笨狼发牢骚
发发牢骚，解解闷，消消愁
正文
美国不仅仅是精英们恨淳朴（Donald Trump），极右的、共和党的精英们也恨。有名的是克里斯头（William Kristol），恨入骨，闹得凶，不过即使倒淳阵里也没多少人理他的，有点儿失魂落魄般，没啥戏。
前两天布三（Jeb）在《华邮》发表专栏，阐述共和党将来如何“从淳朴手里将党夺回来”。说“夺回来”，也就是默认党已经被淳朴抢走了，篡权了。淳朴和基层党员自然不这么觉得，倒是布三之类的是党的败坏分子，篡党专制几十年，把党变成私家党，正是淳朴把党给群众夺回来了。说布三是党内失势的团体发牢骚，也不过分。
败军之将布三抨击淳朴：
布三选择左派反淳媒体先锋《华盛顿邮报》来发表，也算是费劲心机了。
老牌保守专栏作家威尔（George Will ）是另外一类，思维上及其保守，其实他不极端。他也为淳朴伤心透了：
Conservative commentator frequently has criticized New York businessman as being unprepared for and undeserving of the presidency
不过讲到右派精英们的哀叹，最有代表的莫过于《华尔街日报》社论作者斯蒂文斯（Bret Stephens）。说起《华尔街日报》，大家都知道它是投资权威媒体，但它的社论也影响广泛，读者很多，在保守资本主义阵营是砥柱。其实《华尔街日报》得从两部分来看，新闻部和社论部。新闻部在经济金融投资方面的报道分析深刻，广泛，公正，是大家必备的信息来源。它的社论部室独立的，专栏作者有发言权，不受报纸领导影响，影响广泛，但是及其保守，很右。如果你问起一颗子弹，打奥巴马还是（前伊拉克独头）侯赛因，估计它说不出留着打奥巴马那句话，也差不多了【注1】。斯蒂文斯是副主编，地位高，势力大。
这是要说斯蒂文斯肯定不是那种支持民主党，奥巴马克林顿的人，世界观差距巨大。不过淳朴是给他一记耳光，痛定思痛，他得到的结论是宁愿克林顿，也不能要淳朴。为此他在5月就撰文表达了他自己的想法（两文见下）。在“Hillary: The Conservative Hope”里他说不是克林顿好，而是败给克林顿，共和党还有救，淳朴当选总统，共和党一代都完了。
举例说今天在共和党党代会设立的施政纲领里重新立格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法案（Glass-Steagall Act，亦被称為《1933年银行法》）正式通过，像此般反华尔街的思维在传统共和党是不可能被采纳的，可见淳朴率领下的民粹运动到了什么程度。
“The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington”
唉，党真的变天了。
他是说，“共和党基层这帮混蛋，狗屁不懂。到时克林顿一定痛宰淳朴，被打得没脾气了，那时你们这帮傻帽才会知道当时自己蠢到不得了。”
2016.05.09
The right can survive liberal presidents. Trump will kill its best ideas for a generation
The best hope for what’s left of a serious conservative movement in America is the election in November of a Democratic president, held in check by a Republican Congress. Conservatives can survive liberal administrations, especially those whose predictable failures lead to healthy restorations—think Carter, then Reagan. What isn’t survivable is a Republican president who is part Know Nothing, part Smoot-Hawley and part John Birch. The stain of a Trump administration would cripple the conservative cause for a generation.
This is the reality that wavering Republicans need to understand before casting their lot with a presumptive nominee they abhor only slightly less than his likely opponent. If the next presidency is going to be a disaster, why should the GOP want to own it?
In the 1990s, when another Clinton was president, conservatives became fond of the phrase “character counts.” This was a way of scoring points against Bill Clinton for his sexual predations and rhetorical misdirections, as well as a statement that Americans expected honor and dignity in the Oval Office. I’ll never forget the family friend, circa 1998, who wondered how she was supposed to explain the meaning of a euphemism for oral sex to her then 10-year-old daughter.
Conservatives still play the character card against Hillary Clinton, citing her disdain for other people’s rules, her Marie Antoinette airs and her potential law breaking. It’s a fair card to play, if only the presumptive Republican nominee weren’t himself a serial fabulist, an incorrigible self-mythologizer, a brash vulgarian, and, when it comes to his tax returns, a determined obfuscator. Endorsing Mr. Trump means permanently laying to rest any claim conservatives might ever again make on the character issue.
Conservatives are also supposed to believe that it’s folly to put hope before experience; that leopards never change their spots. So what’s with the magical thinking that, nomination in hand, Mr. Trump will suddenly pivot to magnanimity and statesmanship? Where’s the evidence that, as president, Mr. Trump will endorse conservative ideas on tax, trade, regulation, welfare, social, judicial or foreign policy, much less personal comportment?
On Monday, former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who savaged Mr. Trump during the campaign, published an op-ed in these pages on why he plans to cast his vote for the real-estate developer as “the second-worst thing we could do this November.” Too much is at stake, Mr. Jindal said, on everything from curbing the regulatory excesses of the Obama administration to appointing a conservative judge to the Supreme Court, to risk another Democratic administration.
Mr. Jindal holds out the hope that Mr. Trump, who admires the Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision on eminent domain (the one in which Susette Kelo’s little pink house was seized by the city of New London for the intended benefit of private developers), might yet appoint strict constructionists to the bench. Mr. Jindal also seems to think that a man whose preferred style of argument is the threatened lawsuit and the Twittertantrum, can be trusted with the vast investigative apparatus of the federal government.
