Hillary Versus The Man On Horseback
uk canada goose Usually these quadrennial talkfests are mounds of verbal tapioca, as riveting as a four hour walking tour of Canada Goose sale your own living room. Their ostensible purpose is to unify the party and burnish the candidate, launching the campaign with a burst of enthusiasm which swells the hearts of voters. But this year’s conventions sharpened our divisions and exposed one candidate’s craving for adoration and submissiveness, provoking waves of uncertainty and fear. uk canada goose
cheap Canada Goose The Republican convention was notable for its emptiness of vision, ideas, or even hope. Its singular aim was to frighten canada goose clearance sale us into entrusting our future to a demagogue with a barren soul. cheap Canada Goose
The strategists for Donald Trump have concluded that stoking anger and division is their only way to win. An opening night dedicated to the theme “make America safe again” became a hymn of hatred against Hillary Clinton. The second night was canada goose deals more venomous yet, its centerpiece Chris Christie’s indictment of Clinton as delegates buy canada goose jacket shouted “lock her up”.
Indeed Clinton, not Trump, was the central figure of both nights. Bereft of credible reasons that Trump should be our president, the party resorted to hysterical reiterations of why Clinton should not.
A grieving mother Canada Goose Parka of a son lost at Benghazi essentially accused Clinton of murder. A state representative from New Hampshire said she should be “shot for treason”. And the inimitable Ben Carson revealed that Clinton is the handmaiden of Satan himself.
canada goose coats Like Lucifer, we discovered, Hillary Clinton is responsible for all evil canada goose clearance in the world. Thus Paul Manafort’s revelation that Canada Goose online Melania Trumps plagiarism a stunning example of organizational ineptitude had become an issue only because of Hillary Clinton’s war on other women. canada goose coats
Canada Goose Online And what of Paul Ryan, the GOP’s erstwhile man of big ideas? His presentation was largely Trump free. To tepid applause, he assured those assembled that unity is everything and Hillary must go truly a program for the ages. Canada Goose Online
To whom, one began to wonder, are they appealing beyond partisans who are as beyond reason as Pavlov’s dogs? Even the assembled loyalists began evincing a certain fatigue of spirit.
So they seemed resuscitated by Ted Cruz whose remarkable achievement it was to give them someone other than Hillary Clinton to hate. Specifically, Cruz himself.
Canada Goose Outlet True, inspiring loathing is his greatest gift. But your own party’s convention is a unique opportunity, and Cruz did not disappoint. Canada Goose Outlet
Canada Goose Coats On Sale Like the legion of others who can’t stomach Trump and have ambitions of their own John Kasich leaps to mind Cruz could have stayed away. Instead he delivered a self satisfied paean to principal which ran 15 minutes overtime, which he capped by imploring conservatives to vote their conscience in November. He might as well have said that any conservative with a conscience should never vote for Trump. Canada Goose Coats On Sale
True enough. But delegates booed the apostate vociferously. So visceral was the atmosphere that Heidi Cruz had to be escorted from the floor.
Were Cruz not the enemy of oleaginous opportunism, an observer might canada goose have seen his moment of payback as simple justice. It was Trump, after all, who mocked his wife’s appearance in a tweet, and who linked Cruz’s father to the JFK assassination low points even in a year where The Donald dragged our politics into the primordial ooze.
But where the two antagonists so richly deserve each other, we were left to wonder why Trump allowed yet another night to veer from any sane person’s idea of a message especially given that Trump’s people knew what was coming well beforehand. Leaving us to wonder yet again whether Trump is stupifyingly incapable of running a convention, a campaign or, God help us, country, or whether his idea of a successful liftoff stems from World Wide Wrestling.
And so Mike Pence’s moment in the sun became an afterthought. Though he proved himself a serviceable attack dog, his speech was standard right wing boilerplate which had little to do with anything Trump Canada Goose Jackets purports to believe.
canada goose coats on sale This raised a question had Trump indeed taken over the party or, in the minds of its establishment, was he merely a veneer on the same old stuff canada goose store which had gotten the GOP in such trouble with its base. A companion curiosity is whether Trump even noticed. canada goose coats on sale
uk canada goose outlet But the ostentatiously Christian Pence recycled another familiar trope lying. Invoking the deaths at Benghazi once again, he declaimed, “It was Hillary Clinton who left Americans in harm’s way in Benghazi and after four Americans fell, canada goose black friday sale said,’ What difference at this point does it make?'” uk canada goose outlet
canada goose This was no casual lie. Quite deliberately, Pence wrenched Clinton’s response to a question about the attacks during a congressional hearing completely out of context, converting her comment on canada goose outlet the question itself to an expression of indifference about four tragic deaths. canada goose
canada goose uk outlet The GOP makes much of Clinton’s supposed character flaws. But Pence’s self proclaimed Christianity, it seems, does not preclude slander and mendacity in the service of ambition, especially when Pence is forging a personal relationship with his political savior not Jesus Christ but, regrettably, buy canada goose jacket cheap Donald Trump. Even more lamentable is that his master has made such smears so routine that his acolyte’s emulation went widely unremarked. canada goose uk outlet
canada goose factory sale As for Trump himself, there was no mistaking the meaning of his acceptance speech. canada goose factory sale
canada goose uk thomas-sz.com black friday It introduced a GOP without pride or principle, an empty sound stage in the service of Donald Trump. As David Brooks put it, “This is less a party than a personality cult.” And the personality it serves is that of a demagogue who stampedes the electorate with lies and fear in order to serve himself. canada goose uk black friday
His speech was a remarkable moment in our political history. As a matter of intellectual rigor, I routinely deplore the facile references to fascism and its progenitors which the left too often deploys as a shorthand for leaders or movements they deplore. I will try to do better here.
canadian goose jacket But first, a confession. canada goose coats on sale When Trump appeared on stage, I began wondering where I had seen those mannerisms before the semi comical strut, the pursed lips and look of self satisfaction, the self preening tendency to present his profile for the crowd, first left, then right. Then the original came to me: film clips of Benito Mussolini. canadian goose jacket
Canada Goose Parka You can’t say this in a column, I admonished myself at once it’s too glib, too cheap and, ultimately, explains nothing. Then Trump started speaking. And so honesty requires me to acknowledge the historical antecedents for Trump’s performance all the more so because far too many in the media have normalized this speech beyond its due. Canada Goose Parka
Its components were classic and quite simple.
“The irresponsible rhetoric of our president, who has used the pulpit of the presidency to divide us by race and color, has made America a more dangerous environment than, frankly, I have ever seen.”
“Not only have our citizens endured domestic disaster, but they have lived through cheap Canada Goose one international humiliation after another.”
canada goose store “I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal Canada Goose Outlet agendas before the national good.” canada goose store
“Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by the administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.”.