Trump out at RSG15: another view

Some days it just doesn’t seem like it was worth getting out of bed in the morning. For example, when I woke up today and was making my coffee I was looking over a number of current news stories I’d been considering writing about and a couple of longer essays which I have in my “in progress” folder. As Saturdays go, it was looking pretty promising. And then I fired up my laptop and saw Ed’s big announcement last night regarding Donald Trump and today’s RedState Gathering activities.

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The best laid plans, as they say.

I hadn’t caught any of the brouhaha from last night because I’m a bit long in the tooth and I was in bed by 9:30. I just published a rather lengthy piece yesterday about how the party (and the POTUS candidates) need to find a new way to deal with the rise of The Donald, but I didn’t see this one coming.

I’m not here to start an argument with Ed (who didn’t take that strong of a position in either direction, honestly) but this is clearly going to dominate the news of the day as Trump so often manages to do. I chatted with Ed about it this morning and I’ll share something with you which I discussed with him. My first reaction upon hearing about Erick’s decision to cut Trump from the agenda was best summed up in a very short question:

Really, Erick? That’s what it took? This is where you drew the red line in the sand?

I need to point out that I really hate it when people are fine covering the Trump campaign and are willing to ignore this or that controversial – or incendiary – comment, but then turn around and declare the Manhattan mogul persona non grata when he finally says something which personally offends them too much. Or at least I would point that out if I hadn’t done exactly the same thing myself already. In my case, Donald drove me over the edge with his war hero comments, probably because of my family history and the way that just hit a nerve for me. But after a week or so I finally allowed myself to let it go and realized that Donald was just going to be Donald for better or worse and that we should probably both get on with our lives. Trump would stay on the campaign trail and I would continue covering his activities as the current frontrunner in the field.

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Look, I’m not going to take up your time defending what Donald said vis-à-vis Megyn Kelly. I happen to like Kelly’s work in general and I don’t think she went over the line at the debate. She went after the frontrunner and that’s to be expected, though it could have been tempered a bit I suppose. Assuming Trump was taking a jab at her by implying that she must be on her monthly cycle, that was uncalled for and well outside the boundaries of our accepted political discourse. As part of the usual primary process, this will be fed into the national political digestive tract and Trump will either fall or continue to rise.

But getting back to the question I posed for Erick Erickson above, don’t we owe it to ourselves to each ask why this was the bridge too far? Trump’s comments about McCain’s war hero status were enough to put me off my feed but plenty of others were somehow able to excuse them. This apparently included Erick since Trump was still on the agenda until nearly midnight last night. And if this is just a case of gentlemanly honor and the defense of women, comments that Trump made about Rosie O’Donnell and Gail Collins were certainly equally beyond the pale (if not more so in some cases) but Trump wasn’t tossed under the bus for those. If we’re willing to rise in gallant defense of Kelly but not the others mentioned here based on nothing more than the fact that conservatives tend to like Megyn but generally have no use for O’Donnell, the shine on the chivalry picks up a bit of tarnish, doesn’t it?

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Risking the danger of repeating myself, Trump’s comments about the Fox News host were uncalled for and well outside the boundaries of our usual political discourse. And that’s really the entire point I was making about Trump yesterday, isn’t it? Everything he does is outside the normal political process. The man has taken the rule book, set it on fire and dumped the ashes on the heads of everyone else. And what seems to be driving everyone in the politico class to drink is that he still manages to stay on top. This is perhaps the reminder we all needed. There was a time when the rise of blogs was attributed to the fact that so many Americans were sick of seeing a handful of network news stars acting as the gatekeepers of how the election game should be played. Social media and citizen journalists came in like barbarians at the gates and threw down the old order. But now we’ve been doing it for so long that new media outlets such as Salem Media Group properties like RedState and Hot Air are hosting major political events like RSG and even getting in on moderating debates. (Hugh Hewitt is also part of the Salem network and will take on those duties later in the campaign cycle.)

The point is that, having reached these dizzying heights (if you find them to be such), have we begun to assume the role of the previous gatekeepers, feeling that we can define what the boundaries of acceptable behavior are? We can certainly all express our opinions as is proper, but it seems to me that the voters of the nation still hold the keys to the kingdom and they aren’t going to let us “define conservatism” (or liberalism, for that matter) or sketch out in ink where the lines are drawn any more than we were willing to let Peter Jennings do it during the last era. In the end it is the public who makes the final call, and if they decide that what Trump is doing is good enough for them to keep him as their standard bearer, we were the ones who got it wrong.

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Yesterday, before the Megyn Kelly comments came out, our former colleague Noah Rothman wrote the following at Commentary Magazine about the debate: (emphasis added)

On the left and the right, political professionals and opinion leaders know what they saw: the beginning of the end of Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination. It is true that his staying power in the race has shocked everyone, but the debates mark the beginning of a different phase of this campaign. It’s coming, perhaps later rather than sooner, but the celebrity candidate’s deflation is a virtual certainty.

Really, Noah? A virtual certainty? I wonder where I’ve heard that before? Pardon me if I don’t slide any of my chips over on top of your bet, but I’m still going to give it a week or so and see what the primary voters think about it. You may be right… but Trump has a way of taking your virtual certainty cake and shoving it back in your face. The Trump roller coaster may indeed be over, but if I were you I’d keep my arms and legs inside the car until the ride comes to a complete stop.

[DISCLOSURE: I’d thought this would go without saying, but for new visitors it is probably worth noting that Hot Air and RedState are properties of Salem Media Group, as are Townhall, Twitchy, Bearing Arms, Human Events, and numerous other print, radio and sundry media outlets.]

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