<\/p>\n
Whatever his faults, a Trump victory is preferable for the Republic. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n S<\/span>easoned Republican political handlers serially attack Donald Trump and his campaign as amateurish, incompetent, and incoherent. The media somehow outdid their propaganda work for Barack Obama and have signed on as unapologetic auxiliaries to the Hillary Clinton campaign \u2014 and openly brag that, in Trump\u2019s case, the duty of a journalist is to be biased. We have devolved to the point that a Harvard Law professor teases about unethically releasing his old confidential notes of his lawyer\/client relationship with Trump.<\/p>\n Conservative columnists and analysts are so turned off by Trump that they resort to sophisticated metaphors to express their distaste \u2014 like \u201cabortion,\u201d \u201cape,\u201d \u201cbastard,\u201d \u201cbitch,\u201d \u201ccancer,\u201d \u201ccaudillo,\u201d \u201cdog crap,\u201d \u201cfilth,\u201d \u201cidiot,\u201d \u201cignoramus,\u201d and \u201cmoron.\u201d Some of them variously talk of putting a bullet through his head given that he resembles, or is worse than, Caesar, Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin. Derangement Syndrome is a more apt clinical diagnosis for the Right\u2019s hatred of Trump than it was for the Left\u2019s loathing of Bush. Had such venom been directed at leftists or minorities, the commentators likely would have lost their venues.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s political obituary over the last 14 months has been rewritten about every three weeks. During the primaries, each time he won a state we were told that that victory was his last. Now, in the general-election campaign, his crude ego is supposedly driving the Republican ticket into oblivion. The media have discovered that what gets Trump\u2019s goat is not denouncing his coarseness, but lampooning his lack of cash and poor polling: broke and being a loser is supposedly far worse for Trump\u2019s ego than being obnoxious and cruel. So far, he is behind in most of the polls most of the time.<\/p>\n But not so fast!<\/p>\n Mysteriously, each time he hits rock bottom, Trump \u2014 even before his recent \u201cpivot\u201d \u2014 begins a two-week chrysalis cycle of inching back in the polls to within 2 or 3 points of Clinton. Apparently Trump represents something well beyond Trump per se. He appears to be a vessel of, rather than a catalyst for, popular furor at \u201celites\u201d \u2014 not so much the rich, but the media\/political\/academic\/celebrity global establishment that derides the ethos of the middle class as backward and regressive, mostly as a means for enjoying their own apartheid status and sense of exalted moral self, without guilt over their generational influence and privilege.<\/p>\n Given the surprise of Brexit and Trump\u2019s unexpected dominance of the primaries, pollsters seem to fear that his populist support is underreported by 2 or 3 percentage points. Some voters who do not openly profess that they plan to vote for Trump might do just that in the privacy of the polling booth \u2014 even as they might later deny that fact to others.<\/p>\n His latest pivot may be too late, but it certainly hit the right notes by presenting his populist themes \u2014 unwise trade deals, defense cuts, inner-city violence, attacks against police, illegal immigration, the war on coal, big-government regulations, and boutique environmentalism \u2014 as symptomatic of elite neglect not just of the white working class but of minorities as well, upon whom liberal policy falls most heavily. By curbing his personal invective and focusing on Obama\u2019s incompetence and Clinton\u2019s corruption, Trump may succeed in allowing 4 or 5 percent of the missing Republicans and independents to return and vote for him without incurring social disdain.<\/p>\n The news cycle favors any outsider \u2014 certainly including Trump.<\/p>\n About every three weeks, terrorists butcher innocents in one or another Western country, usually screaming \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d during their victims\u2019 death throes. These terrorists have often been watched but otherwise left alone by intelligence agencies. Liberal pieties follow, along with warnings to the public about their prejudices, rather than admonitions to radical Islamists to stop their killing.<\/p>\n The ensuing public backlash does not mesh with the Obama\u2013Clinton narrative that the killings were mere workplace violence, a generic form of \u201cviolent extremism,\u201d or had \u201cnothing to do with Islam.\u201d Like Jimmy Carter, with his infamous inability to frame the Iranian hostage crisis, so too the latest manifestation of Hillary Clinton is simply unable to identify the origin, nature, and extent of the terrorist threat \u2014 much less offer a solution.<\/p>\n When the president upgrades the ISIS threat from a jayvee classification to something analogous to a fall in the bathroom, the public is not reassured that his former secretary of state understands radical Islamic terrorism.<\/p>\n In the same vein, with 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S., almost daily we hear a news report of yet another illegal-alien felony, or a new sanctuary city, or an effort by the \u201cundocumented\u201d to get the vote out \u2014 none of which enhances open-borders Hillary.<\/p>\n Many of us have been saying for a year now that the last six months of the Obama administration will likely be the most dangerous interlude since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 or the Carter meltdown of 1980. Restive aggressors abroad have long concluded that Obama is conflicted about American morality, power, and responsibility. After his faux deadlines, redlines, and step-over lines, his apologies, his mythographical speeches, and his deer-in-the-headlights reactions to overseas challenges, he appears to foreign opportunists to be indifferent to the consequences of American laxity and lead-from-behind withdrawal.