By Mark Rhoads -
One of President Abraham Lincoln's most memorable quotes came at the end of his Second Inaugural Address in 1865 and it showed his vision for uniting the country after the Civil War if he had lived.
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
If Donald Trump wants to unite the Republican Party, let alone the nation, he will have to reject the malice he has indulged in since last June and show some respect for others who differ with his views. I am not sure he can fix his narcissistic personality disorder now at age 70, but he needs to try if he wants to win.
Unlike his GOP rivals, the Democratic nominee will not run out of money and just drop out. Trump claims he is not a racist. Oh really? Can you imagine that he would refer to a child of Irish or English or Australian parents born at O"Hare Airport as an "anchor baby" who was not entitled to American citizenship by birth here? Or is that term only for children whose parents speak Spanish at home?
The only crime of Ted Cruz was to be born of an American mother in Canada and Trump made a silly challenge to his qualifications on that factor alone. So far, news media have not pinned Trump down on specifics but that is over from now on. The Faustian bargain that Fox News made with Trump for ratings is over.
If Trump really wants to be president next year, he has to find some way to carry states that total 270 Electoral Votes, which means he has to carry states that McCain and Romney could not carry in 2008 or 2012. I cannot see how that math works on the current map of the country.
Maybe a Trump supporter who reads Illinois Review can reply with a list of states and prove me wrong. I would welcome that practical list.
Ask Georgia that, Mark, or anywhere else along the path of what in 1865 none dare called war crime.
I see that Mark pulled the race card in here, too, because Trump won’t pander to Hispanic people the way that Johnson pandered to black people but Goldwater wouldn’t.
The biggest mistake in this country’s history was when anti-Goldwater Republicans gave Johnson the votes to trash the trajectory of this country, which took 50 years to come to roost.
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Michigan
New Jersey
He will be competitive in New York and Connecticut.
He will win all of the states that Romney won in 2012.
The real intolerant people are the Republicans who dismissed the policy concerns of the working class on trade, open borders and foreign wars as protectionist, racist and isolationist. They ignored flyover country for so long that the only real political solution was a brash candidate like Trump, who who look out for their interests – finally.
The Republican Party is being reborn anew. Those who do not wish to come along or adjust their views to the realities of the world can leave it and go howl at the moon as far as I am concerned. There are going to be more than enough independents and former Democrats to offset the loss of the inflexible ideologues who have little regard for average Americans. A realignment is at hand.
Democrats view Hispanic people as the new black vote. The black vote became 20 to 1 Democrat by pandering, which conservative populists would not do. It has next to nothing to do with who voted which way on the Civil Rights Act, which Johnson vehemently opposed in 1957. Father Lyndon was quoted as saying that these %^$&* will vote for us for 200 years. Historians have pretended around this by constantly quoting Johnson as saying that they lost the South for 200 years. “Great” Society programs destroyed family in the black community, but they made impoverishment a permanent lifestyle whether by choice OR what Jefferson described as natural aristocracy. In a world where there will always be ditch-diggers (or whatever they’re going to do after machines replace them), all of a sudden an entire category of people were told by Democrats that they’re low-performers and it’s because of constant and perpetual discrimination by white people. Who in their sane mind seriously believes that this isn’t the real reason why there is 20-1 voting in the U.S.? The paranoia over Trump is that he is actually doing for white people, working class because rich people don’t need it, what Democrats do for black people and lately hispanic people. They’re absolutely flustered by it, panicked, and of course shout racism repeatedly. And some people still wonder what father Lyndon’s motivation was for supporting the 1965 Immigration “reform” Act, which almost every Congressional Republican and every anti-Goldwater Republican voted for!