Republican office holders are filling the media trying to distance themselves from Trump. Oh, dear! Listen to Trump! Trump is saying he doesn't trust Muslims and we should stop letting them visit or immigrate until things settle down and we figure out how to protect Americans.
"Why is he saying such things?" Here's why. Some 53% of Republicans say they are "strongly unfavorable" to Islam and another 22% are "somewhat unfavorable". Total: 75%
In a Bloomberg poll 65% of Republicans said they agreed with Trump that Muslims should be banned from coming to America.
Democrats feel a little better about Islam, with only 45% unfavorable, but Trump is running in the Republican primary.
Here is a link to the poll: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/islam-views-poll_56686448e4b080eddf5678ce?utm_hp_ref=politic
I have commented in earlier blog posts that Trump has set the Republican agenda in this campaign. The candidates vary considerably in tone (Trump and Christie in your face; Bush and Kasich mild and earnest; Rubio, Cruz, and Fiorina polished) but all of them are saying approximately the same thing:
**they hate Obama
**the economy has gotten worse under Obama
**America is a weak pushover
**Planned Parenthood terrible and so is abortion
**white Christians and their traditional values are under attack
This is a vision of white Christian America in decline and every candidate, plus Fox News and talk radio, all say the same things. Carefully. No pathway for citizenship for immigrants. Christian Syrian refugees only. "Slow down and smell the falafel." End the 14th Amendment. Arm good Americans to protect against foreign terrorists. Question Obama's religion and birthplace. English only. No sharia law. No beheadings. Stop food stamps.
Those coded statements gets the message across that the candidate "gets it", that the candidate is a defender of a traditional America. The code allows them to avoid obvious we-they racism, while playing to the crowd, pandering to the anti-Muslim sentiment. Fox News helped create Trumpism and they practice code speak constantly.
But Trump is extemporaneous and he has the common touch I have seen first hand as he works and plays off his crowd. Trump is a plain talker. Trump says openly that he doesn't trust Muslims for the very good reason that some of them are trying to kill Americans, destroy our cities, and end our civilization, and he likens himself to FDR.
Stripped of code Trump's views sound like ethnic and religious bigotry. Trump's crime is not that he is out of the mainstream of Republican candidates, because all of them are working the same political themes. They all are getting applause when they tickle the same hot buttons in the audience. Trump's crime is that he says the message unmistakably, stripped of code. It is why he embarrasses the Republican establishment, but it is also why the Republican audiences love Trump.
1 comment:
Are the New York Times and Washington Post making Trump’s case that the mainstream media “is dishonest, so dishonest”?
In my opinion, the answer is more clearly becoming “yes”. Two recent major cases in point are the failure of American mainstream media to cover (1) the call by European Council President Donald Tusk to detain some migrants “if need be up to the 18 months” in order to “check their identity”; and (2) the growing threats to British and French truck drivers by migrants with knives and CS gas trying to force their way into the UK from Calais, France. (See news links below). Reporting on these news events would be contrary to the narrative against Trump by virtually all American mainstream media. Were Trump to advocate such detention of migrants pending security checks, he would certainly be pummeled by Times and Post headlines denouncing him for espousing extremist values, and “hate speech”. And to report on the disturbing and escalating level of migrant violence at Calais would support Trump’s narrative that migrants are prone to criminal conduct. In short, the Times, Post and other mainstream media have decided to parse facts carefully for the purpose of maintaining an anti-Trump agenda. While that purpose may well be for the good of our country, we will all likely pay a high price if that is how we wage battle against Trump’s ideas.
For the majority of Americans who tell pollsters that they fear terrorist attacks and criminality from migrants, they must turn to Breitbart, Fox News, and other conservative outlets to inform themselves about terrorism and immigration issues. Because these conservative media groups accurately and fairly cite as their sources mainstream European press, such as the Guardian, BBC and Reuters, the inescapable conclusion of millions of readers is that American mainstream media, indeed, is unfairly not reporting the “real news”, or worse, censoring it. This is undoubtedly fueling Trump’s unrelenting assaults on American mainstream media as being untrustworthy, or in his words, “dishonest, so dishonest”. As a subscriber and avid reader of both the New York Times and Washington Post, I have concluded that, at a minimum, I would keep myself ill informed on these two issue were I not to read Breitbart, Fox News and even Pamela Geller. On these two issues, I am loathe to say that conservative media sources more consistently report on the more inclusive coverage offered by European mainstream media.
My main complaint here is not as a consumer disappointed for being shortchanged on the news he is paying for. Instead, my concern is that mainstream American media, like the Times and the Post, are undermining the press as an institution critical to our democracy generally, and to our elections in particular. Making Trump’s case for him that we cannot trust the media portends far worse consequences than his companion message that we cannot trust any political leader who has served in government.
Links:
Tusk call for migrant detention:
Reuters http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKBN0TL2U520151202
Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/detain-refugees-arriving--europe-18-months-donald-tusk
Calais migrant violence against truckers:
Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/30/lorry-drivers-refugees-calais-warn-escalating-violence
BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35047731
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