<\/p>\n Putin is now massing troops near Ukraine. Iran is absorbing Iraq and Syria. China has carved out a thalassocracy in the South China Sea. Tensions will only rise in these areas in the next 90 days, to the point of either outright war or more insidious and humiliating withdrawals from U.S. interests and allies. Either scenario favors Trump\u2019s Jacksonian bluster.<\/p>\n When a black police officer in Milwaukee fatally shoots a fleeing armed suspect \u2014 who had a lengthy arrest record and had turned to fire with his stolen automatic pistol \u2014 and anti-police riots follow, then it is hard to conceive under what conditions of legitimate police\u00a0self defense that riots would not <\/em>ensue. While there is plenty of public sympathy for refocusing on the general conditions in the inner city that may foster a high crime rate, there is none for focusing on their riotous manifestations.<\/p>\n After \u201chands up, don\u2019t shoot\u201d in Ferguson, the police acquittals in Baltimore, and now\u00a0Milwaukee, the inevitable next riot will further hurt Hillary Clinton, who has mortgaged her campaign soul to Obama\u2019s electoral calculus of 2008\/2012. Meanwhile the daily carnage in Obama\u2019s hometown of Chicago continues, out of sight and out of mind to the Democratic party.<\/p>\n Hillary Clinton has lied about her e-mails, her personal server, and the supposed firewall between her and the Clinton Foundation. She has lied about almost every detail of her tenure as secretary of state, from the killings in Benghazi to her knowledge of sending and receiving classified material.\u00a0We are back to the cattle-future lying of 1979, when\u00a0 Hillary was said to have had a 31-trillion-to-one chance of telling the truth about her hundred-fold profit.<\/p>\n The problem with chronic lying is that finally the liar reaches a combustible state, one in which she cannot lie any more without contradicting a particular prior lie and yet cannot tell the truth without contradicting all<\/em> prior lies. To keep them straight, one needs an amoral photographic memory. Hillary Clinton has the requisite shamelessness, but (unlike Bill) not the animal cunning to pull off such serial prevarication. In her latest fabrication that has begrudgingly come to light, Hillary had blamed Colin Powell (who never set up a private server as secretary of state) as the supposed felonious model that prompted her to break the law.<\/p>\n So expect more lies about hacked e-mail from the Clinton Foundation, Hillary\u2019s deleted e-mail accounts, the DNC records, or some as yet unknown private communication about every 48 hours until November. If Trump\u2019s fantasies are the bluster, narcissism, and adolescence of a real-estate and show-biz wheeler-dealer, Clinton\u2019s lies are the steely-eyed and deliberate work of a long-time sociopathic prevaricator who destroys all those around her who weave the webs of her deceit.<\/p>\n Barack Obama is not necessarily a plus for Clinton. The president does well in the polls while he is off golfing with celebrities and sports stars, and is thus not heard or seen much in the world outside Martha\u2019s Vineyard \u2014 the world in which coffins float about in flood-ravaged Louisiana, the Putin military build-up near Ukraine continues, or the Obamacare disaster grows. But whenever Obama reemerges to campaign for Hillary, he inevitably winds up in his characteristic condescending rambles and rants \u2014 the most recent his ridiculous lying about the Iranian ransom\/\u201cleverage\u201d payment.<\/p>\n Clinton will win the election if she (and Trump\u2019s own alter ego) can continue to convince the public that Trump is dangerous, repulsive, and unfit to a degree not seen before in politics \u2014 and thus every new day is devoted to Trump\u2019s mouth and not Hillary\u2019s high crimes and misdemeanors. But if Trump can pivot to focus on policy, about which he sometimes proves to be a skilled speaker and clever antagonist, then media attention will shift from Trump to the issues and the daily news. And all that fare is innately damaging to Hillary.<\/p>\n Trump has two enemies: money and Trump himself. In his peculiar way, Trump is able to work the teleprompter as effectively as Obama, and when disciplined is far better in unscripted repartee. All that explains why Trump has not yet quite killed Trump off, and why in any given ten-day recovery period he has the potential to creep within 2 or 3 points of Hillary, which this year may mean a dead-even race.<\/p>\n Yet Trump so far can get close to Clinton, but not 3 to 4 points ahead.<\/em> To do that would require continued zeal, but also a complete end to his personal invective against irrelevant third parties \u2014 and an ability to raise a lot of money quickly and get his message out in a multimedia campaign.<\/p>\n Trump will also have to show reluctant conservative big-money donors that he is serious about the presidency, perhaps with the dramatic gesture of selling off a building or two to infuse his campaign with millions of dollars of good-faith money. That signal might be the sort of financial sacrifice that would encourage traditional donors to give to a common effort and cease talk that Trump was never seriously in the race before being surprised by his unexpected resonance. If he can pick up an additional 4 to 5 percent of Republicans, or win a quarter of the Latino vote, or 10 percent of the black vote, he likely will win the election \u2014 big ifs, of course.<\/p>\n For now, openly siding with Trump is still not \u201cdone\u201d in the New York\u2013Washington corridor. But if Trump were to pull even and stay that way for a week, and curb his bombast, he might be able to assemble a team of advisors and possible cabinet members\u00a0whom he could reference in the matter of possible Supreme Court picks, lending further legitimacy to his candidacy.