Mountain Views News          Saturday, May 21, 2016

B3

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, May 21, 2016 

Mountain 
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MICHAEL Shannon


FOR RENT: DONALD TRUMP

 Donald Trump has upended presidential campaign 
conventional wisdom yet again. In past years, it was traditional 
for candidates to wait until after inauguration to break campaign 
promises. 

 Trump isn’t even waiting until he’s the nominee.

 Before last week’s startling announcement, two of Trump’s 
biggest applause lines were “I’m self–funding my campaign” and 
“go ahead and kick that demonstrator’s a**.”

 Going into as much detail as he ever goes into, Trump would 
explain, “By self-funding my campaign, I am not controlled by my donors, special interests 
or lobbyists. I am only working for the people of the U.S.!”

 And the people — at least those who made it inside the venue and spoke English — loved it! 
He’s not PC and he’s building the wall! Trump is his own man. He can’t be bought or bribed.

 Trump’s independence gave him credibility. Jeb Bush bragging about his fund–raising 
total may have impressed professional politicians, but it told average Americans that he was 
more promiscuous than the rest of the field.

 When people are tired of bought–and–paid for politicians, proclaiming yourself the 
biggest sellout of all is hardly a vote getter.

 Money is the mother’s milk of politics and the man who brings his own cow is his own 
man.

 As long as Trump could get by on the cheap, much like the interior decoration in his 
casinos, self–funding was okay. He limited his spending to a mere $40 million during the 
primary because the news media, his private superPAC, helped him dominate primary 
coverage.

 Michael Bloomberg — another rich guy, but lacking a personality — had to spend more 
of his fortune to become mayor of New York than Trump did to win the GOP presidential 
nomination in a nationwide campaign.

 Now Trump has made what Deon Sanders used to call a business decision. He knows his 
media superPAC will be all Hillary all the time in the fall and it will take real money to replace 
that free coverage. He’s concluded it’s too expensive to be un–bought and anti–establishment 
in the general election. Now he’s listing himself on Craigslist under the headline: Anti–
Establishment Insurgent for Rent.

 This is extraordinary. Trump’s absorbing the Republican National Committee’s fundraising 
apparatus and soliciting big–money donations repudiates half of his most effective message 
to voters. Trump’s explanation when asked about the about–face was he could sell a building 
and finance his campaign, but why bother?

 After all, self–funding was only a promise to the people who choose Trump to be their 
nominee. It’s not like he signed a contract. If Trump is questioned regarding this slap–in–
the–face to Main Street American’s who sent money, attended rallies and voted for him, no 
doubt his answer will be a variation on “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying 
ears?”

 Even MSNBC, hardly a fan of Trump or the GOP, thinks this turnabout is a huge mistake: 
“Trump is taking one of the best arguments in support of his candidacy and throwing it out 
the window…Trump has argued, ad nauseam, that campaign contributions have a corrupting 
effect on public officials. Politicians can be bought, the argument goes, and Trump knows 
because he’s done the buying.”

And now it appears Trump is at least for rent.

 There are two ways to look at Trump’s decision. One, he’s not as rich as he claims — possibly 
explaining why Trump won’t release tax returns either — and he doesn’t have the money to 
run a general election campaign. Or two, he believes his own hype. Trump thinks he can do 
or say almost anything and his base will still support him.

 Trump’s pump–priming made his candidacy possible. Can you picture him raising a dime 
from the usual suspects in May of 2015? By self–financing he turned lemons into lemonade 
and began a movement. Now he’s tinkling in the lemonade.

 The truth is Trump — the man who listens to the Americans the elites ignore — is just 
as ready to tune them out as Democrats and Establishment Republicans when he finds it 
convenient. You might say during the primary Trump self–funded and during the general 
election he self–destructed.

——

Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant, and is the author of 
“A Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times.” He can be reached at 
mandate.mmpr@gmail.com.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 

TRUMP LOVES THE TASTE OF 
BERNIE’S SOUR GRAPES

DICK Polman

 SUSAN Stamper Brown


In a column I wrote 
a couple months 
back, I listed 
five reasons why 
Donald Trump 
could actually win 
this election, to our 
everlasting national 
shame. Here’s 
reason number six: 
A Democratic party 
torn asunder.

