On the Opinion page of the July 23 Albuquerque Journal, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas writes that Donald Trump's acceptance speech was too loud, and he declared that: "Modulation is the key to good public speaking." This is a welcome antidote for those who single out Hillary Clinton for shouting her speeches.
Besides agreeing with Thomas on Trump's speech being too loud and too long, I found Thomas's comments on the content of the speech to be wrong on almost every count. Thomas cites the latest Real Clear Politics data showing 69.3 percent of those polled believing that the United States is on the wrong track and adds that one has to go back to Jimmy Carter to see similar numbers. Wrong track polling has been done frequently during recent years and the results consistently show that about two-thirds of respondents say the nation is on the wrong track. One poll taken in 2015 added the question of whether more or less government is needed to get on the right track. The respondents split 50-50 on the question, meaning that the public didn't have a clear remedy to offer.
Cal Thomas alluded to Trump promising to be a "law and order" president, with "specifics to come." Given that Donald Trump is notorious for not giving specifics for his policy proposals, it is unlikely that specifics will come. What Thomas did not say was that crime statistics, as measured by the FBI, have fallen significantly since the early 1990s and have continued to decline during President Obama's time in office. No president can end crime, or end it quickly, as Trump proposes to do.
Donald Trump's proposals to torture "beyond" waterboarding; allow soldiers to commit war crimes; and his encouragement of violence against protesters are not attributes of a "law and order"president.
Thomas claims "Poor children are trapped in failing public schools and Democrats won't let them escape." It is no deep, dark secret that Republicans have pushed school vouchers because they want to weaken teachers' unions.
When Thomas speaks of blue-collar workers who "haven't had a significant pay raise in years," he fails to mention that Trump wants to leave the minimum wage issue to the states and Trump is a strong foe of labor unions -- two avenues of increasing worker pay.
It is when Donald Trump said: "Only I can fix it." that movement conservatives should have started shaking in their boots. Trump rules out any role for Congress in fixing what he views as a nation falling apart. Republicans have been fierce in their condemnation of President Obama legislating from the White House, yet Trump's "go it alone" course will make Obama look like a "wet-behind-the-ears" amateur. A key tenet of movement conservatives is that the smaller and weaker the government is, the better, while Trump is saying that government will remedy all of America's problems by himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment