Jennifer Amanda Wickre

 Jennifer Amanda Wickre

      1981- 2023

 

What do you say about a girl who liked Lincoln, Churchill, Music, the Oregon Ducks and who died of Cancer at age 42!

 

She was born in Medford Oregon on February 9, 1981, first child to Jim & Janie Wickre.

 

She was a precocious, strong-willed child who would rather be around adults than other children. She took music and dance classes and played soccer. Her soccer coach played her at goalie in grade school because she was the only girl on the team who wouldn’t cry if the other team scored a goal.

 

From an early age she loved going to Oregon football games with her dad. She was in fact present when Oregon broke the back of the Washington Huskies in the watershed game when Kenny Wheaton ran “The Pick” against the Washington QB to win the game in 1994. As an adult living in D.C., she and her brother would travel to Oregon games whenever they played east of the Mississippi as well as bowl games. She also tried to make it back to Oregon once a year for a home game. Go Ducks!

 

She graduated from South Medford High in 1999 where she was active in Speech and Debate and chorus.  She developed in high school a strong desire to live and work in Washington D.C. She went on to Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California where they have a “Semester in DC” program.

 

Jenn loved music and had a beautiful voice. She sang in the South Medford High Chorus, C.M.C. Chorus, and the Congressional Chorus in Washington D.C. 

 

While in college, she interned for a semester for Congressman Jerry Lewis in his Office in DC. They liked her so much they ask her to continue working for them and she spent her summers in college working for the Congressman. After she graduated from college, she worked for him full time. When he retired from Congress, she went to work as a lobbyist for the University of California San Francisco in Washington DC.

 

She missed “The Hill” and returned as a staffer for the U.S House Committee on Science Space & Technology working her way up to Deputy Staff Director. She was able to work with both Democrats and Republicans to draft and pass legislation in a bipartisan manner. She was known for her big laugh, sense of humor and institutional knowledge of how to get things done.

 

She loved to travel and go on cruises. She traveled to England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy, Kenya, Japan, Chile, the Caribbean, Galápagos Islands, and even made it to Barrow Alaska and Greenland. She loved the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Bandon on the Oregon coast and Disney World!

In 2020, when her parents’ home and its contents burned to the ground along with 100s of other homes in a wildfire near Medford Oregon, she flew home within 48 hours and spent several weeks helping them put their lives back together and then drove them across country to her brother’s home in Kentucky.

 

When the Congressmen on her committee found out she was dying of cancer, both Republicans and Democrats took to the House Floor for a 30-minute tribute to Jenn.

 

Jenn fought her cancer for 14 months! She had surgery and went through 3 different chemo regimens each of which consisted of multiple chemo sessions. There were ups and downs and false hope and, in the end, with her known frankness, told her friends and family she was at the end. She, in her short life, accomplished more than most people do in an entire life. In the weeks before her death, hundreds of her friends reached out to her to reminisce and tell her how important she was to them. She even got a visit from her three month old nephew, Benjamin, whom she had never met.

 

She died at her home in Washington DC with her parents and her dog Finn at her bedside on Saturday April 22. She is survived by her parents, her brother John Wickre and his wife Natalie, and nephew Benjamin of Frankfort, Kentucky, her aunt Marva Wickre of Portland Oregon, her uncle Karl Cox (Carol) of Laurel, Maryland and her aunt Charlotte Cox (Ed) of Tenino, Washington. All of her grandparents predeceased her. Whenever you see the Ducks on TV, or a sunset on the beach, think of Jennifer!

 

It was Jennifer’s wish in lieu of flowers that contributions be made to Claremont McKenna College as follows:

 

https://www.cmc.edu/giving  In the designation section either mention the Wickre Washington DC Student Experience Fund or simply denote that the gift is in Jennifer Wickre’s honor/memory.

 

She wanted any student interested in policy and government to be able to have some of the Washington DC experiences she had.

I Collect DVD & Blu-ray Movies …..and I’m an Addict!

 

Some people drink, take drugs, gamble, go on cruises ....but me I collect and watch old movies. Since I was a little kid watching movies was my escapism and way to relax. Old age haven’t changed that. At one time only “Movie moguls” could collect movies. Now everyone can. In fact, with streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime there are many who feel collecting media is old fashioned. Me, I like to have a library I can touch and organize and rearrange. In addition the streaming services don’t have all the great movie I love.

Before the fire I had a library of over 800 movies collected since DVDs became the standard in about 1997. I had never been happy with the picture quality of VHS but DVD and then Blu ray brought movie theater picture quality into the home. I bought special bookshelves just for DVDs and organized them in a system only I could appreciate. Janie and the kids never understood. For example, “John Wayne”movies were organized by release date from oldest to newest. “History/War” movies started with movies in Ancient Greece through Vietnam and on to Iraq and Afghanistan . For example all “Civil War Movies are together and so are World War II. “Drama/Comedy” are in order of when the story takes place. For example, American Graffiti is in 1962  when it occurred and not 1973 when the movie was made.

The fire destroyed them all in about 15 minutes and I was crushed. But then I found a silver lining. I could collect them again. A big part of collecting is  “ the hunt”. After the insurance money came I made a list of about 40 movies that were essential and the rebuilding began. I knew I would never get to the 800+ but 200 was realistic. A second silver lining was it gave me something to do in retirement.

