Making America Hate Again

American Spectator - Friday July 15, 2016

by Wlady Pleszczynski

“Crooked Hillary is spending $57 million to spread even more lies about Mr. Trump and our movement,” begins the fundraising email Donald Trump’s campaign sent out Thursday, announcing a one-day goal to raise half a million dollars “to cut through Hillary’s noise and get our message of America First straight to the voter.” Heading into the weekend before the Republican National Convention begins Monday in Cleveland, the Republican candidate’s campaign had encouraging news for its donors: “New polls show Trump beating Hillary in critical swing states of Florida and Pennsylvania — and TIED in Ohio!”

The exclamation point is well deserved. Florida and Ohio are absolutely crucial to Trump’s hopes of victory in November, and no Republican presidential candidate has won Pennsylvania since 1988. Although early polls are notoriously bad at predicting eventual election results, these mid-summer numbers at least suggest that Trump enters his big week at the GOP convention on even ground with Hillary Clinton. The Real Clear Politics average of national polls as of Thursday showed a 3-point overall lead for the Democrat — Hillary at 44% and Trump at 41% — but the polls have been trending steadily toward the Republican. Four months ago in late March, Clinton was at 50% and Trump at 38%. Now that both candidates have clinched their respective parties’ nominations (with Bernie Sanders’ belated endorsement of Hillary on Tuesday), Trump has substantially closed the gap. The latest CBS/New York Times poll released Thursday showed a dead heat, with the two candidates each at 40%, following on the good news for Trump in the Quinnipiac swing-state polls released Wednesday. The increasing accumulation of evidence that the Republican has a real chance to win in November was enough to trigger outright panic among Clinton’s supporters in the liberal media.

“Anyone who supports Donald Trump is a traitor to the American idea,” Charles Pierce, the left-wing political blogger for Esquire declared Thursday, calling the upcoming GOP convention “a four-day celebration of the ritual suicide of American democracy.” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow told an interviewer she is preparing for a possible Trump presidency by “reading a lot about what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor.” No sooner had media outlets reported that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence would be Trump’s vice-presidential pick than the socialist magazine Mother Jonesrushed out an online report with the headline: “Mike Pence Has Led a Crusade Against Abortion Access and LGBT Rights.”

Eight years after Obama ran on a slogan of “Hope and Change,” Democrats now seem prepared to campaign on a theme of Hate and Fear. With the eager assistance of the liberal media, Team Clinton is trying to convince voters that Republicans are “un-American,” and that Trump is Hitler. The fearmongering attack on Pence was evidently intended to make gullible liberals imagine that the Republican governor has turned Indiana into a Taliban-like regime of fundamentalist repression. However, despite his avowed social-conservative leanings — Pence calls himself “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order” — his governorship has been more defined by Pence’s budget-hawk fiscal conservatism. It’s true that conservative Republicans have tried to defend the state’s wholesome Midwest values against gay-rights radicalism, and it’s also true that Pence is solidly pro-life. So what? The GOP platform has been opposed to abortion for more than 40 years, and recent controversies involving “LGBT Rights” have raised legitimate concerns about religious liberty. Any other Republican who had been picked as Trump’s running mate would have been demonized the same way Pence is being demonized. This is simply what the media do — promote whatever message Democrats want them to promote and call it “objective journalism.”

Whatever else explains Donald Trump’s success so far, no one can deny that his popularity is in large measure a backlash against eight years of media cheerleading for President Obama, whose failures have been ignored or excused by the class of dishonest journalists that Professor Glenn Reynolds calls “Democrats with bylines.” Perhaps this is why months of negative coverage of Trump have not only failed to destroy him, but may actually have helped his campaign. Millions of Americans hate the media so much that they will vote for Trump just to spite all the liberal talking heads on TV who hate him. How many people will go to the polls in November to vote for Trump in the hope of making Rachel Maddow break down in tears on national TV when he wins?

With less than four months remaining until Election Day and polls showing a dead heat, the chances of making Maddow’s worst nightmares come true are looking better than ever. Trump’s promise to “make America great again” is a powerful message. “This election is about sending a message to the rigged and corrupt establishment that has crushed our country’s soul,” the campaign’s fundraising email said. “It’s not enough to win. We must win in a LANDSLIDE.”

Imagine the look on Rachel Maddow’s face if she has to report that news on Nov. 8. If that’s not worth at least half a million dollars, what is?

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