I can't for the life of me understand why attackers of Trump keep taking this line when it's clearly ridiculous. Donal Trump is a businessman, a showman, and celebrity because of his success and his ability to appeal the the average guy even though he's a billionaire. The Kardashians are celebrities because of two things--their father's connection to the OJ trial and their endless quests for publicity. Some would say they are famous for trying to be famous. There's no comparison there--the Kardashians are famous without having earned it, the Donald earned his fame the hard way. Calling his supporters stupid or uniformed is unlikely to deter them from their support, in fact it sounds like an elitist argument saying "the poor rubes are being misled, now you stupid people get back on the GOPe plantation and do what's good for ya."
It's been a long time since we had a businessman for president, one who would actually cut waste and fire people who abuse the system, so I've always though Donald Trump would run the government more like a business and that's appealing to me. Also, I want a president who will enforce the existing laws and not keep ignoring them and calling for more laws when bad things happen because of government incompetence.
So to answer the question, what would make me dislike Trump would be for him to espouse views that encourage lawbreaking, enable the bureaucracy, or to undermine the pinnings of the Constitution. After all, the Presidency is an executive position and requires an executive who has a vision, follows the rules, and makes wise choices. The leader of the US also needs to be able to persuade people if they disagree, prioritize how funding is spent based on the budget approved by congress, and reign in the bureaucracy to make it run better and follow their mission statements. It should not matter a great deal if the President is liberal or conservative as long he's a good executive and follows the rules/laws of the land.
So, having said that, what do I think of this article? Here are the points made by the author and my comments on same.
being a repeat donor to Clinton and other Democrats -- Donald Trump is from New York. He does large business deals and builds things that require signoffs by the local, state, and federal government. I'd wager that most of these donations were to keep the various governments from putting a monkey wrench into the permit/approval process. It's also worth looking back at what those candidates were saying at the time. Generally, even though they were democrats, they weren't as liberal as they appear to us now(or it was not known how liberal they were to the general public). In particular, if you look at Clinton's early speeches, they were pretty conservative in tone. Of course I knew he was lying, but a great many people did not.
I ask because I would have thought that using Michael Moore’s talking points on 9/11 might have been that point for principled conservatives.--So just because Michael Moore is a liberal whacko, we should never listen to what he says. I though conservative were about listening to the message and not attacking the messenger. Sure Michal more is wrong 99% of the time, but Bush came in promising to restore the rule of law and enforcing immigration laws, and then he didn't do it. You can make the argument that if the existing immigration laws were enforced, we'd have caught half of the 9/11 hijackers who were here on expired visas. Any of them might have talked and ruined the plan.
defending federal funding of Planned Parenthood--So this is one of those things where the media distorted what Donald said. He said if there good things PP did, we should keep funding those and cut off the funding for the abortion part of PP. So if we actually did that, most people know that abortions is all PP does and under that definition Donald actually called for defunding it, but the media chose to go with the first part, and talk about PP as a "women's health clinic"
adopting Democrat rhetoric on the need to raise taxes--Personally, I don't think anyone should pay over 25% in taxes. Having said that, I think everyone should pay something in taxes and those taxes should be fair. It is funny to me that for all the rhetoric the Democrats spout about making the rich pay their fair share, they've ignored this one particular tax that oddly low because it benefits their buddies. Why not turn their own rhetoric on them and point out this fact? Using their own rhetoric to make a conservative point is not a sin, it's actually damned clever.
publicly professing a love for eminent domain --this one gives me a little trouble because it's about property right and what the government can do under eminent domain. This one's clearly in the constitution, so that's not the problem, the issue comes down to disputes about public use, and in a city like New York where parts of the city have aged can the government step in and rebuild an area if people don't want to leave? It's not as clear cut as property right--should one or two people be able to hole of redevelopment that would benefit many more people? This is not a slam dunk in a city as it would be in the country--in the country, you can just go get more land. In the city there is no more land, so what do you do when you've a developer ready to go and everyone sells but a few?
I haven’t even gotten into the insanely liberal things Trump said and did before he decided to run for President, because apparently being an unprincipled and opportunistic flip flopper only bothers principled conservatives when the candidate in question is Mitt Romney--This is simply a lie. Romney served as governor and them flipped positions when running for president. Donald has not held public office, he was merely stating his opinions on things as he was asked about them without knowing much about them. Under these conditions, people tend re repeat the current poplar mantras, and he is from NYC, so the popular mantras tend to be liberal. If you read his books, however, you will see his opinions as far back as 2000 were not as liberal as presented in the media. Perhaps some of his comments were also sarcasm or meant to tweak the media so they would cover his project or help him make a deal. Seriously, does any remember how flip flop was invented for John Kerry, and the reason it got transferred to Mitt was that his positions were exactly the same ones that Kerry flip-flopped on?
betrayed as many conservative principles as Trump has --really, is presenting an alternate opinions betraying conservative principle now? Call me when Trump comes out for gun control, tax increases on the middle class, and open borders. Wait, he's against all those things? Wait, what conservative principles did he betray exactly?
Is it attacking the media? No, he's done that and won. Was it pointing out RINOs in congress and the media? Is it that he calls out people when they tell lies? I'm struggling to come with anything on the level of a betrayal. The closest I can get is that he supported the Kelo decision, and that's not as clear cut as everyone is making it out to be. So what is it then--is it that he's not clearly enough pro life? That he's not railed against gay marriage? Are those the only reasons I should vote against him, even though all his other positions are clearly more conservative than everyone but Cruise? And that's he's clearly to the right of Cruise on immigration and trade policies? How again has he "betrayed conservative principles?"
The PP conundrum is because PP has done such a clever job of polishing their brand image with these “non abortion women’s services.”
Practically, what kind of policy decision could be made? That any provider of “non abortion women’s services” that gets Federal benefits must not do so under the same brand as any abortion facility, or do so in any other manner that promotes abortions. That at least puts the issue in generic terms and doesn’t take the legally difficult position of singling out PP by name. I think both the GOP side of Congress, and Trump, would go for that.