Trump: A Mismatch for the GOP Conservatives are more focused than ever on substance and consistency. By Kimberley A. Strassel
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-a-mismatch-for-the-gop-1438903585
Of the 10 Republicans in Thursday’s debate, none was harder to explain than Donald Trump. It’s not that he isn’t a serious candidate. It’s that he was on the wrong stage, with the wrong people, at the wrong time.
Republicans have been working for the past decade to reconstruct a movement that collapsed in the mid-2000s as a result of laziness and loss of principle. It has been a wrenching process, full of tea-party uprisings and bitter primaries, uninspired presidential candidacies and blown elections, policy setbacks and government shutdowns. Still, the number of triumphs has been growing. The Republicans’ hold over governorships and takeover of the Senate, their new faces and new ideas, and their brimming presidential field all are signs that the Republican electorate has grown more thoughtful about the political process—and more demanding of smart, principled conservatives.
And then along comes The Donald. In some ways, you can see the appeal. Mr. Trump is good at selling things, and even better at selling himself. He knows what inspires voters, thus his rallying theme, “Make America Great Again.” He knows what frustrates them, thus his focus on immigration, which has become a broad byword for everything voters hate about Washington.
What Mr. Trump lacks is pretty much everything else that conservatives have come to insist on in their candidates—everything that created today’s Scott Walkers and Marco Rubios and Ted Cruzes. Mr. Trump is the anti-new-GOP.
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He’s not conservative. Remember all those recent primaries in which Republican voters fired sitting legislators for being too wimpy on taxes or health care or spending? Mr. Trump makes the losers look good. He’s on record in favor of single-payer health care, and on Thursday night praised it again in other countries. He’s said he likes gun control; higher taxes and eminent domain. He has said he’s pro-choice, against a flat tax, and opposed to free trade. He has personally given money to help elect pretty much every politician Republicans view as a threat to the Western world: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer. Imagine the pitchforks in New Hampshire if Chris Christie had this track record.
He’s not principled. Mr. Trump has disavowed most of his liberal positions. But grass-roots conservatives have increasingly lost tolerance for Republicans who switch positions on a whim, or try to have it two ways. Already in this early phase of the presidential race, voters have rapped Mr. Walker for changing views on immigration; Jeb Bush for waffling on Iraq; and Mr. Rubio for altering his position on military spending.
Mr. Trump explained his own entirely new political persona this week and on Thursday by rolling out the classic “I’ve evolved” line, and referencing Ronald Reagan. True, many great conservatives started on the left. Then again, most took their time moving rightward. Mr. Trump has evolved at the speed of lightning. As recently as 2012 he backed the sort of comprehensive immigration reform he now derides and praised Hillary Clinton as “a terrific woman.” Only a few years before that, he talked up the 2008 auto bailouts and hoped an “impressive” Nancy Pelosi would “impeach” George W. Bush.
He’s also not policy knowledgeable. Evolution involves an end point; it’s an intellectual struggle that concludes with considered policy positions. What are Mr. Trump’s? The conservative electorate has put growing value on fresh, substantive ideas and plans for getting them enacted. They appreciated Mr. Walker’s collective-bargaining overhaul, John Kasich’s tax reform, and Mr. Christie’s pension fixes.
Mr. Trump remains a cipher. He has been queried endlessly on how, precisely, he’d make America great again—what exactly is his tax plan, or his education reform, or his health-care fix? Yet he has smoothly dodged specifics, as he did during the debate on everything from health care to the economy. Contrast that with Mr. Rubio’s detailed tax plan, Bobby Jindal’s energy proposals, or Mr. Christie’s entitlement reforms.
Then there is the oddity that so many are buying Mr. Trump’s I’m-a-self-made-man-who-will-change-Washington shtick, when conservatives have come to care so much about genuineness. Mr. Trump has done well in business, and that’s praiseworthy.
Yet he inherited a fortune from his tycoon father, and he built his empire by practicing the sort of corporate elbow-rubbing and lobbying and reliance on government favors that conservatives revile as crony capitalism. On Thursday night, Mr. Trump outright bragged his money put politicians at his beck and call. He’s no Ben Carson, who broke free from inner-city Detroit to become a neurosurgeon. Mr. Trump is an insider, a deal-maker; he was born into it.
None of this is to say that Mr. Trump didn’t have a right to be on stage debating. Just not this particular stage, at this time, in this party. He isn’t the culmination of the new conservative movement; he’s its wrecking ball.
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