As an Amazon Prime member I can get free shipping of DVDs from Amazon. They have most movies that have been released at reasonable retail costs. However, I love a bargain and started to look at other avenues. eBay is good but their shipping is costly and slow. HalfPrice Books in Lexington has a good selection of used DVDs but can be pricy. The $5.00 bin at Walmart turns up some real gems but I love Antique Malls! There are a lot here in Kentucky and you can get some really great bargains as low at $1.25 each. Goodwill is always an option and Frankfort even has a shop that sells used DVD for $3.00 each or 7 for $10.00.

Every time I acquire a new or used DVD/Blu ray I catalog it on several internet sites. Janie always gave me a good natured kidding about my obsession in recording each acquisition but it came in handy for insurance purposes.

I’m now up about 155 DVDs and Blu ray. Like any addiction you have to ration yourself.

Another Churchill in my lifetime.

 

Ukraine Forever!

 

Books on Director John Ford

Through the years I have collected and read the following books on movie Director John Ford my favorite Director.

1974   The Western Films of John Ford by J.A. Place

1975   John Ford by Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington

1975   John Fords Stagecoach edited by Richard J. Anoble 

1978   Wagonmaster

1978   John Ford by Peter Bogdanovich

1979   The Non-Western Films of John Ford by J.A. Place 

1979   Pappy by Dan Ford

1979   John Ford a Biography by Andrew Sinclair

1981   About John Ford by Lindsay Anderson

1986   John Ford (The Man and his Films) by Tag Gallagher

1994   Company of Heroes by Harry Carey Jr.

1995   John Ford Hollywood's Old Master by Ronald L Davis

1999   Print the Legend (The life and Times of John Ford) by Scott Eyman

2001   Searching for John Ford by Joseph McBride

2001   John Ford Made Westerns by Gaylyn Stublar and Matthew Bernstein

2004   Tis Herself by Maureen O'Hara

2007   How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford by Kathryn Kalinak 

2013   Lest We Forget (The John Ford Stock Company) by Bill Levy

2014   Five Came Back by Mark Harris 

2016   The Western and War Films of John Ford by Sue Matheson

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Trump-Clinton-Obama Scandals

Trump-Clinton-Obama Scandals

I have come to the conclusion there could be some  truth in all the scandals swirling around Washington DC which are poisoning the political life of this country

RUSSIA

I believe President Trump has something to hide regarding Russia. From the beginning of his campaign to the present his refusal to get tough with Russian aggression has been suspicious. He may be afraid they have information on him for money laundering, corrupt business deals or prostitutes or all three. He certainly acts like a man hiding something. However I have seen little evidence Trump “colluded” with Russia during the campaign. Both Hillary and Trump were attempting to get dirt on each other from the Russians with little success.

HILLARY’S EMAIL

Hillary broke the criminal laws of the United States over the handling of classified information and the Obama Administration, Justice Department and some in the FBI worked to prevent her from being prosecuted for both partisan reasons and because of a fear of a Trump Administration.

 INVESTIGTION of TRUMP

The Obama Administration, Justice Department, CIA, NSA and the FBI have been investigating Trump almost from the beginning of his campaign. They feared his ties with Russia and used the criminal justice system to investigate. They got FIFSA warrants on some low level Trump campaign people (with the help of the Hillary campaign) in the hope of them leading up the chain to Trump. They were never able to prove anything about Trump and Russia and after Trump won they had to cover their tracks by telling Trump he was not the subject of their investigation. They were not telling the truth and Trump suspected as much when they refused to go public that he was not the subject of the investigation. They then used the firing of the FBI director Comey to bootstrap the appointment of Mueller to investigate the Russian collusion charge with the help of Trump's AG. When Mueller was just as unsuccessful at proving that allegation he converted his prosecution to an “obstruction of justice” investigation/prosecution and hopes to trap Trump in a perjury trap! He is also bringing criminal charges against others on peripheral issues in hopes of getting them to turn on Trump.  The Feds were never able to get the goods on Al Capone but they did get him on tax evasion and sent him to prison. They are doing something similar now.

If Muller has the goods on Russia and Trump let him bring charges otherwise this is an attempt to overturn an election. I didn’t vote for Trump, or Hillary for that matter, but I do believe Trump was duly elected.

In any case while we spend our time dealing with these issues the debt gets bigger, little gets done, and the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreas watch and wait for their chance.

My Summer of 1968 !

It was the summer of 1968. I was between my junior and senior year at the University of Oregon in Eugene. I was spending the summer at my parent's home in North Bend and had a summer job as an assistant manager at a variety store called Sprouse Reitz in Coos Bay, Oregon.

1968 was a year things seemed to come apart. It was a Presidential election year,  War was raging in Vietnam and President Lyndon Baines Johnson  (LBJ) had decided to not run for reelection. Senator Eugene McCarthy was the Democrat anti war candidate going against Johnson's VP, Hubert Humphry. Senator Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated in Los Angeles after winning the Democrat primary. Martin Luther King had been assassinated that spring and major American cities had seen riots, looting and buildings burned. National Guard troops guarded the Capitol in Washington D.C.  Richard Nixon was the leading candidate for the Republicans. California Governor Ronald Reagan and former N.Y. Governor Nelson Rockefeller were trying to block his nomination. The Democrat convention that year was in Chicago and the Republican was in Miami Beach in Florida.

We all watched on TV as the Democrats destroyed themselves in Chicago both in the convention and on the streets. Humphry ( a good man) won  the nomination but paid a heavy price.

Three of my best friends at the University of Oregon spent the summer in Eugene and shared an old house down the alley from Bob's Superette a few block from campus. Jerry Norton, Gaines Smith and Randy Gragg. It was a house only a college student could appreciate and I visited as often as I could. I loved the intellectual stimulation of being around three friends that shared my passion for  the Conservative cause. We were young and were excited about the future and we loved to talk politics and events.   All three are now gone but the memory of that summer and those friends remains.