Tuesday night, after winning Oregon and 
losing Kentucky, Bernie Sanders told his 
tragically credulous acolytes: “We have a 
possibility of going to Philadelphia with a 
majority of pledged delegates.” The truth, 
to which he remains allergic, is that under 
the Democratic rules of proportional 
delegate allocation, he would have to beat 
Hillary Clinton by whopping landslides, 
35-point margins or more, in each and 
every remaining primary. That is not 
going to happen. In reality, he has been 
been burnt toast for so many weeks that 
his crust has the consistency of ash.

And yet — destructively so — he still 
wants his “revolutionaries” to believe. 
And because they believe, they continue 
to feed on the delusion that somehow 
Bernie is being “robbed” by a system that 
is “rigged,” despite the fact that Hillary has 
won three million more votes than Bernie 
nationwide. But unless or until Bernie 
grows up and talks to them as adults, 
they’ll take their delusions to Philadelphia 
and put their tantrums on national 
display. And every day that happens is a 
great day for Trump.

What happened this past weekend at the 
Nevada Democratic convention gave us a 
taste of those sour grapes. The gist is that 
even though Hillary won the February 
caucus, 53 to 47 percent, Bernie’s followers 
went ballistic because they felt he didn’t 
win enough delegates. (Like, a majority.) 
They threw chairs, screamed obscenities 
at Clinton surrogates, and, in numerous 
texts and cell phone messages, threatened 
the life of the state party chairwoman.

“Despite their social media frothing and 
self-righteous screeds, the facts reveal that 
the Sanders folks disregarded rules, then 
when shown the truth, attacked organizers 
and party officials as tools of a conspiracy 
to defraud the senator of what was never 
rightfully his in the first place,” said Jon 
Ralston, the smartest political reporter in 
Nevada. “Instead of acknowledging that 
they were out-organized [by the Clinton 
campaign], the Sanders folks have decided 
to cry conflagration in a crowded building, 
without regard to what they burn down in 
the process.”

And this was a fight over the allegiances 
of only four delegates; it didn’t matter 
whether Bernie won them, because that’s 
a drop in his deficit bucket. Even political 
commentator Charles Pierce — who’s 
no fan of Hillary — is repulsed by the 
behavior of the “revolutionaries.” He 
writes that “the Sanders people should 
know better than to conclude what has 
been a brilliant and important campaign 
by turning it into an extended temper 
tantrum. I voted for Bernie Sanders .... 
But if anybody thinks that, somehow, he is 
having the nomination ‘stolen’ from him, 
they are idiots.”

And the idiocy is fed from the top. Bernie 
seems determined to play it ugly all the way 
to the convention, and to threaten further 
displays of wrath on the convention floor.

Some of us are old enough to remember 
the last time there was such a spectacle. 
I happen to remember it well, because it 
was my first convention as a journalist. 
The year was 1980, Ted Kennedy took his 
losing liberal insurgency all the way to the 
floor, exacerbating the breach with the 
forces committed to incumbent President 
Jimmy Carter. The resulting Democratic 
disunity helped fuel the autumn victory 
of Ronald Reagan, a guy who Democrats 
once derided as a joke.

Is that really the way Bernie wants to play 
it? Is he bent on becoming the next Ralph 
Nader?

Ed Kilgore, a longtime Democratic 
operative and commentator, wisely says 
that “the best step Sanders’ supporters 
could take to promote their long-term 
interests in the Democratic Party would be 
to get a grip before they wind up helping 
Donald Trump win the presidency. And 
Bernie Sanders himself has a responsibility 
to talk his devoted followers off the ledge.”

But Bernie seems averse to taking 
responsibility. Jon Ralston warns: “If 
what happens in Vegas happens in 
Philadelphia, the chances of a unified 
Democratic party in the general election 
are virtually nonexistent and the odds of 
a President Trump suddenly don’t look so 
long.”

