The Donald has awakened the force

As an independent, I plan to vote in the Republican presidential primary in North Carolina this year because that’s where the real action is. Although I don’t yet know which Republican I’ll vote for, I doubt it will be Donald Trump.

The explanation is simple: Trump’s campaign thus far is devoid of substance. He has yet to offer, and may never offer, any coherent set of proposals that he would implement if elected president of the United States.

Given the magnitude and complexity of the challenges the nation faces on the home front and internationally, Trump’s unwillingness or inability to articulate how he would overcome those challenges is thus far disqualifying. His repeated assertion that he would make America great doesn’t pass the smell test. It doesn’t pass Ronald Reagan’s Trust, But Verify standard because there’s precious little to verify.

But that said, Trump not only won’t go away, he continues to lead his Republican rivals by large margins. Most of his GOP rivals have chosen not to confront him for fear it would be curtains for their campaigns. A few have now begun to attack him out of desperation. It may be far too few, and far too late.

The Democrats and their allies in the media and academe first ignored Trump, believing his candidacy was a short-lived joke. Now, realizing it’s no joke and that it has had a life of its own, they are at the barricades engaged in an all-out effort to destroy him. Their vulnerability is that they do not adequately comprehend the magic in Trump’s bottle and the threat it poses to the status quo they so desperately wish to maintain.

There’s no mystery about Trump’s magic. The public’s outrage at Washington has at long last hit critical mass. The anger is white-hot and palpable. The fury is Trump’s propellant. Trump’s faithful supporters have gotten the self-serving, deceitful Washington establishment in their cross hairs.

The public’s outrage is increasingly directed at all those inside the Beltway who have convinced themselves that they can flaunt their oath of office and get away with it because the American people are too stupid to tumble to their game.

Trump has indicted the entirety of Washington’s ruling oligarchy: President Barack Obama, Congress, the judiciary, and the unaccountable and invisible monstrosity known as the federal bureaucracy. His rivals, whether Republican or Democrat, can’t lay a glove on him because those who support Trump instinctively understand that virtually all his rivals have something in common, something they abhor, a perpetuation of Washington thumbing its nose at folks like you and me.

Trump’s force and its staying power are elemental and easy to grasp. They come down to this: Folks like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are cunning liars. What counts is not what they say they disagree about, things like Obamacare, immigration and ISIS. What counts is what they have in common, unbridled ambition to win an election and then spend the next four years spinning their way to re-election.

When an aroused citizenry makes those connections, the nation is in uncharted and turbulent water. And there’s more. Citizen outrage is not limited only to Republicans. What the pollsters, pundits and political class don’t yet adequately grasp is that there are also millions of Democrats who are ready to jump ship. When the Clinton campaign “Feels The Bern” in Iowa and New Hampshire by Feb. 9, its smug confidence will disintegrate into terror.

The nightmare for those who must find a way to destroy Trump is that their weapon of choice, political correctness, won’t work this time. Calling him a bigot, a racist, a bully, vulgar or a jerk won’t drive him to ground as it has done to so many before him. Remarkably and delightfully, the political correctness crowd has met its match. And that is long overdue and welcome indeed.

I have no idea whether Trump fully understands what his candidacy represents and what propels it. Surely he knows he’s a lightning rod, and he knows that lightning is a force that can’t be harnessed, even by an entrenched and corrupted political class in Washington.

Perhaps The Donald is cagier than most realize. What if he believes he doesn’t need to address substance and policy until after he’s the GOP nominee? What if he’s right?

Who knows? Maybe we won’t have to wait till 2017 for Hollywood’s version of chapter eight of “Star Wars.” Perhaps the awakened force of the American people will be made manifest in 2016 in ways no one could have foreseen. The dark side inside the Beltway trembles!

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at: EmailMe

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