Jerry Norton was from Coos Bay and had been my mentor in the draft Goldwater movement and Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) thereafter. Jerry had just graduated from Oregon and was waiting to go into the Army. He would end up in Vietnam, and was wounded. After the Army he worked for YAF and went on to get a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University and worked for many years in the Far East as a reporter and editor for Reuters New Service.   He died a few years ago and was buried  at Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC.

Gaines Smith was from Lake Oswego Oregon and was  "a professional student". He was a follower of Ayn Rand then called Objectivist and now called Libertarians. He was tall, dark and handsome and the girls loved him with his fake British accent. He was a very good writer. He wore a $ sign pin in the lapel of his tweed sports jacket he always wore with a black turtleneck. A few years after that summer  he moved back east for a few years working as a journalist for a Connecticut newspaper and then for the American Conservative Union.  He returned to Eugene and eventually got a job at Lane Community College as a creative writing instructor.  The Eugene Register Guard newspaper would report how he died.......... ! I attended his funeral in Eugene and spent time with his friends wondering why!

Randy Gragg was from Southern California and was active in student government at the University of Oregon and was a great Conservative debater. After that summer he would return to California and was active in the Libertarian movement. He had bright red hair. We all lost track of Randy but his obituary states that he later graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary in Indiana and was a pastor at a Lutheran church in Ohio.

Jerry, Gaines and Randy all went to the Republican Convention in Miami Beach and I didn't! I was so jealous. One of the few regrets in my life. In little more than a year I would be in the Army learning how to kill North Vietnamese soldiers and from my perspective how to prevent them from killing me. I ended up not going to Vietnam but it was very close. I should have gone to the Convention!

The three friends went to the convention supporting Ronald Reagan. I had wavered between Reagan and Nixon. My head said Nixon had the best chance in November and my heart was with  Reagan. Nixon won the nomination in Miami on the first ballot. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was able to hold most of the Southern delegates for Nixon who went on to win in November. He would resign in disgrace after winning reelection in 1972. Reagan would win in 1980 and serve two terms.

For years Gaines would tell me of his "adventures" at the convention.  Jerry had tickets to get into the convention but Gaines and Randy didn't. Gaines went to one of the many social gatherings  associated with a major party convention and met a young lady whose father was high up in the Wyoming delegation. Gaines struck up a conversation with the young lady who thought Gaines was British. Gaines played along with her mistake and said he was sad that he had come all this way to see the convention but couldn't get tickets. She volunteered to get him tickets and told him if he went to a "hospitality suite" at a given hotel at a certain time she would see that he got some tickets. So Gaines with Randy "dragging behind" walked across muggy Miami Beach and went to the hospitality suite and there was no one there! There were tables loaded with liquor but no people. Gaines and Randy sat down to wait and Randy noticed on the table between them two tickets to the convention. They grabbed the tickets and ran out of the room and down the stairs as fast as they could. They got into the Convention but were afraid to sit in those seats and so spent a lot of time walking around.

After that summer I returned to Eugene for my Senior year at Oregon  but only Gaines remained and the magic of that time and place were gone.

I sure would like to get-together with the guys again  and see what they would say about Donald Trump!

Donald Trump the Good, the Bad & the Ugly (6 months later)

One month after he was sworn in as President I posted the Good, the Bad & the Ugly on President Trump’s first month on the job.(see below)  Now that he has been President for over 6 months it’s time to revisit my view of the man and the job he is doing.

The Good

With some exceptions, I was originally impressed by the people he appointed to his cabinet and otherwise.   It is now apparent that regardless of the people he appoints that he will do what he wants and if anyone gets in the way they will be fired, or ignored.  The treatment he has given to Attorney General Sessions is appalling and the same can be said about his National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State. Good men who are trying to hold things together for a President who at best is an incompetent jerk or worse a man who has a lot to hid.  I know this is supposed to be “The Good” but I am having a hard time finding anything good to say about President Trump other than a good Supreme Court pick and the fact he isn’t Hillary. There were so many good men from my party to pick and it is a Greek Tragedy that Donald Trump got the nomination. 5 months ago I had hope for President Trump and had some doubts about being #Nevertrump during the election. I no longer have any hopes for President Trump, those doubts are gone. I made the right decision to not vote for him in the Oregon Primary and not vote for him the General  Election ( For the record I did not vote for Hillary).

The Bad

We live in a dangerous world and the enemies of Freedom in Russia, Iran, North Korea and China will take advantage of a crisis of leadership in the United States.  I originally had doubts that the Russians had anything on Trump and was critical of the Democrats and the Main Stream Media for spending so much time on it. I opposed the appointment of a special investigator. And was no fan of FBI Director Comey.   However, with what is happening to Attorney General. Jeff Sessions, I no longer have any doubts that President Trump is deathly afraid of what will come out. He is a man who acting like he has something to hide!  If he forces Sessions out and makes a “recess appointment” of one of his cronies to be AG who then fires Mueller we will have a real Constitutional crisis . The same will be true if he starts issuing pardons to his family and associates to keep them quiet.

