Despite receiving virtual universal condemnation from politicians on both sides of the political spectrum for proposing the temporary ban – including the former vice president Cheney and the influential writer Kristol – the incident appears to be only the latest of Trump’s controversial statements to actually benefit his standing among Republican voters.
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At first glance, last Monday’s blast out of the blue does seem to have been thinly sourced. Obviously, they are disgusted that Trump is dominating the discussion and the news coverage. What are you going to do about Social Security?
“His numbers apparently have gone up since his call to ban Muslims from entering the USA despite universal condemnation from Republicans – even from hawks like Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol”.
While the Republican Party has been criticized for employing “dog whistle” politics since the days of Lee Atwater, Trump has thrown out the whistle and begun waving red meat to the dangerously ethnocentric hordes that lurk in the Republican base. In recent weeks, the GOP front-runner has used the phrase as a preamble to almost every statement he has made about Muslims and Syrian refugees, and even went so far as to blame last week’s terrorist attack on political correctness. Even North Korea allows people who practice other religions into the country.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Trump’s rhetoric risked inflaming tensions in the Middle East, playing into the recruiting strategy of Islamic State militants, who have framed their battle as a war between Islam and the West. He dictates the press releases. And we’ll defend his right to say it. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has overseen a diligent organisation. While he is not leading the race like Trump, he is still in the top tier of candidates.
Rubio then said he would have finished by saying the US can defeat IS with a combination of more air strikes, a force on the ground that includes special operations forces from the USA and elsewhere and more aggressive communications to counter the militant group’s propaganda.
Britain got a taste of that when he warmed to his provocative theme with a succession of slurs about Muslims in the United Kingdom, which were rooted so superficially in reality that he found himself relentlessly mocked in a series of absurdist #TrumpFacts.
Trump doesn’t care. He’s grown his own complaining faction.
At best, it can be said that Trump is evasive about his policy advisers. “I had a meeting with Netanyahu”.
The same pattern is shown on domestic policy.
Outside a private meeting Thursday night between Trump and a regional police union that had endorsed him, there was strong support for the ban among about two dozen Trump supporters gathered with campaign signs.
Donald Trump isn’t that extremist, unserious or bigoted. But the war over political correctness was never an attempt to stifle debate -only a fence to keep out the kinds of discriminatory animism that has hoisted Trump to the front of our political atmosphere. “But among Republicans, only 16 percent find him insulting; 37 percent believe he’s raising important issues despite his language; and 40 percent say he’s telling it like it is”. Either way, his absence, by all accounts, is now being felt.
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Asked about his immigration platform, he scoffed at Trump’s proposal to deport the approximately 11 million people living in the U.S. without permission. Yet somehow Trump is the one who gets singled out for his fiscal recklessness.