That’s what I’m saying. Reason number 
six.

Dick Polman is the national political 
columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in 
Philadelphia (newsworks.org/polman) 
and a “Writer in Residence” at the 
University of Pennsylvania. Email him at 
dickpolman7@gmail.com.

SO-LONG, FAREWELL, 

AUF WIEDERSEHEN, 
GOODNIGHT GOP

 I am a nationally syndicated opinion columnist who’s 
been staring at a blank screen for days now because I have no 
opinion for once in my life. 

 Mike Huckabee just told millions of good Republicans not backing Trump they 
should leave the party. “You’re either on the team, or you’re not on the team,” he 
said. Giving 15,933,645 people the boot is a bit edgy I’d say, considering RedState.
com reports that of the 26,651,002 votes cast, Trump only received 10,717,357 or 
40.2 percent of the votes – even with Democrats’ help. I’m sorry I can’t oblige him, 
but it may console him to know I already burned up my GOP membership card, 
sometime between President Obama’s reelection and John Boehner’s golf dates 
with the president. 

 And now there’s all those irrational theories flying around that a non-vote for 
Trump, or a write-in vote puts the woman who really should be donning an orange 
jumpsuit in the White House. Not so. If Trump does not receive a person’s vote, 
Hillary does not magically receive a vote, unless you are using Common Core math 
or voting in Florida.

 Or, the accusations hurled at non-Trump evangelicals, suggesting they’ll be the 
cause for socialism and unchecked debt -- if Trump doesn’t win. As if socialism 
hasn’t been creeping through the crevices and debt hasn’t been on the rise for years 
now. Even still, it’s the evangelicals’ fault. Frankly, blaming Christians and Jews 
for everything under the sun is getting rather old, considering it’s been happening 
since the days Jesus walked the Earth. 

 I’m tiring of those who just woke up from their naps to realize there’s a problem 
in America, and then have the audacity to say that this constitutional conservative 
who leans libertarian is part of “the establishment.” Sure. Of course, it matters not 
that I’ve been sounding the alarm that the Titanic’s been sinking since 2007. They 
are finally awake, now that the water’s flooding their deck. And somehow I’m part 
of a problem which wouldn’t have risen to this level, had they wakened from their 
slumber, and joined me years back. But that’s water under the bridge, now that we 
are all dog paddling together in uncharted waters to keep ourselves afloat. “Father 
forgive them, for they know not what they are doing…”

 None of this matters anyhow. As I told a group of friends recently, if Constitutional 
conservatives and believers are feeling a bit misplaced in the GOP, it’s okay. We 
must understand that we live in a post-Christian country that practices post-truth 
politics, so it’s best to get comfortable feeling uncomfortable because it’s pretty 
much downhill from here. We are called to represent truth, conviction and honor 
in a world that willingly exchanges those things for political power and winning the 
White House at any cost. We have no reason to be dismayed, so we should look up, 
as the old song goes, “This world is not our home.”

 So, knock yourselves out over this election, folks. I don’t have the appetite 
to participate in your food fight, so I’m washing my hands of it all. I’ll vote my 
conscience both locally and nationally come November, and I’ll have plenty to write 
about both sides in the meantime. I’ll support, respect and pray for whoever wins. If 
the GOP didn’t nominate the right candidate to beat Hillary or if Democrats don’t 
have a strong enough candidate to beat Trump, that’s not the problem of those of us 
who did not support them in the first place. As Huckabee said, we’re not part of the 
“team.”

 So, like the old song goes: “So-long, [GOP], farewell, Auf Weidersehen, goodbye… 
I’m glad to go, I cannot tell a lie…”

 Signing off to do more important things, like serving others and sharing the light 
of the One whose hope still shines brightly -- even in this dark and miserable world. 
Enjoy your food fights. See you next week.

Susan Brown lives in Alaska and writes about culture, politics and current events. 
She was selected as one of America’s 50 Best Conservative writers for 2015.

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