The Ugly

President Trump is an ugly man on the inside and it keeps coming out. I agree with his stated positions on many things but do not believe he believes them and is just saying them because he knows that’s what his ardent followers want to hear. He brings out the worst in people and will continue the deep divisions exacerbated by President Obama However where Obama was a smooth operator. Trump is cruel and crude. He enjoys hurting people and I am not talking policy. As a Conservative Republican since Goldwater and Bill Buckley it hurts to see so many of my Conservative friends taken in by this con-man. I understand and feel the anger against Hillary, Obama, the Liberal Media and most of the academia  on our campuses, turning this country into Europe or worse. I see the culture of our country turn its back on hard work small government, freedom and individual responsibility.  Trump will not reverse this trend but will set back the Conservative cause for  a generation. I am not yet advocating Impeachment as it would nullity a valid election and  in turn make our  divisions deeper.  My hope is evidence will come out that will convince a large majority of Americans that President Trump must resign so that a good man, Vice President Pence, can take over.  However, President Trump along with some of his allies on Fox News (not all, there are some good people there) and other Trump agitators will poison our democracy and that he really could shoot someone on 7^th Avenue in New York and his followers would stick with him. 

We are in for a rocky ride America. It’s bad and ugly but for a political junkie it is exciting.  It’s only going to get worse before it gets better and as yet I see no light at the en

Jim Wickre Birth Family Tree (best guess based on DNA)

Click to enlarge


One of the questions I often get at the doctors office I can never answer is "does.....run in the family?" I always answer I am adopted and I don't know.

The above information about my  birth parents  is based upon circumstantial evidence based upon DNA through Ancestry.com (1-3) cousins, "DNA Circles" * ,"New Ancestor Discoveries", Y-DNA through FamilyTree.com, family trees of the extended Hawkins, Brown, Worthen and; McMullin families and where they intersect, location and opportunity. In other words, who in those families were in Salt Lake City, Utah in the late years of World War II on or near VJ-Day and the ages and marital status of the prospective parents. Key single members of the Hawkins and Worthen families lived within 1.8 miles of each other in Salt Lake City during the key periods. The Catholic Hospital where I was born was in-between!  I welcomes additional evidence based upon family histories  or otherwise that supports this analysis or contradicts it. If true, this is a sad story of very young kids who produced a child before they were ready to be parents. I would much prefer a different result. However in the end, I was adopted by great parents and have no regrets. Information of family medical history would also be greatly appreciated! On a further note, if anyone has concerns about any breach of  privacy please let me know since that is not my intent. Both of my  purported birth parents have been deceased for  20 years or more, but if there are any others, please advise and your concerns will be resolved to your satisfaction.

My purported father  came from the old line Mormon families that settled Utah the Worthen and McMullin families. He was 15 to 20 when I was born. My purported birth mother was from the Hawkins and; Brown family's that had settled in Kansas and later in Colorado and Washington State. However, one couple , husband a Hawkins and wife a Brown, settled in Salt Lake City.  They were Methodist. Their daughter was About 15 when I was born. Good thing for me abortion was illegal in Utah in 1946.

Update: since writing this I have discovered my birth mother from the Hawkins family. She is deceased but I have a number of half sisters and brothers through her confirmed by dna tests.

On interesting fact is that I am related to a signer of The Declaration of Independence, George Ross of Pennsylvania. Look him up! There is a reason I love the musical  movie/play "1776"!  No, he is not portrayed in the movie.

*"DNA Circles" is a great feature on Ancestry.com where they group people with similar DNA in Circles so you can see how you are related to each other based upon Family trees that have been filed for various families.  

President Trump: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly!

Now that President Trump has been elected and in office for about one month here is my assessment.

First of all I am a Conservative Republican and have been one since the draft Goldwater campaign of 1963- 1962.  I voted for Marco Rubio in the Oregon primary in May of 2016 and wrote in Evan McMullin in the general election of 2016. Until the election I was #neverTrump. I believe in limited government, maximum individual freedom and the responsibility that goes with it.

The Good:

I have liked most of Trump's appointments to his cabinet and in particular General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, Betsy DaVos at Education, Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador, Tim Price at HHS, Scott Pruitt EPA, General  John Kelly at Homeland Security, Ryan Zinke (an Oregon Duck) at Interior, Mike Pompeo at CIA and Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence. I am taking a wait and see about Rex Tillerson at State and Jeff Sessions as AG.

I love the nominations/appointments of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill Judge Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court and General  H.R. McMaster to be National Security Adviser.

All in all a good group of advisors around the President with a few exceptions as outlined below. I will be the first to admit I am pleasantly  surprised that he made these appointment. He now has some really good people around him.  

I think President Trump is correct that  he will NEVER get a fair deal out of the Liberal Main Stream Media and is correct in trying to neutralize their attacks on him provided he recognizes their 1st Amendment Rights.  I agree with him that many in the entrenched Federal bureaucracy  including Obama holdovers will attempt to sabotage him and his agenda and it is important for him to take them on. I am very of skeptical  alleged leaks coming from the bureaucracy. The Democrat strategy to President Trump appears to be a scorched earth policy that will cause many to rally to Trump.

I believe in enforcing the laws of this country and as long as we have immigration laws they need to be enforced in a humane manner. If laws are ignored then that breeds disrespect for all laws. Every country has the right to enforce and defend it's borders.   No question that we need immigration reform but until that happens the law is the law!

The Bad:

I  still don't personally like Donald Trump. I don't think he is a good person and I don't like his style. He is a bully and I don't like bully's. He can be cruel and often overstates his case. As much as I dislike the Main Stream Media they are not the "enemies" of Americans. He is erratic, self centered, undisciplined and thin skinned.

I strongly dislike Steve Bannon his chief strategist. I believe he appeals to President Trump's "dark side." 

