The Smell Of Panic

Old Beau the beagle sat with his head tilted up at the sky. His nose was twitching as I turned on my television to catch the latest updates of the Super Tuesday election results. My dog's keen hunting instincts were fully aroused. What he was detecting was not your normal morning hangover after a victory celebration or your normal morning pain after trying to drown the sorrow of a bitter defeat. Oh no, it was something else, something that excites all scent hunters. It was the smell of panic in the morning! A large, lumbering beast was finally reacting to the realization that it was in serious trouble. The pachyderm was staggering, stumbling, then kneeling - not in penance over what its foolishness had wrought - but in a vein attempt to crush the movement it had unwittingly unleashed. Too late! The movement is propelled by the “news” media, which waits for no one in its pursuit of the all mighty dollar. On February 29 of this year mediate.com reported that:

“At a Morgan Stanley investors’ conference in San Francisco today, the chief executive officer of CBS, Les Moonves, found the silver lining of this year’s tumultuous election season as only a businessperson can. The latest chairman of the company said, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” and called Donald Trump‘s presence in the race a “good thing.”

The Trumpster successfully sucked the air out of the news cycles leading up to the March primary elections. He knows how to feed the media beast or the beastly media if you prefer. Sensation draws the marks to the pitchmen hawking the products. It does not matter how outrageous Trump has to be to create the sensation the media craves because his followers are not that bright. He appeals to the media darlings who participated in the bizarre tea party rallies, who disrupted town hall meetings, and who threatened anyone with a conscience and the intellectual capacity to distinguish facts from suppositions and assumptions.  He appeals to the crowd that has bought into the elephant's contention that all government is evil and all politicians are corrupt. He has tapped into the naivete of people who believe that a “businessman” who has amassed a huge fortune at their expense must be someone of superior intellect and virtue, and therefore the great man who will fix the mess in Washington! Of course they have no idea what that mess is, let alone how to fix it. But that is what great men are for!

The problem with the great man theory is that it undermines the importance of ideology and policy; you either have faith in the great man or you don't. It is this aspect, this denigration of Republican orthodoxy and the provocative things Trump does to provide the sensation that now has so much of the GOP in such a panic! Good Gawd! This great man stuff could even cause people to ignore the trickle down theory, not because they are bright enough to realize that trickle down is the longest running fraud in our nations history, but because some other great man (perhaps a Bernie Sanders type) might be able convince them that he has a better solution! Furthermore, Trump is all about Trump. He does not care about the party or whether he actually has any sort of plan or program to govern. There is no predicting what kind of damage he will cause, but he has certainly given us reasons to fear the worst. His braggadocio and his WWE kick 'em in the crutch rhetoric would be a diplomatic and governmental nightmare.

Traditional Republicans are forecasting a general election disaster if Trump wins the nomination, and there is no good way to stop him. How upset are traditional Republicans over the prospect of Donald Trump becoming their Presidential Candidate? Well, Senator “Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Tuesday vowed to give up on the GOP if Donald Trump wins the party’s presidential nomination. Furthermore, Chris Christie is being roundly criticized for endorsing Trump. As NPR reported:

“Meg Whitman, a former California gubernatorial candidate and the national finance co-chair for his failed presidential campaign, called Christie's endorsement "an astonishing display of political opportunism."

Joining the chorus were former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman ("I am ashamed that Christie would endorse anyone who has employed the kind of hate mongering and racism that Trump has"), Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger who has been a stalwart Christie booster ("Chris Christie, you're nothing to me now") and one of his top fundraisers, Bobbie Kilberg ("I don't get it").”

If you are inclined to look at the bright side, you will hope that Trump, the GOP Presidential nominee, will lead the Republican Party into a political disaster that is worse than the Goldwater debacle of 1964, that the Democrats will retake the Senate, and that the mid-terms will be even worse for the Republicans. Better yet, you will work like hell to accomplish those results. It will take a “reform or die” scenario to make the Party of the Greedy Old Plutocrats offer anything other than fear and loathing! Remember it took five consecutive presidential election losses and President Eisenhower to make the Republicans accept what the Great Depression should have taught them. And they have been ignoring the lessons of the Great Depression ever since the Reagan Administration!