Dump "The Donald" ... Alan Caruba

Dump "The Donald"

By Alan Caruba

Listening to and watching Donald Trump talk with Fox News’s Sean Hannity about how rich he is and how smart he is was truly a vomit-inducing moment. The notion that this extremely successful egomaniac would ever be President of the United States is surreal. It’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington on steroids.

Now we learn that he is going to announce whether he is going to run on the season finale of “The Apprentice.” The show is scheduled to air on May 15. Reportedly he will hold a press conference to announce the decision about being a candidate in the Trump Tower in New York “a few days after” the finale.

This is such a naked sham for the purpose of getting lots of viewers for his show that it should be embarrassing to everyone who has, even momentarily, taken his phony “campaign” to gain the Republican Party’s nomination seriously. Hannity was snookered or, more likely, he was using Trump to hype his show’s ratings and vice versa. In a similar fashion, Fox’s Greta Van Susteren has of late used Trump appearances for her show.

Just as I and others cautioned voters in 2008 that Barack Obama was a completely unknown quantity with a totally fabricated life story, it behooves me to warn voters to GET SERIOUS about Trump.

Running the nation requires credentials that go well beyond being a successful businessman. America has coast-to-coast successful businessmen and women, but if a company’s CEO makes bad decisions, the Board of Directors can fire them. You can’t say “You’re fired!” to the President of the United States until the next election.

Let me get the formalities out of the way. I am not jealous of Donald Trump because he’s rich. Much of the population is richer than me and I could not care less. I understand that Trump has exhibited considerable business acumen, but that is not the same as political acumen, nor does it suggest that it prepares him to deal with heads of state and the nasty events that occur; frequently unexpectedly.

Nor has everything Trump has put his name to been a great success. He gambled on gambling in Atlantic City and that was a bad bet. Fortunately he owed the banks so much money he could write his own ticket. In fairness, all the casinos took a bath. Instead of gambling, the few people visiting Atlantic City these days are there to buy its famous salt water taffy.

Trump is a strident self-promoter. He is a bombast. He lacks subtlety which, for his line of work may be a good thing, but for someone to whom we would have to trust the future of the nation, what he lacks most is the experience that a professional politician acquires over time. I hate to admit this, but it is true. The lack of this experience and judgment is blindingly apparent in the current White House resident.

Trump wants to win—all the time. Politicians want to survive with their principles reasonably intact and a fat government pension. It is a whole different mindset. The ones the voters reject tend to become lobbyists.

We have a history of presidents who just stunk up the job because they came to it as engineers like Hoover and Carter or ivory tower scholars like Wilson. For a long time, Americans elected a succession of generals because the president’s job was mostly about expanding the size of the nation, generally by shooting our way to the West Coast, or fending off Barbary Pirates, yet another of Thomas Jefferson’s many achievements.

Presidents become celebrities AFTER they’ve been in the office. Few are celebrities going in unless, like Obama, their celebrity is totally manufactured by skilled public relations professionals. After two years in the job, the only things we know for sure about Obama is that he’s a moron, probably a Muslim, and definitely a Marxist.

If you want business acumen, Mitt Romney has it to spare. True, he’s a bit of a RINO, but it’s hard to find a Republican these days who isn’t. Gov. Pawlenty is a politician and that is not a bad thing. Gov. Huckabee was a politician, but is now a successful anchor of his own show on Fox News. He is going to stay put. Rep. Bachman is the political equivalent of your ex-wife, smart and, like Trump, impossible to shut up. There's a reason we haven't heard from Sarah Palin lately and that's because she's smart enough to not want the job.

I guarantee you that, within one month of his inaugural, you would be kicking yourself for voting for Trump. His incessant need to demonstrate he knows best and is the greatest president ever would be the mirror image of Barack Obama’s crazed ideology.

Right now Trump is a novelty, a distraction, a false hope. There’s plenty of time for the campaign process to sort out who will be the Republican choice. My bet is that Trump will announce he’s not running. If I am wrong, the happiest man in America will be Barack Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

The GOP’s Choice For President

The GOP’s Choice For President
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

There are those who will say NOW is not the time to expend mental energy on ciphering the inner workings of the GOP and the machinations they go through to choose a presidential candidate. Those who say that may very well be correct, but here we go, anyway.

If I could make one suggestion to the GOP candidate selection corp – it would be that they not present their base with the same tired old candidates they continue to run out each h election cycle.

Oh, and allow me to mention something they may have missed. Sarah Palin, for all her likeability within the conservative branch of the Republican Party, will not be an acceptable choice to carry the GOP banner into the 2012 election for President of the US.

Don’t misunderstand. I LIKE Ms. Palin. In my opinion, she is a powerful engine within the conservatives of the GOP. She can gather a crowd, create a tidal wave of energy within the ranks of the party, and her skill at raising money is akin to that of a money machine. Her support can push a little known candidate across the finish line to victory, as we have seen a number of times already. But she cannot win a race for President against Obama.

That needed saying, as the expression as it, so I said it.

In the first place I think the upper echelon of the Republican Party had rather ingest cyanide than support Ms. Palin as their candidate for President. Left to their own devices I am convinced they would, as they did in 2008, discard the conservative wing of their party and place their support behind a liberal or a RINO candidate with the belief that they can win the 2012 Presidential Election with the support of only liberal and moderate republicans, plus the independent voters. That move was doomed to failure, right from the start, in the 2008 election cycle and it has even less chance of ending in victory in the 2012 election cycle.

I have voted a conservative ballot since my first election at the tender age of 21. I will do the same this next month and again in November of 2012. Like all conservatives my votes always reflect my core beliefs. Conservatives are like that. We will not compromise our beliefs to vote for a GOP candidate who does not share those beliefs just so the Republican Party can claim a victory. Such a victory often turns out to be pyrric, anyway.

There is some evidence that the “higher-ups” in the GOP are beginning to understand this fact. I hope so, for, indeed, the survival of the Republican Party, as a political force in America, literally hangs on their understanding that and accepting that and embracing conservative republicans.

The Republican Party must recognize that Conservatives have the power now to create that viable “third Party” which, I am convinced would quickly move the GOP into third party status and itself into direct contention with the Democratic Party to become the controlling political party in the US. The truth is the Tea Party Movement in America has accomplished that for conservatives.

In one month America’s electorate will go to the polls to decide whether America remain a constitutional republic or is dragged into the slavery of a socialist state akin to the pathetic European socialist entities sometimes referred to as “states.” The conservative movement in America is going head-to-head with the liberal socialists in America to stop that from happening. Conservatives understand, better than anyone, it seems, that socialism is assured death for the American way of life. They give all indications they are determined to concentrate their considerable power on preserving the country and the political system our forefathers labored so hard to obtain and to guarantee for us.

The GOP MUST understand conservatives will settle for nothing less than a genuine conservative candidate for President of the US in 2012. This is not negotiable, period.

Before the GOP makes a mistake they will rue to their dying day, allow me to state as clearly as I know how the following: Conservatives are not so desirous of being rid of the Obama Regime that they (conservatives) will vote for practically anyone the GOP decides to push forward as the party’s choice for President. I assure you that is NOT the case. In fact, it is a sure and certain way to return the Obama Regime to power for another four years.

The bottom line is this: If the GOP decides to ignore the conservative branch of their party this time around, then I expect conservatives will accept the GOP rejection of their values and move on to form their own political party, separate from the Republicans, into which they can pour their considerable political clout, their energy, and their collective talents in an effort to build a better America.

J. D. Longstreet