It was also a big mistake to appoint Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor but thank goodness he is gone and replaced by a good man.

I don't understand why President Trump has a blind spot regarding Russia's Putin. Is it a mistake as to strategy or something darker? 

The Ugly:

President Trump's Inaugural Address was the ugliest and meanest  in U.S. history and I saw Steve Bannon's fingerprints all over it.

 The vetoing of Eliott Abrams to be Deputy Secretary of State because of campaign criticism of Trump in the campaign  was wrong!. Secretary of State Tillison needs a strong deputy to get control of the State Department and President Trump let that cloud his judgment when Tillison sought Abrams appointment.

The rollout of the Executive Order on limiting immigration from certain countries. I agree  the President has the authority to make such decisions under current  law and the courts that ruled against him did so for political and not legal ground but, non the less, it was clumsy and a self inflicted defeat.

This country is deeply divided and was before President Trump became President.. President Trump will not bring us together and will further divide us not only on policy but because of his personality.  I saw and see in Senator  Marco Rubio  a real conservative that could help bridge our differences and bring civility back into politics.. However, the country was so divided in 2016 that each side was only interested  in appealing to it's base regardless of the consequences. I firmly believe that the anger generated on the Right by Obama's 8 years of only appealing to his Left led to President Trump! I also see the Democrats still moving farther to the Left!

In Conclusion:

 I remain a President Trump skeptic. I will support him when he is attacked unfairly by the Left, the Main Stream Media, Democrats and the Obama/Hillary sore losers.  I will defend him when he makes Conservative appointments and works for Conservative policy. I will work against him when he doesn't and  if he  fails to recognize the evil of Russia's Putin. Russia, Iran China and North Korea are run by evil men and we need a President who recognizes this and takes action to protect us and the world!

I didn't vote for him, but Donald Trump is my President and because I love this country I want him to succeed!

The scene: Oregon fans flock to Lincoln ... and feel the love

By Clark Grell, Lincoln Nebraska Journal Star

There's something neat about mingling with the opposing fans when they come to Lincoln. I always like hearing their stories

For example, Jim Wickre of Medford, Oregon, was here on an all expenses-paid trip, thanks to son John and daughter Jennifer. it was a gift for his 70th birthday.

So the tree were decked out in Oregon gear and taking in the sights of Memorial Stadium before kickoff Saturday. John, 35 (actually 33) came in from Kentucky and Jennifer, 33 (actually 35) from Washington, D.C.

The tree love going to Oregon Road games.

"We've been to a lot of road games," Jennifer said "This is the nicest fans we've ever seen."

Nebraska fans have heard that before, but the Wickres can't stress it enough. "Everyone comes up to you sand says "Welcome to Nebraska" and "Have a good game tomorrow," Jim said

The Oregon fans were fun. They're a passionate bunch (and they're kinda hard to miss when they don the bright-green and yellow).

http://journalstar.com/sports/huskers/football/the-scene-oregon-fans-flock-to-lincoln-and-feel-the/article_002b6ceb-754a-5482-9df2-234b62a91804.html

This is how fascism comes to America

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for The Post.

"The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well.

But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.
And the source of allegiance? We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.

That this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as it has everyone else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and something far more dangerous.
Republican politicians marvel at how he has “tapped into” a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the “mobocracy.” Conservatives have been warning for decades about government suffocating liberty. But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy, excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the institutions created to preserve their freedoms. As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people.
This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called “fascism.” Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Fuhrer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who singlehandedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.
To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today. These movements play on all the fears, vanities, ambitions and insecurities that make up the human psyche. In democracies, at least for politicians, the only thing that matters is what the voters say they want — vox populi vox dei. A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn’t matter how popular or admired that person has been. He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. He might be the highest-ranking elected guardian of the party’s most cherished principles. But if he hesitates to support the leader, he faces political death.

In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon. They praise the leader’s incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive. Their consciences won’t let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of support, like the victims in Stalin’s show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and his followers will get them in the end anyway.
A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different from the usual politics is afoot. Let the storm pass, they insist, and then we can pick up the pieces, rebuild and get back to normal. Meanwhile, don’t alienate the leader’s mass following. After all, they are voters and will need to brought back into the fold. As for Trump himself, let’s shape him, advise him, steer him in the right direction and, not incidentally, save our political skins.
What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election, his legions will comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that laid down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?
This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him."

mp reads snake poem to discuss immigration, terrorism

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump read a poem about a snake at a rally in Ohio to discuss immigration and terrorism. (Reuters) That this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as it has everyone else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the phenomenomething larger than him, and something far more dange

NEVER Trump!

Donald Trump is a cancer on the Conservative movement and the Republican Party that must be removed ! George Will in his column said it best today:

Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s history. These collaborationists will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction.

Were he to be nominated, conservatives would have two tasks. One is to help him lose 50 states -- condign punishment for his comprehensive disdain for conservative essentials, including the manners and grace that should lubricate the nation’s civic life. Second, conservatives can try to save from the anti-Trump undertow a saving remnant of senators, representatives, governors and state legislators.


http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/04/28/case-trump-nomination-break-glass/83659112/

Cruz & Fiorina

# Never Trump!

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I have been a Republican since I worked for Richard Nixon in 1960. As a kid I had a poster of Nixon on my bedroom door from 1960 through 1962. In 1963 I read Barry Goldwater's book  "Conscience of a Conservative" and became a Conservative Republican with emphasis on the Conservative. I used my allowance to send away for Goldwater bumper stickers and worked in the Draft Goldwater movement. I joined Bill Buckley's Young Americans for Freedom  and helped form a chapter in my home town of Coos Bay/North Bend, Oregon ("The Thomas Jefferson Chapter" to be exact). I joined the YAF chapter at the University of Oregon in 1967 and became its President in 1968. I campaigned for Reagan in 1968, 1976,1980 and 1984. I voted in the General Election for Nixon in 1968 but refused to vote for him in 1972 because of his imposition of wage and price controls, his trip to Red China and his refusal to level with us on Watergate. I have voted for every Republican nominee since, even when I had to hold my nose. From the time I was an college undergrad through today I have always had a poster or picture of William F. Buckley hanging in my dorm, apartment or each of the homes I have owned. I am and will always be a Conservative.

