Trump's convention inferno

Megafires are a phenomenon in nature when debris like branches, dead leaves and dry pine needles are allowed to collect year upon year, sometimes decade upon decade. Add to that hotter and drier climates, and Man's understandable intention to suppress fire. These conditions result in uncontrollable, earth-scorching super-fires such as the one in Yarnell, Arizona in 2013 that killed 19 brave souls; the entirety of the hotshot crew sent in to extinguish it. In 2016, the political landscape has an analogous experience: front-runner Donald Trump. Will he destroy the GOP (as the “Paul Ryan” establishment fears) or will his bile produce a healthier more determined conservative response to intrusive big-government, our woe-filled country, and terrorist-infested world left in shambles by eight years of Barack Obama?

The answer is unknowable 'til election day, but the political tea leaves can be read. Trump is a complete wild card: a sword that cuts both ways. The positive is his true genius is in marketing himself as an “outsider” (who truthfully cannot be “bought” because he is already a billionaire.) While he is not a professional politician (a good thing), anyone who has the “for sale” Clintons to his wedding isn't exactly a babe in the woods when it comes to politics. Essentially, Mr. Trump is running a insurgent third party-style campaign within the umbrella of the Republican Party and it has the elites shaking in their loafers (also a good thing). However, his straight-talk is so unfiltered, his answers so unconsidered they are flippant (read: women “punished” for having legal abortions. Seriously?). One wonders if he is actually a Republican or the progressives caricature of the misogynistic Frankenstein monster they wrongly think a Republican is.

Indeed, Trump's populist rage against insulated do-nothing Republicans and lawless, spendthrift Democrats are the layers of brush, political dead wood Mr. Trump's “firebrand” candidacy is blazing a trail rapidly through. Yet, same as any fire can warm, it can just as readily singe. Is Mr. Trump the former, the latter or both? That is the fundamental question that frames his surprisingly successful candidacy.

On the other hand, there is Ted Cruz, the safer, happy medium between maverick and Washington insider. He has won Wisconsin primary by a robust 13 percent. Will he have the electoral juice to secure the Republican nomination (and defeat Hillary Clinton) or the class to put the people's will first given the current likelihood of a Trump presidency? That means waiting 'til 2020 or beyond (At 70, Trump will best “oldest” Ronald Reagan's 69 years). Complicating all of these moving parts is the economic tipping point for a country given its ever-mounting 19 trillion dollar debt. With a University of Pennsylvania degree in economics, perhaps a businessman like Mr. Trump is better suited to make the hard choices of the near future to rescue America from insolvency? In any case, at only 45, Mr. Cruz has plenty of time. But for what precisely? With the Supreme Court vacancy needing a strict constitutionalist, I wonder if the country would not benefit more in the long-term from 30 years on the court than eventually (perhaps) the executive branch.

Add to this already tangled mess, the self-preserving interests of Republican party leaders, elected officials and deep-pocketed special interests (read: the aforementioned “forest decay” fueling Donald Trump's “megafire” candidacy). These power players are so invested in maintaining the status quo they are ironically willing to facilitate the convention chaos that will likely result in at the high cost of handing the presidency (and the philosophical balance of the Supreme Court) by default to the corrupt Democrat. Even now, these elitists unhappy with Trump (uncontrollable) and Cruz (unlikable) scheme for a brokered convention to insert a hand-picked third option ( Paul Ryan?) who will lose in the general election. (Indeed, how is this top-down exercise any different from Democrats' superdelegates where the fix has been in for Hillary Clinton since day one?) This is the nuclear option that shatters the GOP: new and loyal general election voters will be disenfranchised, Trump might renege on a third party run (and who would blame him), and the rank and file will further suffer under Hillary's version of Obama's legacy-preserving third term. Meanwhile, the GOP elites will “lose” gracefully over Manhattans, and the smoke not emitted by the glow of their self-satisfied cigarettes will be the American Way on fire.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog
http://patriotpost.us/commentators/446
http://www.americanthinker.com/author/david_l_hunter/
http://canadafreepress.com/members/74987/DavidLHunter/976

Race: from the eye of the beholder

Stop The Washington Post presses! One of their race-obsessed scribblers—their intrepid columnist Lonnae O'Neal—has begrudgingly admitted in print that she was wrong! She who previously has seen absolutely every black-white human interaction through that divisive prism—might have had a moment of clarity. A real rarity in political terms: a "come to Jesus" epiphany. Don't expect it to last as habitual race-baiting pays the bills. After all, unlike 93 million able-bodied Americans who can't find a job, Ms. O'Neal doesn't want to inadvertently find herself the latest casualty of Mr. Obama's “5%” unemployment rate.

Her new column, 'Why can’t we agree on what we see when we see race?' addresses her previous one: 'Was classroom arrest a case of excessive force? Just imagine it was a white girl.' Regarding the latter, the reader has not even gotten to body of the article (or the objective details of the situation) and Ms. O'Neal's bias is already in full flower in the title.

Fast-forward two weeks. Suddenly, that which she was so adamant about—that race was the causal factor—perhaps, after all, was incidental to the greater issue of a bullying cop wrongly manhandling an intransigent student. Although Ms. O'Neal is very late to the party of evolved and generally tolerant 21st century race relations, it is a real pleasure to extend a welcoming hand. If she lounges, she will find the waters more than fine.

Today, she sensibly sees video cop incidents, such as the above, as “'racial Rorschach test[s,]' [d]ifferent people seeing the same thing but drawing different conclusions.” In other words, scientifically, one's internal belief system automatically filters physical stimuli into a unique point of view. Therefore, by definition, a “racist” has nothing to do with skin color, but with a mindset that sees every societal ill as framed by a racial cause or consequence.

Is it any wonder 7 years into the most polarizing president in U.S. history who subverts the social order (“The cops acted stupidly”) and engages in race (“If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon”) and class warfare (“You didn't build that”) at every opportunity that attitudes would not be hardened? Indeed, how could they not be? Obama and the abetting MSM (which, of late, Ms. O'Neal has been an active participant) have spawned the Black Lives Matter Frankenstein monster.

Ms. O'Neal has finally seen the enemy that she acknowledges threatens to tear our divided republic asunder from within. Yet, same as our chronically responsibility-phobic president, she has still not realized she was looking in the mirror at the time.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog
http://www.americanthinker.com/author/david_l_hunter/
http://canadafreepress.com/members/74987/DavidLHunter/976