Donald Trump and the GOP Part 3: What Is Trumpism? Is It Bad for the GOP and America?

The biggest reason to oppose Trump is that he is not a conservative nor a real Republican, even though in the eyes of his supporters the latter is a benefit. It is time to take a serious look at what Trumpism really is and why it is not just a threat to Republicans but America itself. Recently I had a chance to get into a twitter discussion with an individual who actually defended fascism when he tweeted out brilliant thoughts like, “And fascism is bad why exactly?... I would like to hear your input on why fascism is bad. I feel the word Nazi might be involved.. and more often than not fascism needs to be supported by a nationalistic populus... But nationalist doesn't = racist… capitalism allows the rich to get grossly richer and the poor to pay for the poor…all profits from these corps are put into social programmes and welfare. Unlike the tax based system we have now…corporations in a fascist state are ALLOWED to exist only for the sole purpose of benefiting the public.”

Let these words sink in as you are now seeing what both the Democratic Party and Trumpism is evolving into, a Nationalist socialist or a National populist movement that is independent of constitutional rule and limited government. Trump has been consistent on one view point, trade policy and protectionism. He is not just building a wall to keep out illegal immigrants, but he is building a trade wall to keep out foreign goods. His attack on Wall Street and companies who move factories overseas are no different than what you will hear from Bernie Sanders.

Look at Trump's own views in just the past two decades. He has called for a tax on the wealthy in the past; been pro-choice in a radical sense, including late term abortions before declaring himself pro-life; and supported gun restriction before coming an advocate of gun rights, promising to appoint constitutional judges while praising his sister, who is a radical pro-abortionist. His views on immigration, his signature issue, has gone from open border and amnesty to close the border and kick them out back to maybe a back door approach to amnesty and more visas for high tech workers. There is no consistent program except that American is run by a bunch of losers and need to win again led by a real winner, Donald Trump. Trump economic plan is an autarky economic plan that build walls to force Americans produce goods at home. The nation most likes Trump’s economic theory in its autarky approach, which at its most extreme is North Korea. There are enough studies and surveys to show the countries with the freest economy including controlling government spending and taxes, sensible regulations, and liberal trade are the most prosperous and politically free countries, and trade walls do not aid in additional prosperity.

National Review's Kevin Williamson noted about Bernie Sanders:

Bernie bellows that he remembers a time when you could walk into a department store and “buy things made in the U.S.A.” …Like most of these advocates of “economic patriotism” (Barack Obama’s once-favored phrase) Bernie worries a great deal about trade with brown people — Asians, Latin Americans — but has never, so far as public records show, made so much as a peep about our very large trade deficit with Sweden, which as a share of bilateral trade volume is not much different from our trade deficit with China, or about the size of our trade deficit with Canada, our largest trading partner. Sanders doesn’t rail about the Canadians and Germans stealing our jobs — his ire is reserved almost exclusively for the Chinese and the Latin Americans, I speak with Bernie volunteer McKinley Springer, an earnest young man whose father worked for the UAW local hosting the rally. He’s very interested in policies that interpose the government between employers and employees — for example, mandatory paid maternity and paternity leave. He lived for a time in Germany, first studying abroad and then working for Bosch, an automotive-parts company. He is a great admirer of the German welfare state, saying: “I ask myself: Why do they have these nice things, and we can’t?” I ask him to answer his own question, and his answer is at once familiar and frightening: “Germany is very homogeneous. They have lots of white people. We’re very diverse. We have the melting pot, and that’s a big struggle.” Donald Trump has some thoughts on that…He knows who Them is: The Koch brothers, who make repeated appearances in every speech; scheming swarthy foreigners who are stealing our jobs; bankers, the traditional bogeymen of conspiracy theorists ranging from Father Coughlin and Henry Ford to Louis Farrakhan.

Sanders emphasis on finding bogeymen like the Koch Brothers and foreigners who are taking our jobs is no different than what Trump has done. How many times has Trump railed against Wall Street, big donors and even the Koch Brothers? Every debate, he makes it a point to rail against those donors in the audience and his position on free speech is no different than Sanders, Clinton, or Obama. He rails against Citizen United and Super PACs, but anyone who actually read Citizen United will know that this case was not about campaign finance laws but the ability of a group to play a film demonstrating why Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be President, the conservative version of Michael Moore's “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Trump's own call to change libel laws to make it easier to sue media is another attempt to stifle media criticism, and Trump would love nothing more than to change Citizen United to reduce the ability to criticize a future Trump administration just as Clinton and Sanders want the government to restrict the ability of critics to attack their version of Democratic socialism, or as Kevin Williamson would say, National socialism. As Breitbart's national reporter, Matthew Boyle, observed about the meaning of Jeff Sessions endorsement of Trump, “Sessions is known for his tough views on immigration and trade and has repeatedly aimed to push the Republican Party in a more populist, nationalist direction.”

Breitbart author, Virgil, also wrote:

Yes, the days when Republicans were knee-jerkingly subservient to the wishes of Corporate America seem over...Old Virgil thinks back more than a hundred years, to 1896, when William Jennings Bryan, then a 30-something ex-Congressman, electrified the Democratic national convention in Chicago with his stem-winding oration. Indeed, in many ways, Bryan had a tough Trump-like message, “It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came…We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

Virgil included in his article:

What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggregated wealth…Today, of course, Big Government is at least as great a threat to American well-being as Big Business. Yet both are, in fact, threats—and so both need to be checked...In Chicago more than a century ago, Bryan closed with the ringing words that put him in the history books: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a Cross of Gold.

Virgil defends Trumpism not from the right but from the left! He rants against foreign competitors and big business in languages that would warm the heart of any Sanders fan, but it begs the question why would Republicans even nominate a man who is not dedicated to a principle of limited government? The only difference between Sanders, Clinton, and Trump is that Trump is a hardcore nationalist who appreciates America and what it can provide. Trump, whose economic views will do far more damage to the middle class that he supposedly loves, is leading America into the formation of two leftist parties: one based on a national socialist led by the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders while being administered by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment and the other, a national populism led by Trump and Sessions. Both movements add class and racial identity and break with what was the conservative and American ideals of a color blind society based on judging an individual on the character of his or her content.

Trump is hijacking the Republican Party, and in the process, doing what the left has been wanting to do: isolate the conservative and libertarian movement to the sidelines. Many Republicans and conservatives have to ask themselves, is it worse to elect Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? As I mentioned in the first part, Trump's most likely path to victory will be as a result of an economic collapse and we will be voting for a candidate who has a shallow knowledge of issues and whose own ideas will expand government's reach into our lives. The difference is that Trump is not a man of strongly held beliefs, and other than with Trump running government, great things will happen and it will be huge! So the hope for conservatives is that Trump will do some things right since they know Hillary won’t, but that for many conservatives, is a slim reed to allow Trump to be the nominee. Trump is not a conservative, a point I made previously but the question is do we need two leftist parties? Autarky economic policies proposed by Trump will not enhance the lives of those who support him. The middle class has been hard hit but under Trump, they will not see a better tomorrow. We will be voting for the lesser of two evils: Clinton/Sanders or Trump.