Obama gold-mine
While so many are shocked such a plodding mind as that of the bombastic Donald Trump, an obtuse man with no vision, no sense of integrity whatever and a cruel penchant for inciting violence, has managed to ascend to the lead in the race for the Republican nomination, Obama is not.
Judging from his speech in Austin, Texas to the Democratic National Committee, America’s leader sees the rise of Donald Trump, or someone like him, as inevitable given the path the GOP has taken in recent years.
Reading Obama’s speech is akin to learning a gold-mine was right where you thought it would be — and yet you were unable to find it on your own. Obama’s words make sense, they click, they connect us with thoughts about Donald Trump that most of us have had but were unable to articulate.
Indeed, it would be hard slogging to detail how Trump has come to be in the position he is in despite his lack of character and intelligence. But after Obama’s speech, there’s no need to.
Obama on Trump
Here then are exerts from a speech he wasn’t simply reading off a prompter to make but one he was newly minting as he went along. You don’t get the same effect as hearing them but these words show how he can coalesce our own thoughts into acute meaning; they also show that the American president is not only insightful but at times rather funny:
“We’ve got a debate inside the other party that is fantasy and schoolyard taunts and selling stuff like it’s the Home Shopping Network,” Obama told his audience. “(But) how can you be shocked? This is the guy, remember, who was sure that I was born in Kenya – who just wouldn’t let it go.
“And all that time the Republican establishment (was) saying nothing. As long as it was directed at me, they were fine with it. They thought it was a hoot, wanted to get his endorsement,” Obama continued.
“Then now, suddenly, we’re shocked that someone could be fanning anti-immigrant sentiment…that someone is playing loose with the facts…(yet) what is happening in this primary is just a distillation of what’s been happening inside their party for more than a decade.
“I mean, the reason that many of their voters are responding (to Trump’s rhetoric) is because this is what’s been fed through the messages they’ve been sending for a long time – that you just make flat assertions that don’t comport with the facts.
“That you just deny the evidence of science. That compromise is a betrayal. That the other side isn’t simply wrong, or we just disagree, we want to take a different approach, but that the other side is destroying the country, or treasonous. I mean, that’s – look it up. That’s what they’ve been saying.
“So they can’t be surprised when somebody suddenly looks and says, you know what, I can do that even better,” Obama noted. “I can make stuff up better than that. I can be more outrageous than that. I can insult people even better than that. I can be even more uncivil.
“I mean, conservative outlets have been feeding their base constantly the notion that everything is a disaster, that everybody else is to blame, that Obamacare is destroying the country. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s true. It’s not ‘we disagree with this program, we think we can do it better.’ It’s ‘oh, this is a crisis!’
“So if you don’t care about the facts, or the evidence, or civility, in general in making your arguments, you will end up with candidates who will say just about anything and do just about anything.
“And when your answer to every proposal that I make, or that Democrats make, is no, it means that you’ve got to become more and more unreasonable because that’s the only way you can say no to some pretty reasonable stuff. And then you shouldn’t be surprised when your party ultimately has no ideas to offer at all.”
Trumping The Donald
In contrast to those insights, from The Donald you’ll get outright lying along with insults hurled at immigrants, minorities and women. You even get a cocky boast about the size of his penis and exhorting crowds to violence, one of many recent examples his telling supporters at a rally to “knock the crap out of” a protester.
Incidentally, Obama didn’t just trash the GOP. He also spoke of Republicans who are of sound and reasonable mind and do not thrive on hyperbole and anger. There is a significant percentage of them who fit that bill and their sitting president didn’t tar and feather all conservatives with the same political brush.
“There are thoughtful conservatives – good people in the Republican Party, good people who are Republican voters who care about poverty and they care about climate, and don’t resort to insults, and are troubled by what’s happening inside their own party,” Obama said.
“I know them. I’ve talked to them. But they’ve got to acknowledge why this happened – because some of them have been writing that, ‘Well, the reason our party is going crazy is because of Obama.’ Which is a pretty novel idea. The notion is Obama drove us crazy.
“Now, the truth is, what they really mean is their reaction to me was crazy and now it has gotten out of hand,” he added. “But that’s different. I didn’t cause the reaction. The reaction is something that they have to take responsibility for and then figure out how do we make an adjustment.”
Finally, it is not only the rank and file American who might gain by hearing Obama’s words on Donald Trump. The Republican Party establishment, those in the command center, should also consider them. For they might still be able to return their party back to one of sound principal and reasonable debate.
And what if it’s already too late to re-inject the GOP with reason? Then as I’d suggested in this space after the 2012 election, the Republican Party may see members with views like those of Donald Trump break away entirely, form their own party. Most will come from the nascent movement known as The Tea Party and many will trumpet solutions not found in the ballot box.
That’s because the splitting of the GOP would leave the conservative wing of America with very little chance of winning an election and that would lead to even more anger from extremists, a scenario which could bring an outbreak of violence far greater than what we are seeing now at Trump rallies.
It is scary but possible and if you don’t think so then don’t just listen to Barack Obama — listen to Donald Trump.