 I pledge on everything I hold dear including my honor that I will NEVER vote for Donald Trump!!! The man has the emotional level of a 4 year old and the personality of a tyrant! The man is crude, a show off, a con artist and the worst of all a cruel bully.

He is not interested in policy issues and has no philosophy or core values other than self aggrandizement.

But, what about Hillary! No one is more angry about the last 7 years of Obama. Just read deep into this blog to see my opposition and despair to Obama and Hillary on so many issues. She needs to be indicted and sent to prison for her criminal negligence for the secret documents on her  private email server. She and Bill through their foundation are a classic examples of crony capitalism. Her actions or should I say inactions at Benghazi have made her disqualified to be President!  The cover-up afterword's is even worse. Too bad there aren't people of conscience in the Democrat party who will speak out on these issues that should cut against the grain of liberalism.

Ben Shapiro a young attorney and Conservative writer and activist makes a compelling argument for my decision:

The counterargument to the #NeverTrump movement comes down to two words: Hillary Clinton. Trump will supposedly close the borders (a lie); Hillary will not. Trump will appoint conservative Supreme Court justices (unlikely); Hillary will not. No matter how bad Trump is, the argument goes, conservatives have a duty to back the anti-Hillary.
I think Trump will get blown out in a general election. But let’s assume that these critics of #NeverTrump are right. Let’s assume that but for we #NeverTrump voters sitting out the election, Trump would become president, and Hillary would go down in flaming defeat. And let’s assume that Hillary Clinton will appoint terrible justices, destroy the military, and usher in the apocalypse. Why in the world would conservatives live with President Hillary Clinton on their consciences?
Because first, it’s not on our consciences. It’s on the consciences of the people who went along with this nomination. We did not select Trump. We will not vote for him.
And if we are going to save the country, it will not rest on one or two justices on the Supreme Court. It will rest on the will of the people to resist tyranny. That will start at the state and local level. It will start with the people.
It will start with conservatives willing to say “no.”
Because if we never say “no,” we will never have the opportunity to say “yes.”
We must have a conservative party. The Republican Party is not that party, and has not been for a very long time. The Obama administration has brought about a unique moment – a transformational choice for the Party. Will they abandon all conservative principle in pursuit of victory, or will they turn back to the conservatism they supposedly espouse? This entire election cycle, the answer has been the former. In fact, for virtually my entire life, the answer has been the former. Establishment Republicans abandoned Reaganism for Bushism, and then abandoned Bushism for McCainism, and then abandoned McCainism for Romneyism. Until the last five minutes, they were ready to embrace Trump himself rather getting behind Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Now they call for conservatives to swallow hard and unify behind a man who opposes all conservative principles – to save conservatism!
In every election cycle, the establishment insists that we unify behind a candidate who does not reflect conservatism because elections are always a choice between the two worst options. They blackmail conservatives into supporting candidates who undermine the message and morality of our mission. Now Trump does the same. The establishment created the Donald Trump phenomenon with their “best of two bad options” logic, and now Trump is using that logic to destroy conservatism openly. The establishment doesn’t object to Trumpism. They only object to Trump. Strip the drunken boor antics from Trump, and you’ve got John McCain who will lie transparently to pander to the populist wing.
We don’t have to be complicit. As Ben Domenech is fond of citing, Alexander Hamilton once wrote, “If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.” Let us not be our own enemies.
Now is the time to say no.

I only disagree with Shapiro  on Ted Cruz who would be my second choice, my first being Marco Rubio, who I believe is just as Conservative and more electable.

In the end, long after this election, I want to be remembered for the stand I took against the forces of authoritarianism, fascism and bigotry who were on the march in my own Republican Party. I must do this to keep faith with Lincoln, Goldwater, Reagan, Jack Kemp and Bill Buckley.

#NEVERTRUMP

Republican Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse on why he can't support Donald Trump! A true Patriot!