The deeper mistake that Mr. Jindal and other lukewarm Trump supporters make is to assume that policy counts for more than ideas—that is, that the policy disasters he anticipates from a Clinton administration will be indelible, while Trumpism poses no real threat to the conservative ideas he has spent a political career championing. This belief stems from a failure to take Trumpism seriously, or to realize just how fragile modern conservatism is as a vital political movement.
But Trumpism isn’t just a triumph of marketing or the excrescence of a personality cult. It is a regression to the conservatism of blood and soil, of ethnic polarization and bullying nationalism. Modern conservatives sought to bury this rubbish with a politics that strikes a balance between respect for tradition and faith in the dynamic and culture-shifting possibilities of open markets. When that balance collapses—under a Republican president, no less—it may never again be restored, at least in our lifetimes.
For liberals, all this may seem like so much manna from heaven. Mr. Trump’s nomination not only gives his Democratic opponent the best possible shot at winning the election (with big down-ballot gains, too), but of permanently discrediting the conservative movement as a serious ideological challenger. They should be careful what they wish for. Mr. Trump could yet win, or one of his epigones might in four or eight years. This will lead to its own left-wing counter-reactions, putting America on the road to Weimar.
For conservatives, a Democratic victory in November means the loss of another election, with all the policy reversals that entails. That may be dispiriting, but elections will come again. A Trump presidency means losing the Republican Party. Conservatives need to accept that most conservative of wisdoms—sometimes, losing is winning, especially when it offers an education in the importance of political hygiene
2016.05.02
‘America First’ is the inevitable outcome of the Republican descent into populism.
A joke in Milan Kundera’s novel “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” goes like this: “In Wenceslaus Square, in Prague, a guy is throwing up. Another guy comes up to him, pulls a long face, shakes his head and says: ‘I know just what you mean.’ ”
The joke is supposed to be about life in Czechoslovakia under communism, circa 1977. It conveys exactly what I feel about the moral and mental state of the Republican Party, circa 2016.
Last week, Donald Trump delivered his big foreign-policy speech, built around the theme of “America First.” The term seems to have been planted in his brain by New York Times reporter David Sanger, who asked the Republican front-runner in late March whether it was fair to sum up his foreign policy as “something of an ‘America First’ kind of approach.”
Trump: “Correct, okay? That’s fine.”
Sanger: “Okay? Am I describing this correctly here?”
Trump: “I’ll tell you—you’re getting close. . . . I’m not an isolationist, but I am ‘America First.’ So I like the expression. I’m ‘America First.’ ”
Did Mr. Trump know anything about the history of the America First Committee before he seized on the phrase? Did anyone in his inner circle advise him that it might be unwise to associate himself with a movement whose principal aim was to prevent the United States from helping Winston Churchill fight the Nazis during the Battle of the Atlantic? Once he learned of it—assuming he did—was he at least privately embarrassed? Or was he that much more pleased with himself?
With Mr. Trump it’s hard to say: He has a way of blurring the line between ignorance and provocation, using one as an alibi when he’s accused of the other. Is he Rodney Dangerfield, the lovable American everyman pleading for a bit of respect? Or is he Lenny Bruce, poking his middle finger in the eye of respectable opinion?
Whichever way, the conclusion isn’t flattering. Either Mr. Trump stumbled upon his worldview through a dense fog of historical ignorance. Or he is seriously attempting to resurrect the most disastrous and discredited strain of American foreign policy for a new generation of American ignoramuses.
And now he’s about to become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, assuming a win in Tuesday’s Indiana primary.
It’s true that Mr. Trump benefits from having as his main opponent Ted Cruz, the man recently described by former House Speaker John Boehner as “Lucifer in the flesh.” That’s about right, assuming Lucifer is the fellow who sows discord where harmony once reigned.
In 2014, the “Republican establishment,” as it is now derisively known, succeeded in securing its largest ever majority in the House since 1928. It won nine seats in the Senate and regained the majority for the first time in eight years. The GOP also took control of 31 governorships, with historic gains in state legislatures.
These were significant political achievements, which only awaited a reasonably serious presidential candidate to lead to a sweeping Republican restoration.
Instead, Mr. Cruz used the moment to attempt a party coup by treating every tactical or parliamentary difference of opinion as a test of ideological purity. The party turned on its own leaders, like the much-vilified Mr. Boehner. Then it turned on its (classically) liberal ideas, like free trade and sensible immigration policy.
And now it’s America First time again—the inevitable outcome of the GOP’s descent into populism.
Mr. Cruz, who used to be fond of calling Mr. Trump “my friend Donald” when it seemed opportune, now presents himself as the only man standing between his nemesis and the nomination. But Mr. Cruz’s trashing of his fellow Republicans hastened the arrival of the ultimate party-crasher. Arsonists who set fire to their neighborhood run the risk of burning their own house down.
And then there is the GOP rank-and-file. It is supposed to be sinful for conservative columnists to blame Republican voters for making disastrous choices, at least without the obligatory nods to their patriotism and pain.
But if Democrats don’t get a moral pass for bringing Bernie Sanders this far in the race, Republicans shouldn’t get one for bringing Mr. Trump to the cusp of the nomination. The point of democracy isn’t freedom. It’s political accountability. That goes for elected officials—and for the ones who elect them.
The “white working classes” that are said to form the core of Mr. Trump’s support deserve better than to be patronized with references to their “anger.” They deserve to hear an argument about the disaster they are about to impose on their party, their country and their own economic interests.
A Trump nomination will not destroy the GOP, any more than George McGovern’s nomination destroyed the Democrats. But it all but guarantees another Clinton presidency. How should that make you feel? Note the Kundera punchline atop this column.
评论
目前还没有任何评论
登录后才可评论.
