Hill. (Alex Wong/Getty)

Social observers from Aristotle and Juvenal to James Madison and George Orwell have all warned of the dangers of out-of-control government. Lately, we have seen plenty of proof that they were frighteningly correct.

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Obama: Earning Contempt, at Home and Abroad

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From Thucydides’s Athens to 21st-century America, appeasement is not a winner.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
President Obama departs Air Force One. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty)
President Obama departs Air Force One. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty)

The common bond among the various elements of the failed Obama foreign policy — from reset with Putin to concessions to the Iranians — is a misreading of human nature. The so-called Enlightened mind claims that the more rationally and deferentially one treats someone pathological, the more likely it is that he will respond and reform — or at least behave. The medieval mind, within us all, claims the opposite is more likely to be true.

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The Tragic and Complete Collapse of Racial Relations

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Polls show that racial relations have gotten much worse under Barack Obama. Why has that happened?

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Photo via: hoodmetal.com
Photo via: hoodmetal.com

Why do polls show that racial relations have gotten much worse under Barack Obama, who won the White House with over 95% of the black — and 45% of the white — vote?

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll [1] just revealed that about 60% of Americans feel race relations are not good. Some 40% think that they will become even worse. Yet when Obama was elected, 66% of those polled felt race relations were generally OK. All racial groups, according to recent polling, believe that Obama’s handling of racial relations has made things worse since 2009. Another recent Pew poll confirms these tensions, and suggests whites are now about as pessimistic as blacks.

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How Long Will Trump’s Cathartic Candidacy for Fed-Up Conservatives Last?

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Photo via NRO
Photo via NRO

The coarser and cruder Donald Trump becomes, and the more ill-informed on the issues he sounds, the more he coasts in the polls. Apparently, a few of his targets must be regarded as unsympathetically as their defamer.

Trump is rightly mocked for cynically spreading quid pro quo money around. But he quickly counters that his critics — from Hillary Clinton to his Republican rivals — have all asked him for such cash or for favors.

Trump preps little. He has no real agenda. And he makes stuff up as he goes along. For such a New York brawler, he has thin skin, smearing his critics, often in creepy fashion. How can a former Democrat, once a pro-choice, pro-amnesty liberal and a supporter of single-payer health care, remain the godhead of the conservative base for weeks on end?

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