AN OPEN LETTER TO TRUMP SUPPORTERS
To my friends supporting Donald Trump:
The Trump coalition is broad and complicated, but I believe many Trump fans are well-meaning. I have spoken at length with many of you, both inside and outside Nebraska. You are rightly worried about our national direction. You ache about a crony-capitalist leadership class that is not urgent about tackling our crises. You are right to be angry.
I’m as frustrated and saddened as you are about what’s happening to our country. But I cannot support Donald Trump.
Please understand: I’m not an establishment Republican, and I will never support Hillary Clinton. I’m a movement conservative who was elected over the objections of the GOP establishment. My current answer for who I would support in a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton is: Neither of them. I sincerely hope we select one of the other GOP candidates, but if Donald Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option.
Mr. Trump’s relentless focus is on dividing Americans, and on tearing down rather than building back up this glorious nation. Much like President Obama, he displays essentially no understanding of the fact that, in the American system, we have a constitutional system of checks and balances, with three separate but co-equal branches of government. And the task of public officials is to be public “servants.” The law is king, and the people are boss. But have you noticed how Mr. Trump uses the word “Reign” – like he thinks he’s running for King? It’s creepy, actually. Nebraskans are not looking for a king. We yearn instead for the recovery of a Constitutional Republic.
At this point in Nebraska discussions, many of you have immediately gotten practical: “Okay, fine, you think there are better choices than Trump. But you would certainly still vote for Trump over Clinton in a general election, right?”
Before I explain why my answer is “Neither of them,” let me correct some nonsense you might have heard on the internet of late.
WHY I RAN FOR SENATE
***No, I’m not a career politician. (I had never run for anything until being elected to the U.S. Senate fifteen months ago, and I ran precisely because I actually want to make America great again.)
***No, I’m not a lawyer who has never created a job. (I was a business guy before becoming a college president in my hometown.)
***No, I’m not part of the Establishment. (Sheesh, I had attack ads by the lobbyist class run against me while I was on a bus tour doing 16 months of townhalls across Nebraska. Why? Precisely because I was not the preferred candidate of Washington.)
***No, I’m not concerned about political job security. (The very first thing I did upon being sworn in in January 2015 was to introduce a constitutional amendment for term limits – this didn’t exactly endear me to my new colleagues.)
***No, I’m not for open borders. (The very first official trip I took in the Senate was to observe and condemn how laughably porous the Texas/Mexican border is. See 70 tweets from @bensasse in February 2015.)
***No, I’m not a “squishy,” feel-good, grow-government moderate. (I have the 4th most-conservative voting record in the Senate: https://www.conservativereview.com/members/benjamin-sasse/ http://www.heritageactionscorecard.com/members/member/S001197 )
In my very first speech to the Senate, I told my colleagues that “The people despise us all.” This institution needs to get to work, not on the lobbyists’ priorities, but on the people’s: https://youtu.be/zQMoB4aUn04?t=3m8s
Now, to the question at hand: Will I pledge to vote for just any “Republican” nominee over Hillary Clinton?
Let’s begin by rejecting naïve purists: Politics has no angels. Politics is not about creating heaven on earth. Politics is simply about preserving a framework for ordered liberty – so that free people can find meaning and happiness not in politics but in their families, their neighborhoods, their work.
POLITICAL PARTIES
Now, let’s talk about political parties: parties are just tools to enact the things that we believe. Political parties are not families; they are not religions; they are not nations – they are often not even on the level of sports loyalties. They are just tools. I was not born Republican. I chose this party, for as long as it is useful.
If our Party is no longer working for the things we believe in – like defending the sanctity of life, stopping ObamaCare, protecting the Second Amendment, etc. – then people of good conscience should stop supporting that party until it is reformed.
VOTING
Now, let’s talk about voting: Voting is usually just about choosing the lesser evil of the most viable candidates.
“Usually…” But not always. Certain moments are larger. They cause us to explicitly ask: Who are we as a people? What does the way we vote here say about our shared identity? What is actually the president’s job?
THE PRESIDENT’S CORE CALLING
The president’s job is not about just mindlessly shouting the word “strong” – as if Vladimir Putin, who has been strongly bombing civilian populations in Syria the last month, is somehow a model for the American presidency. No, the president’s core calling is to “Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution.”
Before we ever get into any technical policy fights – about pipelines, or marginal tax rates, or term limits, or Medicare reimbursement codes – America is first and fundamentally about a shared Constitutional creed. America is exceptional, because she is at her heart a big, bold truth claim about human dignity, natural rights, and self-control – and therefore necessarily about limited rather than limitless government.
THE MEANING OF AMERICA
America is the most exceptional nation in the history of the world because our Constitution is the best political document that’s ever been written. It said something different than almost any other government had said before: Most governments before said that might makes right, that government decides what our rights are and that the people are just dependent subjects. Our Founders said that God gives us rights by nature, and that government is not the author or source of our rights. Government is just our shared project to secure those rights.
Government exists only because the world is fallen, and some people want to take your property, your liberty, and your life. Government is tasked with securing a framework for ordered liberty where “we the people” can in our communities voluntarily build something great together for our kids and grandkids. That’s America. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of speech – the First Amendment is the heartbeat of the American Constitution, of the American idea itself.
WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO MR. TRUMP?
So let me ask you: Do you believe the beating heart of Mr. Trump’s candidacy has been a defense of the Constitution? Do you believe it’s been an impassioned defense of the First Amendment – or an attack on it?
Which of the following quotes give you great comfort that he’s in love with the First Amendment, that he is committed to defending the Constitution, that he believes in executive restraint, that he understands servant leadership?
Statements from Trump:
***“We’re going to open up libel laws and we’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before.”
***“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. They were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak…”
***Putin, who has killed journalists and is pillaging Ukraine, is a great leader.
***The editor of National Review “should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him.”
***On whether he will use executive orders to end-run Congress, as President Obama has illegally done: "I won't refuse it. I'm going to do a lot of things." “I mean, he’s led the way, to be honest with you.”
***“Sixty-eight percent would not leave under any circumstance. I think that means murder. It think it means anything.”
***On the internet: “I would certainly be open to closing areas” of it.
***His lawyers to people selling anti-Trump t-shirts: “Mr. Trump considers this to be a very serious matter and has authorized our legal team to take all necessary and appropriate actions to bring an immediate halt...”
***Similar threatening legal letters to competing campaigns running ads about his record.
And on it goes…
IF MR. TRUMP BECOMES THE NOMINEE...
Given what we know about him today, here’s where I’m at: If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, my expectation is that I will look for some third candidate – a conservative option, a Constitutionalist.
I do not claim to speak for a movement, but I suspect I am far from alone. After listening to Nebraskans in recent weeks, and talking to a great many people who take oaths seriously, I think many are in the same place. I believe a sizable share of Christians – who regard threats against religious liberty as arguably the greatest crisis of our time – are unwilling to support any candidate who does not make a full-throated defense of the First Amendment a first commitment of their candidacy.
Conservatives understand that all men are created equal and made in the image of God, but also that government must be limited so that fallen men do not wield too much power. A presidential candidate who boasts about what he'll do during his "reign" and refuses to condemn the KKK cannot lead a conservative movement in America.
TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT
Thank you for listening. While I recognize that we disagree about how to make America great again, we agree that this should be our goal. We need more people engaged in the civic life of our country—not fewer. I genuinely appreciate how much many of you care about this country, and that you are demanding something different from Washington. I’m going to keep doing the same thing.
But I can’t support Donald Trump.

