More On The Nature Of Conservatism And Herr Trumpf

This is really a continuation of the 6AM post on the easily verifiable catastrophe of Republican Party governance. Even the over-hyped Texas economy-- all statewide officers are Republicans and the Texas state Senate has 20 Republicans and 11 Democrats and the state House has 98 Republicans and 52 Democrats-- has started crumbling, the victims of GOP ideological nonsense in action. As the price of oil tanked, Texas' hollowed out economy started collapsing as though the state was a whiter version of Nigeria and run by the same kind of crackpots.

In his NY Times column Friday, in-house Republican David Brooks celebrated Romney's fusillade against Herr Trumpf. "[N]ow," he wrote, "finally-- at long last-- major Republicans are raising their heads and highlighting Trump’s actual vulnerability: his inability to think for an extended time about anybody but himself." True enough, but isn't that the very nature of political conservatism? Isn't that the whole ugly crux of it? Herr Trumpf admits his role model is P.T. Barnum; the GOP hasn't evolved enough to face that fact about itself.

He seduces people with his confidence and his promises. People invest time, love and money in him. But in the end he cares only about himself. He betrays those who trust him and leaves them high and dry.

Actual honest conservatives have a candidate they should be backing: Hillary Clinton. A former Republican who still admits that "I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with... I'm very proud that I was a Goldwater Girl." And that pride is reflected in her political career. Personally, I'm a liberal and I would never vote for her but with the Republican Party having already descended into an outright reactionary morass, Republicans might as well help spark the political realignment and embrace her. Brooks' ugly description of Trumpf's business practices makes Little Marco's point that Herr is nothing but a con-man and a scammer. But isn't that exactly what the Republican Party's version of conservatism has become?

Start with Trump University, where Trump betrayed schoolteachers and others who dreamed of building a better life for themselves.

Trump billed his university as a place people could go to learn everything necessary about real estate investing. According to a 2013 lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, more than 5,000 people paid $40 million, a quarter of which went to Trump himself.

Internal Trump University documents suggest that the university wasn’t really oriented around teaching, but rather around luring customers into buying more and more courses.

According to the New York lawsuit, instructors filled out course evaluations themselves or had students fill out the non-anonymous forms in front of them, pressuring them into giving positive reviews. During breaks students were told to call their credit card companies to increase their credit limits. They were given a script encouraging them to exaggerate their incomes. The Better Business Bureau gave the school a D- rating in 2010.

“They lure you in with false promises,” one student, Patricia Murphy, told The Times in 2011. Murphy said she had spent about $12,000 on Trump University classes, much of it racked up on her credit cards. “I was scammed,” she said.

The barrage can continue with Trump Mortgage. On the campaign trail, Trump tells people he saw the mortgage crisis coming. “I told a lot of people,” he has said, “and I was right. You know, I’m pretty good at that stuff.”

Trump’s biggest lies are the ones he tells himself. The reality is that Trump opened his mortgage company in 2006. Others smelled a bubble, but not Trump. “I think it’s a great time to start a mortgage company,” he told CNBC. “The real estate market is going to be very strong for a long time to come.”

Part of the operation was a boiler room where people cold-called clients, sometimes pushing subprime loans and offering easy approval.

Jennifer McGovern had trusted Trump and went to work for him. But she got stiffed in the end. In 2008 a New York State Supreme Court judge ordered Trump Mortgage to pay her the $298,274 she was owed. The bill wasn’t paid. “The company was set up in a way that we could never recover what we were owed,” she told the Washington Post.

The stories can go on and on. The betrayal of investors when his casino businesses went bankrupt. The betrayal of his first wife with his flagrant public affair with Marla Maples. The betrayal of American workers when he decided to hire illegals. The people left in the wake of other debacles: Trump Air, Trump Vodka, Trump Financial, etc.

These weren’t just risks that went bad. They were shams, built like his campaign around empty promises and on Trump’s fragile and overweening pride.

The burden of responsibility now falls on Republican officials, elected and nonelected, at all levels. For years they have built relationships in their communities, earned the right to be heard. If they now feel that Donald Trump would be a reckless and dangerous president, then they have a responsibility to their country to tell those people the truth, to rally all their energies against this man.

It will be quite the trick to make a logical case against Herr Trumpf without dragging the Republican Party through the same mud and muck. Trump Steaks spent more money on packaging-- classy gold embossed boxes-- than on the frozen third rate meat they shipped out in them... just like the bill of goods Republican state governments have sold to the voters of Wisconsin, Michigan, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Indiana, Kansas, Alabama, North Carolina and the rest. Don't want that for America? Neither do I. We can do something about it here.