PARTSCH: One candidate Trump-eting our demise

With masses of Americans flocking to abandon their party’s principles, and allowing their own moral centers to be corrupted by drinking the magic elixir known as ‘Make America Great Again!,” a snake oil salesman and 1980’s wrestling heel come to life is on the precipice of destroying the Grand Old Party.
Not any of Donald Trump’s own shady business dealings; his tabloid-filled personal life; his political affiliations (which blow as the wind — or cash — does); his core values (or rather his lack thereof); his deplorable treatment of women; his televised bullying of fellow candidates and journalists nor his faux Christian persona has stopped Trump from seizing control of the Republican nomination for U.S. President.
After Super Tuesday, the billionaire with the ridiculous hair has locked up 316 delegates and seems primed to be atop the Republican ticket for this November’s general election.
Dozens upon dozens of some of the most trusted and revered conservative leaders in our country have railed, to little effect mind you, against Trump since he entered the race last summer.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist George Will stated in a column that “conservatives’ highest priority now must be to prevent Trump from the Republican nomination.”
Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay wrote in the Christian Post that Trump’s speech at Liberty University (where he famously stated Two Corinthians instead of Second Corinthians) was “insulting to Christians everywhere,” and his reasoning had nothing to do with the Corinthians flub.
Former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn stated “Donald Trump’s campaign is a fabrication. He is perpetuating a fraud on the American people.”
Female pro-life leaders, as well as national pro-life organizations, teamed up (in an open letter) to urge voters in Iowa “to support anyone but Donald Trump.”
And of course there was the National Review which boldly dedicated an entire issue to why Trump was the wrong individual for the Republican nomination, including featuring 22 short essays by the likes of Glenn Beck, Thomas Sowell and Mark Helprin to name a few.
The magazine stated, “A philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strongman overtones.”
But Trump does have the endorsement of former Klu Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke who was quoted last week saying, “Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage.”
Hey, an endorsement is an endorsement I guess.
Yet despite all of that, Trump’s candidacy keeps rolling right along and when his rabid fan base is presented with actual facts which prove that he is anything but a conservative or Republican for that matter, they simply take on the persona of their leader, a bully. Or as Beck has called them “brown shirts,” which is a reference to Adolph Hitler’s infamous paramilitary group.
Trump, and his followers, gladly touts his impressive business background.
Yes, the man — who has never possessed an item that didn’t need to be plated in 24K gold and have his name stamped on it — has been successful in the real estate business. But he has also suffered numerous failures.
Four of his enterprises have filed for bankruptcy, including one three times, his short-lived airline had to be signed over to this creditors, and his aggressive business model helped destroy a sports league (USFL). Not to mention a search engine, a vodka brand, a mortgage company, a university (more like seminars) that have all borne his name also failed.
Is this the man — who is notorious for not paying his creditors on time or at all — that will solve our nation’s economy and bring new industry to the U.S.? No. But he will be the man who will probably install gold floors into the West Wing and then leave us taxpayers with the bill.
Nor is “The Donald” a Republican, much less a conservative. He is a populist egomaniac disguising himself as a conservative. The man has officially changed party affiliation five times, and has donated to several liberal Democrats (like Harry Reid and Charlie Rangel) over the years (more than half a million to be exact) since 1990.
Of course the former reality TV star and World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer has donated several times to one Democrat in particular. The name escapes me right now... Oh yeah, it is Hillary Clinton. Fun fact: The likely Democrat nominee had a front row seat at Trump’s third wedding.
Heck, if Clinton hadn’t been a lock to receive the nomination, Trump would have run as a Democrat.
As for being a social conservative, well Trump is not that either. He is working on marriage number three. He cheated on his first wife with the woman who would become his second and has a storied history of degrading women on the Howard Stern Show, where topics ranged from discussing celebrity breast implants, rating women on a 10-point scale, which women had he had sex with and who he would want to have sex with.
All this, of course, is extremely presidential.
Trump does not share the values of the Republican Party or conservatives, which explains why he is so quick to take down leaders that have come before him. He has questioned the war hero credentials of Sen. John McCain.
There is plenty to criticize McCain for, like his flip-flopping on issues for decades, but his time as a POW in Vietnam is not one of them.
Trump most recently took shots at former President George W. Bush, faulting him for the terror attacks on September 11, 2001.
Once again, there is plenty to criticize Bush for but the day the towers fell is not one of them.
Trump doesn’t care to unite the party and he doesn’t care to bring people together. The only thing he cares about is himself and his own interests, and at the moment that is doing whatever it takes to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I think a pretty famous Republican once wrote something about a house being divided, what was his name again? Oh yeah, that was Abraham Lincoln, who I am pretty certain Trump would mock for a slew of different reasons.
It is no surprise then that the New York Times recently reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has informed members of the GOP to run negative ads against Trump, that way the other Republicans on the ticket this fall can distance themselves from the most polarizing figure in modern history.
Yet, that won’t stop voters, including here in Louisiana, to cast their vote in the primaries for Trump.
I fully understand the despair and rage being felt for those who are currently out of work due to the economy, particularly those hurt by the oil field crunch here in Louisiana, as well as Texas and Oklahoma.
I understand and even sympathize that many of these voters who believe that the government has overreached its grasp, and that the federal government has no right to tell them how to live, or specifically forcing him or her to carry health care insurance.
The emotions of these voters possess are authentic and as Americans these individuals want someone to change things, to have someone think about the blue-collar folks that truly embodied the American dream.
Yet despite all of his grandiose talk, Trump is not these voters political savior. He is not a modern-day Ronald Reagan. Trump will prove to be the man who will further push these voters and their families into further despair and turmoil.
If elected — and that is a big “if” because him winning the nomination will make Clinton, unbelievably, a sympathetic figure and probably push her into the White House — Trump would make the United States nothing less than an international joke.
No leader worth a salt will take anything he says seriously. Trump will try his grade-school bullying technique by spewing sound bites about “huge walls” and “the best attack plan ever”. Those leaders, like say, Vladimir Putin will have him begging for mercy within days. As a rule of thumb, any leader who only plays the role of bully stands no chance to evil men who bully by way of imprisonment and murder. Fact.
World history shows us a long and unfortunate recurring tale of men rising to power during desperate times, then betraying those who willingly gave them power as each “leader” plunged their countries, in which they proclaim to love, into the dark abyss.
Trump is feeding off voters emotions to get what he desires even more than zeroes in his bank account, gold-plated hotels and model wives, and that is absolute power.
Republicans, conservatives, and for that matter American voters, deserve better than Trump and there are other alternatives, good ones that are also on the ballot.
But if my fellow Louisiana voters choose to ignore the warning signs, and go to the polls this Saturday still willing to buy the Trump Snake Oil then the only people they can blame for how this country turns out will be themselves.
The choice is yours.