笨狼發牢騷
發發牢騷，解解悶，消消愁
正文
美國不僅僅是精英們恨淳樸（Donald Trump），極右的、共和黨的精英們也恨。有名的是克裏斯頭（William Kristol），恨入骨，鬧得凶，不過即使倒淳陣裏也沒多少人理他的，有點兒失魂落魄般，沒啥戲。
前兩天布三（Jeb）在《華郵》發表專欄，闡述共和黨將來如何“從淳樸手裏將黨奪回來”。說“奪回來”，也就是默認黨已經被淳樸搶走了，篡權了。淳樸和基層黨員自然不這麽覺得，倒是布三之類的是黨的敗壞分子，篡黨專製幾十年，把黨變成私家黨，正是淳樸把黨給群眾奪回來了。說布三是黨內失勢的團體發牢騷，也不過分。
敗軍之將布三抨擊淳樸：
布三選擇左派反淳媒體先鋒《華盛頓郵報》來發表，也算是費勁心機了。
老牌保守專欄作家威爾（George Will ）是另外一類，思維上及其保守，其實他不極端。他也為淳樸傷心透了：
Conservative commentator frequently has criticized New York businessman as being unprepared for and undeserving of the presidency
不過講到右派精英們的哀歎，最有代表的莫過於《華爾街日報》社論作者斯蒂文斯（Bret Stephens）。說起《華爾街日報》，大家都知道它是投資權威媒體，但它的社論也影響廣泛，讀者很多，在保守資本主義陣營是砥柱。其實《華爾街日報》得從兩部分來看，新聞部和社論部。新聞部在經濟金融投資方麵的報道分析深刻，廣泛，公正，是大家必備的信息來源。它的社論部室獨立的，專欄作者有發言權，不受報紙領導影響，影響廣泛，但是及其保守，很右。如果你問起一顆子彈，打奧巴馬還是（前伊拉克獨頭）侯賽因，估計它說不出留著打奧巴馬那句話，也差不多了【注1】。斯蒂文斯是副主編，地位高，勢力大。
這是要說斯蒂文斯肯定不是那種支持民主黨，奧巴馬克林頓的人，世界觀差距巨大。不過淳樸是給他一記耳光，痛定思痛，他得到的結論是寧願克林頓，也不能要淳樸。為此他在5月就撰文表達了他自己的想法（兩文見下）。在“Hillary: The Conservative Hope”裏他說不是克林頓好，而是敗給克林頓，共和黨還有救，淳樸當選總統，共和黨一代都完了。
舉例說今天在共和黨黨代會設立的施政綱領裏重新立格拉斯-斯蒂格爾法案（Glass-Steagall Act，亦被稱為《1933年銀行法》）正式通過，像此般反華爾街的思維在傳統共和黨是不可能被采納的，可見淳樸率領下的民粹運動到了什麽程度。
“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，黨真的變天了。
他是說，“共和黨基層這幫混蛋，狗屁不懂。到時克林頓一定痛宰淳樸，被打得沒脾氣了，那時你們這幫傻帽才會知道當時自己蠢到不得了。”
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.
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