ByĀ Fareed Zakaria
A main cause of the rise of extremism in the world of Islam has been the cowardice of Muslim moderates, who for decades chose not to condemn bad ideas and ugly rhetoric. Fearing that theyād be seen as ideological weaklings, theyāve avoided confronting the cancer in plain sight. It is now clear that a similar dynamic has been at play in the world of conservatism.
Mitt Romney should be congratulated for making a speech calling Donald Trump a phony and a fraud. But where was he in 2012, when Trump was pushing his nasty ā and utterly false ā campaign casting doubt on President Obamaās U.S. citizenship?
By Trumpās side in Las Vegas, as E.J. Dionne Jr. reminds us in his book āWhy the Right Went Wrong.ā āThere are some things that you just canāt imagine happening in your life,ā Romney gushed. āHaving his endorsement is a delight. I am so honored and pleased.ā And although he generally eschewed ābirtherism,ā Romney fed the fires later that year by joking that āno oneās ever asked to see my birth certificate.ā
There have always been radicals on both sides of the political spectrum. But what is different about the conservative movement is that, since the 1990s, some of its most distinguished mainstream members have embraced the rhetoric and tactics of the extremes. A memo put out by Newt Gingrichās political action committee that decade urged Republican candidates to use savage rhetoric against their Democratic opponents. Some of the recommended words were āfailure,ā āpathetic,ā ādisgraceā and āincompetent.ā In the past month, Trump has called Mitt Romney a āfailed candidate,ā Jeb Bush āpathetic,ā Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) āa disgraceā and Obama ātotally incompetent.ā Perhaps he read the memo.
It is gratifying to see the National Review mobilize against Trump, decrying his āfree-floating populismā and disdain for the details of public policy.
But where were the magazineās editors when Sarah Palin put these same forces on full display eight years ago? Loudly cheering her on.
National Reviewās editorĀ praised her for her āplain-spoken, combative way.ā And he was more restrained than the editor of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, who called Palin his āheartthrob.ā
Instead of pointing out that knowledge and expertise are actually things to admire and acquire, not mock, conservative intellectuals expressed admiration.
Robert Kagan, a distinguished writer and a contributing columnist to The Post, declared:
āI donāt take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world. Iām not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palinās experience.ā
It is courageous of dozens of Republican foreign policy leaders now to sign anĀ open letter condemning Trump publicly and refusing to support his candidacy.
But over the past decade, I can recall conversations with some of these individuals in which they refused to accept that there was any problem within the Republican Party, attributing such criticism to media bias.
We still see this denial, with the truly bizarre claim by some in the media that the rise of Trump is really all the fault of .ā.ā. Obama. The logic is varied. For some, it is because he has been so weak. The Wall Street Journal editorial page opined, āThe oldest truism in politics is that demagogues flourish in the absence of leadership.ā (I must confess to never having heard of that ātruismā and wondered how it would explain the rise of Father Charles E. Coughlin and Huey Long during Franklin Rooseveltās reign, or Joseph McCarthy under Dwight Eisenhower.)
For others, however, it is because Obama has been too strong, abusing executive power and elevating himself to center stage. Apparently having Oprah share the stage with you leads to authoritarian populism.
Here is a much simpler explanation for Donald Trump: Republicans have fed the country ideas about decline, betrayal and treason. They have encouraged the forces of anti-intellectualism, obstructionism and populism. They have flirted with bigotry and racism. Trump merely chose to unashamedly embrace all of it, saying plainly what they were hinting at for years. In doing so, he hit a jackpot.
The problem is not that Republican leaders should have begun to condemn Trump last year. It is that they should have condemned the ideas and tactics that led to his rise when they began to flourish 20 years ago.
See: Watch Donald Trump Endorse Mitt Romney for GOP Presidential Candidate
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Hillary has been in bed with the Zionist warmongers since they baited her husband (mossad monica) and he took the bait. This author fails to see that Hillary is a LOT bigger threat to the entire world than Trump.
With Hillary, there is absolutely no doubt we will get embroiled in more ME conflict, that serves one purpose…building “greater Israel”. Last year, the Jewish refugee applications to go to Israel was up 50,000. Is that NOT the goal by roth and nutty and Clinton too?
Trump is not part of the that plan and is thus the one least likely to do harm to the US.
