Tuesday, February 02, 2016

The Constitution, Donald Trump and the Sarah Palin I Used to Know

By Jen Kuznicki

How is it possible to suggest that after all the exposure that Donald Trump has had, the positions he’s taken, and the smack he’s talked, that he is a constitutional candidate who most represents the constitutional restoration of our government, free market capitalism, and a return to our Judeo-Christian principles?

It seemed awfully strange that Sarah Palin would try to help Donald Trump, given that her most memorable speeches and work always seemed to track toward our founding and constitutional principles. I have been a Palin fan since 2008; in fact, my first ever published piece was in defense of this great Hockey Mom from the Great White North, who thought outside the box and drove the establishment crazy. She was the first true maverick of recent years.

But being an outsider comes with a price, and Sarah Palin has been made fun of by the media and the establishment for things she’s said to the point of cruelty and torture. There is no bottom to the sewers the “lame stream media” will sink in treating her like a laughingstock and scrutinizing her every breath. I understand all of this, so it is not my intention at all to besmirch her or degrade her in any way. However, there is an untruth that is being told, and it must be righted.

Donald Trump hasn’t displayed one modicum of understanding of our constitutional government.

In a Monday interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie, Palin took offense when the line of questioning involved her son, and rightly so, she defended herself. But part of that interview I found appalling, especially because I’ve been listening to her for some time, and never heard her so flippantly say things that are counter to what I believed was her position.

Lauer: Did you hitch yourself to the right candidate? Is Donald Trump going to win Iowa?

Palin: I believe that he will win Iowa, Iowa voters too are ready for restoration of constitutional government again, and Donald Trump is the one who can do this.

Donald Trump hasn’t displayed one modicum of understanding of our constitutional government. There is no instance in which you can show where Donald Trump even understands the separation of powers. He has no history of publicly-known study of the Constitution, and the fact is, the policies that he has so far taken lay bare the fact that he doesn’t know or doesn’t even care that there are constitutional restrictions.

Private property rights are a cornerstone of constitutional government, and eminent domain used for private business is not some small violation, it’s a big one. If government can take your belongings to better another, well, isn’t that a redistribution of wealth?

The reason our phone calls go unanswered when we all call in to stop Congress from going ahead with one 2,000 page bill after another is because of lobbyists who work for big business to corner the market and make it law. We do not have a say in what goes on in our government because of these special interests who show up with tons of money and an army of lobbyists. So Trump’s stance on ethanol isn’t some small thing, it’s a huge disruption of constitutional government.

The way Trump sells his candidacy is by telling people to believe him. But so far, he hasn’t said anything about how he’s going to do all the things he’s said you should believe he’ll do. For instance, he’s going to build a wall.

How? Executive Order? Pen and a phone? When he says he’s going to make a deal with Congress, it raises a slew of red flags. Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting all along? And in what way could any of this rhetoric jibe with, “Trump’s going to restore constitutional government?”

Palin’s NBC interview continued:

Guthrie: Do you think he’s the “Godly” candidate everyone hopes he’ll be?

Palin: Again, I hope voters aren’t trying to find the most “Christiany” “Godliest” candidate out there, you know, because who are we to judge our level of faith, our Christian quotient, if you will, hopefully people are looking for he who has that success and proves he’s going to get the job done for us.

Say what?

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone say in a Republican primary that they hope voters aren’t looking for a godly candidate. That said, I have never, ever accepted the “who are we to judge” argument either, since it is our job to judge who would best serve as president, in this instance.

But even that can be pushed aside when you are trying to hone in on the thrust of Palin’s argument for Trump’s imaginary restoration of constitutional government.

Lauer: Is he a true conservative though? He has admitted in the past he’s donated to democratic candidates, republican candidates, he’s donated to Hillary Clinton, how do you square that?

Palin: You compare him to someone like Ronald Reagan, who too, at one point was a registered democrat, and then he saw the light, and I say, wonderful, I’m so glad that Donald Trump is on our side when it comes to the political spectrum, understanding free markets and capitalism, and restoration of our freedom, is the way for America to be restored.

Trump is not only not even close to being compared to Reagan, he isn’t even in the ballpark. For decades after leaving the Democratic party, Reagan studied the founding, constitutional governance, philosophy, and history, and really understood it. He wrote about it all the time; Nancy said he was always writing, and through that process, he internalized the subject matter and it became part of him. You can’t get very far into a Reagan speech without being hit with a simple way of saying what history taught us. Heck, his campaign slogan in 1980 was, “Let’s make America great again,” which is a great line, and was stolen by Trump.

Palin has every right to endorse and stump for Trump, if that’s the guy she wants, no big deal. But I just don’t believe the Palin I used to know would ever say these blatantly false things to promote someone with a shallow understanding of what will need to be done to restore constitutional government.


Read more at Conservative Review.
 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes Trump is a conservative and I am the POPE.....