Well, Super Tuesday is over, and as Republicans survey the rubble left in its wake, we need to get an answer from our front runner to this question: “Mr. Trump, what will you build?” The answer to that question will not only decide the fate of our party, but also our country.
As I described in my last post, I came of age as Reagan set about designing and building a New Republican Party. His blueprint called for creating a new conservative party that restored the edifice of Madisonian government built on the foundation of the individual, the family, faith, private enterprise, and local and state responsibility, and to relight the beacon of America to guide the world away from the darkness of communism and toward a model of freedom. He called his vision “A Shining City on a Hill,” and he persuaded the GOP and the country to help him build it.
But almost as soon as he left office, all the old factions that he had tried to blend into this “new” party began to fight against each other to alter the blueprint to fit their own agendas. Soon, as we fought, the liberals and progressives reasserted themselves to continue their decades-long remodeling of our culture and politics away from the Madisonian model and towards a hyper-secular, European, democratic-socialist model of national, top-down governance. While we splintered, they remodeled; and, eventually, we and our elected leadership were reduced to simply forming picket lines of protest around the progressive worksite.
By 2009, many people had enough and wanted to break through the picket lines and tear down what the progressives were changing. By last summer, the anger of those wanting to stop the progressive work had reached a fever pitch, but our party leaders appeared incapable of doing anything but protest and picket.
Enter the great deal-maker and developer, Donald Trump. I, for one, do not believe that he was the best candidate to lead, restore, or unite our party going into the 2016 election; but, frankly that was never his intent. Instead, it is now clear that he planned to demolish both the Republican Party and the Washington “establishment” and start the construction work all over again. To those whose frustrations had boiled-over, Trump’s demolition of the remnants of the New Republican Party of Reagan was welcome, because they viewed it as the first step toward demolishing all that was wrong with what had been built over the last generation since Reagan went home to California. But the problem is, none of us really know what Mr. Trump plans to build after the rubble is cleared (other than a wall paid for by Mexico), and many of us fear that he really has no plan for rebuilding America after the demolition is finished.
But a good real-estate developer—and Trump has been a very successful developer—does not start demolition work without a plan for what he will build in its place; nor does he start a historical restoration of a landmark without a researched plan for the restoration work. So, it is time for The Donald to show us his blueprint to “Make America Great Again.”
This plan must not be just for one building, but must encompass rebuilding the entire “Shining City” that has been left in ruins by the work of modern progressives (and the neglect of post-Reagan conservatives). It must include clearing rubble and building new structures for a new century, as well as carefully designing restorations of great landmarks of our traditions and principles. It also must include a plan for relighting the beacon of freedom and stability to protect the world against the new threats we face in this century. If his design incorporates a strong foundation and infrastructure of the individual, family, faith, private enterprise, and local and state responsibility upon which a modern, Madisonian city will be built, I believe he eventually can persuade our party and our country to follow him to “Make America Great Again.”
But if his plan is just to demolish the ruins of the “Shining City” without more, then we conservatives must stop this project now before we lose the last remnants of what we worked so hard to build over two generations.
Mr. Trump, if you truly want to “Make America Great Again,” it is time to show us your plan.
I’m not holding my breath that you will an answer to that good question.
I voted for Trump. Trump is self funding his campaign. That’s what scares all the insiders of the Republican Party. The Republican party elite knows they’re not going to be able to control him.. The Republican Party elite and all the special interest groups associated with them is what’s wrong with the Republican Party. Trump is transforming the party. It will be interesting to see how they will try to take Trump down. They need to be careful because they were about to lose people like me who have voted Republican all my life. Power to the people! I said it before and I’ll say it again the Republican Party is changing and you better get on the Trump Train or you will be left behind!
Trump isn’t self-funding.
Forgot the link:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/10/donald-trump/donald-trump-self-funding-his-campaign-sort/
IT’S ALIVE, IT’S ALIVE!
Donald Trump is a creation of the Repubs much like Frankenstein was a creation of Victor in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The repeal of the fairness doctrine in 1987…
wiki
The main agenda for the doctrine was to ensure that viewers were exposed to a diversity of viewpoints. In 1969 the United States Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s general right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine where channels were limited. But the courts did not rule that the FCC was obliged to do so.[4] The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the Doctrine. However, the proliferation of cable television, multiple channels within cable, public-access channels, and the Internet have eroded this argument, since there are plenty of places for ordinary individuals to make public comments on controversial issues at low or no cost at all.