All other Republican presidential contenders are dependent on big business sponsorship. So either way, whether āindependentlyā rich Trump or the other corporate clones, the electoral choice has been ring-fenced by billion-dollar elite interests determining how ordinary Americans exercise their ādemocratic rightā.
http://mycatbirdseat.com/2016/03/supreme-leader-trump-and-the-wall-street-mullahs/
It is amazing how hypocrisy will always expose itself.
Zacharia has recovered a bit of esteem in my eyes. Not much, because I think he is, like the rest of them, a consummate politician who lays with the rest of them.
I know, I sound like sour grapes, but I simply have no regard or respect for Layers, Politicians or Journalists anymore. They are all ambitious frauds and the truth is not in them.
I agree about the hypocracy totally. I can’t stand This idiot. When will ppl learn that it is just a game the R & the L play but not with each other…they are “PLAYING” US. LOSE your political affiliation and it is much ezr to see. Gheeze. This commentary coming from the token Muslim in the CFR? To criticize Trump when the alternative is Hitlery Criminalinton? The woman who probably bullfrogged Ambassador Chris Stevens in the ORAL OFFICE before she had him taken out? That would of course be either while or while not her husband wasn’t having sexual relations with that woman under his desk, Miss Lewinsky? Then you have Shrub Bush, another non convicted felon if anyone else remembers the 2000 election when felons all over Florida took part in the Greatest theft of OFFICE in history and set the stage for the BS we are experiencing now from 911 to ALL-CIA-DUH and ISIS (Israeli Secret Intel Service) and all the war to no end as far as the eye can see. Pro-Pagan-DUH! The shame stream, criminal, corporate, zionnazi media eat it up and regurgitate it back to the masses to digest it good and proper. Trump isn’t a politicriminal…yet…HE or possibly Bernie is a solution and HE is the ONLY candidate who mentions anything about 911 truth so for me, Mr. Zakaria, he who lives in glass houses…
They are fighting words, but oh, so true.
What boring lives we must all have. From apathy just a month ago, to mindless stupidity as we follow the media-driven circus, showing the whole world what we have now become.
The founding fathers, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington would be ashamed of what the USA now represents.
One has to observe that there is no Netanyahu, Kagan, Adelson, Koch, Schumer, Wolfowitz, Abrams or any of at least another 1500 Zionist fifth columnists for Israel as founding fathers, no AIPAC as the default Congress.
One may also observe that there is no respect anywhere in the world for the country that those same founding fathers went to so much effort to establish.
More’s the pity as we will all find out.
One thing is clear. Who endorses whoever in the USA means nothing now. Everyone is out for himself / herself and bugger the voters, decency, honesty and integrity gone by the way. So we see that screaming mass of mindless supporters, one as bad as the other, participating in the Presidential circus. Only in America
Now giving the people the choice of a vote between a arrogant con-man and perhaps the single most dangerous person on the planet, Clinton, a walking disaster who sold herself out the Zionists and Zionism decades ago and is now ready to reap the benefits of all tats grovelling over time to the wealthy financiers of fourth rate aspirants for the title of the most powerful person in the world. Clinton’s feeble Democrats are loaded with Zionist funds ā¦.but, so are the Republicans.
In would be unfair to state that other than the military weapons industry, Clinton is the only enthusiastic proponent of World War III because any Zio-American right now on the hustings would do what they were told by Netanyahu, kingmaker of the USA, and that’s his objective. Just a year has passed since his last commend performance in the US, when we added that disgraceful exhibition of US subservience as the final sell-out of the American people to the Zionists. 3 March , 2015, a day of perfidy along with John Kennedy’s assassination, the 9/11 lies and the bombing of the USS Liberty in 1967.
Netanyahu meeds to know “he owns America” to implement the plan they call “Eretz Israel”, Israel owning everything from the Euphrates to the Nile, the reason for all the problems in the world today. Remember, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iraq an soon to emerge, parts of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Kuwait.
Look it up readers. It’s on the web. It’s there in large type for all to see..
Just look what Netanyahu and his predecessors have got away with so far. Hundreds of nuclear weapons; no signature on the Non Proliferation Treaty; the worst example of an apartheid state in history except for the South in early America; the finger raised on high against UN resolutions, how many times I have lost count; the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on a daily basis; corruption in every national government worth the effort, Canada, the UK, Australia, all always ready to grovel on cue and on it goes.
What has the UN done? Bowed down 66 times to the US Israeli-controlled) veto in the Security Council.
So if there is anyone in America in 2016 who hasn’t enrolled in a course in Hebrew, go out and buy a copy of Hebrew for Dummies, because that’s what you have now become.
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