<\/p>\n There is a herd-like mentality in Washington and New York, where the gospel is not professed politics, but unspoken allegiance to a perceived winner. Momentum is the deity. If Trump were to creep out ahead, one should not be surprised about the resulting silence in the Never Trump camp, or about those who would suddenly \u201cbe willing\u201d to join a Team Trump. Epithets like \u201cape\u201d and \u201cHitler\u201d would mysteriously disappear. For those worried about a satanic President Trump, they should at least concede that Republican elites sign letters of dissent against their own nominee, whom the media seek to destroy at every turn; in contrast, there will be no Democratic establishment cries of outrage over Hillary Clinton\u2019s past and future crimes and sins \u2014 and the media will abet, not censure, her excesses.<\/p>\n What is forgotten in the Trump pessimism is that even with less than three months until Election Day, the Republican nominee \u2014 after the worst imaginable self-inflicted wounds, and with a complete absence of serious fundraising, an ad campaign, or a ground game \u2014 still is within striking distance of winning the election. If he were to do so, for the first time in a generation, the Republican party would likely control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and the future of the Supreme Court \u2014 with a public on record in support of radical change and without need to pacify its old establishment.\u00a0Certainly, an attorney general like Rudy Giuliani would be preferable to Loretta Lynch, just as a John Bolton at State would not run the department in the fashion that Clinton herself did during Obama\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n Such is the unrelenting popular furor at political correctness, the political and media aristocracy, the Obama record, and the immorality of Hillary Clinton that a candidate with no political experience, little campaign cash, and serious character problems may overturn a century of conventional wisdom. The choice of winning or losing the election is now mostly Trump\u2019s own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whatever his faults, a Trump victory is preferable for the Republic. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Seasoned Republican political handlers serially attack Donald Trump and his campaign as amateurish, incompetent, and incoherent. The media somehow outdid their propaganda work for Barack Obama and have signed on as unapologetic auxiliaries to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1092,1091,1090,145,46,185],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2s2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11012,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-paradoxes-of-the-mueller-investigation\/","url_meta":{"origin":9426,"position":0},"title":"The Paradoxes of the Mueller Investigation","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review They are numerous, and none of them are good news for President Trump\u2019s opponents. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals for allegedly conspiring to sow confusion in the 2016 presidential election. The chance of extraditing any of the accused from Vladimir\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11026,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-real-russian-disaster\/","url_meta":{"origin":9426,"position":1},"title":"The Real Russian Disaster","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 27, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Donald Trump has said a lot of silly stuff about Russia, from joking about Vladimir Putin helping to find Hillary\u2019s deleted emails, to na\u00efve musings about the extent of Russian interference into Western democratic elections. 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The president campaigns for his party\u2019s nominee in hopes of continuing his legacy.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12190,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-once-and-future-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":9426,"position":3},"title":"The Once and Future Scandal","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Now that the four-and-a-half-month-long Ukraine impeachment bookend to the 22-month Mueller charade is over, it clearly accomplished nothing other than substantially raising the polls of both Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The public was reminded that Representative Gerald Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9366,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-long-trump-summer\/","url_meta":{"origin":9426,"position":4},"title":"A Long Trump Summer","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When have voters faced a choice between two such unpalatable, unprincipled candidates? By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Before summer is over, we may see things now scarcely imagined that will make Brexit seem anticlimactic. Trump\u2019s Attack Mode I think the following is an accurate statement: No major\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "UK"","block_context":{"text":"UK","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/uk\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10353,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-progressive-boomerang\/","url_meta":{"origin":9426,"position":5},"title":"The Progressive Boomerang","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 Not only have progressives failed to take down the president, but they also haven\u2019t offered an alternative agenda. \u00a0 The progressive strategy of investigating President Donald Trump nonstop for Russian collusion or obstruction of justice or witness tampering so far has produced no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comey"","block_context":{"text":"Comey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/comey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9427,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9426\/revisions\/9427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}