Trumpery knows no party. On the left, as Will Wilkinson wrote at The Economist, we’ve seen “harmonious ideals of in-it-together mutual benefit” replaced with “a combative, zero-sum conception of politics that combines the lofty rhetoric of social and economic justice with a disenchanted view of democracy as smashmouth sectarian conflict.”
In that corner, of course, the heavyweight champion is Hillary Clinton, whose “savvy” embrace of bloodsport as self-empowerment converts her “lack of charm, and her reputation for shady dealings, into assets. She’s not here to make you like her. She’s here to make sure that you get what you’d like.” One couldn’t make the case for Trump any better than that.
Or the case for Chris Christie, for that matter. Sure enough, the hectoring, larger-than-life governor so many of us love to hate was a not-so-surprise hit at Mitt Romney’s latest confab of donors and moneymen. “In a handful of discussions with attendees — most of them off the record — Christie’s name came up time and again as the one who opened eyes and exceeded expectations,” the Salt Lake Tribune reported. At the big-time Park City do, it was fellow Republican Rand Paul who Christie put in the crosshairs. Not only has the Kentucky senator “made America weaker and more vulnerable,” railed Christie, “he has done it for his own personal political gain and he has done it to raise money.”
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