 

Humbly,
Ben Sasse
Nebraska

I will NEVER vote for Donald Trump!

Resistance to Trump is a test of character & integrity. Where you stood will be remembered long after this election.

 

National Review: "Against Trump"

I have been a conservative and reader of National Review since the draft Goldwater days of 1963. Never been more proud of the "Flag Ship" of the Conservative movement! Trump is a dangerous man.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". Edmund Burke

Against Trump      

By The Editors — January 21, 2016

Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.
Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it.
His signature issue is concern over immigration — from Latin America but also, after Paris and San Bernardino, from the Middle East. He has exploited the yawning gap between elite opinion in both parties and the public on the issue, and feasted on the discontent over a government that can’t be bothered to enforce its own laws no matter how many times it says it will (President Obama has dispensed even with the pretense). But even on immigration, Trump often makes no sense and can’t be relied upon. A few short years ago, he was criticizing Mitt Romney for having the temerity to propose “self-deportation,” or the entirely reasonable policy of reducing the illegal population through attrition while enforcing the nation’s laws. Now, Trump is a hawk’s hawk.
He pledges to build a wall along the southern border and to make Mexico pay for it. We need more fencing at the border, but the promise to make Mexico pay for it is silly bluster. Trump says he will put a big door in his beautiful wall, an implicit endorsement of the dismayingly conventional view that current levels of legal immigration are fine. Trump seems unaware that a major contribution of his own written immigration plan is to question the economic impact of legal immigration and to call for reform of the H-1B–visa program. Indeed, in one Republican debate he clearly had no idea what’s in that plan and advocated increased legal immigration, which is completely at odds with it. These are not the meanderings of someone with well-informed, deeply held views on the topic.
As for illegal immigration, Trump pledges to deport the 11 million illegals here in the United States, a herculean administrative and logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government. Trump piles on the absurdity by saying he would re-import many of the illegal immigrants once they had been deported, which makes his policy a poorly disguised amnesty (and a version of a similarly idiotic idea that appeared in one of Washington’s periodic “comprehensive” immigration reforms). This plan wouldn’t survive its first contact with reality.

On foreign policy, Trump is a nationalist at sea. Sometimes he wants to let Russia fight ISIS, and at others he wants to “bomb the sh**” out of it. He is fixated on stealing Iraq’s oil and casually suggested a few weeks ago a war crime — killing terrorists’ families — as a tactic in the war on terror. For someone who wants to project strength, he has an astonishing weakness for flattery, falling for Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the Russian thug. All in all, Trump knows approximately as much about national security as he does about the nuclear triad — which is to say, almost nothing.
Indeed, Trump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with “winning,” regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.
It is unpopular to say in the year of the “outsider,” but it is not a recommendation that Trump has never held public office. Since 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture. The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in other fields is not transferable. That is why all American presidents have been politicians, or generals.
Any candidate can promise the moon. But politicians have records of success, failure, or plain backsliding by which their promises may be judged. Trump can try to make his blankness a virtue by calling it a kind of innocence. But he is like a man with no credit history applying for a mortgage — or, in this case, applying to manage a $3.8 trillion budget and the most fearsome military on earth.

Trump’s record as a businessman is hardly a recommendation for the highest office in the land. For all his success, Trump inherited a real-estate fortune from his father. Few of us will ever have the experience, as Trump did, of having Daddy-O bail out our struggling enterprise with an illegal loan in the form of casino chips. Trump’s primary work long ago became less about building anything than about branding himself and tending to his celebrity through a variety of entertainment ventures, from WWE to his reality-TV show, The Apprentice. His business record reflects the often dubious norms of the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others; buying the good graces of politicians — including many Democrats — with donations.
Trump has gotten far in the GOP race on a brash manner, buffed over decades in New York tabloid culture. His refusal to back down from any gaffe, no matter how grotesque, suggests a healthy impertinence in the face of postmodern PC (although the insults he hurls at anyone who crosses him also speak to a pettiness and lack of basic civility). His promise to make America great again recalls the populism of Andrew Jackson. But Jackson was an actual warrior; and President Jackson made many mistakes. Without Jackson’s scars, what is Trump’s rhetoric but show and strut?
If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with such “permanent things” as constitutional government, marriage, and the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.
Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot explain their Beltway maneuvers — worse, if their maneuvering is indefensible — they will be rejected by their own voters. If they cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump supporters about the GOP, but that doesn’t make the mogul any less flawed a vessel for them.
Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430126/donald-trump-conservatives-