uh oh, Scalia got involved…
wiki
In one landmark case, the FCC argued that teletext was a new technology that created soaring demand for a limited resource, and thus could be exempt from the Fairness Doctrine. The Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC) and Media Access Project (MAP) argued that teletext transmissions should be regulated like any other airwave technology, hence the Fairness Doctrine was applicable (and must be enforced by the FCC). In 1986, Judges Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the Fairness Doctrine did apply to teletext but that the FCC was not required to apply it.[12] In a 1987 case, Meredith Corp. v. FCC, two other judges on the same court declared that Congress did not mandate the doctrine and the FCC did not have to continue to enforce it.[13]
Shining city on a hill? Think again…
wiki
In 1985, under FCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler, a communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the FCC released a report stating that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
In August 1987, under FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick, the FCC abolished the doctrine by a 4-0 vote, in the Syracuse Peace Council decision, which was upheld by a panel of the Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit in February 1989, though the Court stated in their decision that they made “that determination without reaching the constitutional issue.”[16] The FCC suggested in Syracuse Peace Council that because of the many media voices in the marketplace, the doctrine be deemed unconstitutional, stating that:
“ The intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters … [and] actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and the degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists. ”
At the 4-0 vote, Chairman Patrick said,
“ We seek to extend to the electronic press the same First Amendment guarantees that the print media have enjoyed since our country’s inception.[17] ”
The FCC vote was opposed by members of Congress who said the FCC had tried to “flout the will of Congress” and the decision was “wrongheaded, misguided and illogical.”.[18] The decision drew political fire and tangling, where cooperation with Congress was at issue.[19] In June 1987, Congress attempted to preempt the FCC decision and codify the Fairness Doctrine,[20] but the legislation was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan. Another attempt to revive the doctrine in 1991 was stopped when President George H.W. Bush threatened another veto.[21]
Fowler said in February 2009 that his work toward revoking the Fairness Doctrine under the Reagan Administration had been a matter of principle (his belief that the Doctrine impinged upon the First Amendment), not partisanship. Fowler described the White House staff raising concerns, at a time before the prominence of conservative talk radio and during the preeminence of the Big Three television networks and PBS in political discourse, that repealing the policy would be politically unwise. He described the staff’s position as saying to Reagan:
“ The only thing that really protects you from the savageness of the three networks—every day they would savage Ronald Reagan—is the Fairness Doctrine, and Fowler is proposing to repeal it![22] ”
Instead, Reagan supported the effort and later vetoed the Democratic-controlled Congress’s effort to make the doctrine law.
And then along comes Mary…
wiki
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by the English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley that tells the story of a young science student Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
During the rainy summer of 1816, the “Year Without a Summer”, the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.[9] Mary Shelley, aged 18, and her lover (and later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor holiday activities they had planned, so the group retired indoors until dawn.
Sitting around a log fire at Byron’s villa, the company amused themselves by reading German ghost stories translated into French from the book Fantasmagoriana,[10] then Byron proposed that they “each write a ghost story”.[11] Unable to think of a story, young Mary became anxious: “Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.”[12] During one evening in the middle of summer, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated”, Mary noted, “galvanism had given token of such things”.[13] It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her “waking dream”.[14]Shelley incorporated a number of different sources into her work, one of which was the Promethean myth from Ovid. The influence of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, are also clearly evident within the novel. Mary is likely to have acquired some ideas for Frankenstein’s character from Humphry Davy’s book Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he had written that “science has … bestowed upon man powers which may be called creative; which have enabled him to change and modify the beings around him …”. References to the French Revolution run through the novel; a possible source may lie in François-Félix Nogaret’s Le Miroir des événemens actuels, ou la Belle au plus offrant (1790): a political parable about scientific progress featuring an inventor named Frankénsteïn who creates a life-sized automaton.[45]
my thoughts…
The only radio stations available In many rural parts of the United States, are right wing leaning anti Obama smear machines. Indeed, Rush, Sean, Laura, Mark and other hate spewers are the only daily news/information that many “country folk” have access to. They are purveyors of only one viewpoint. Is it any wonder that Congress is controlled by Republicans? Donald Trump is a Frankenstein creation of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by the Repubs…
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.[15]
LOL-ROTFL!!!!!!! “The only radio stations available In many rural parts of the United States, are right wing leaning anti Obama smear machines.” In liberal speak that means anybody that doesn’t carry the Democrat party line. . . . . .
I’m sure you’d be much happier with the government controlling everything we see and hear, thankfully more rational heads prevailed.
As for Trump being the creation of the Republican party – perhaps, but that means that Hillary Clinton is the creation of the Democrats.
ROTFL? Roll On The Floor Laughing? I would pay $24.56 to watch a video of you rolling on the floor, Fat. Seriously. And are you sure you are sure that I’d be happier with the government controlling everything we see and hear? That’s lugubrious Fat, kinda like your reply to my comment to Ed’s post.
$24.56?? You’re not only a liberal, you’re a cheapskate! You want video of me? Fine, but it isn’t cheap. Multiply by a factor of 1000 and we can talk – otherwise you’ll just have to fantasize.
Donald Trump is pussy and a coward. He just backed away from opposition at a rally in Chicago. He tucked tail and ran when confronted by protesters.
Ted Cruz’s campaign has always been about courageous conservatism, and Trump and his supporters do not measure up.
You cannot call yourself a Texan if you support Trump.