Donald TrumpPhoto: Reuters
With humor, pride and two populist fists, Donald Trump on Tuesday entered the GOP race for the White House. However his campaign turns out, he’s already improved the field.
Above all, he spoke to the voters Republicans have to win over if they’re to retake the White House — to the Americans who believe in hard work and fair play, to the folks who show up every day to make this country work.
“We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military, can take care of our vets. . . We need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again.” Trump pretty well summed up the appeal the GOP needs to make.
He rained contempt on the political class and all its recent works, from ObamaCare to the pending Iran nuclear deal to “Third World” airports like LAX and La Guardia. He spoke up for people “tired of spending more money on education than any nation in the world per capita . . . and we are 26th in the world.”
He hit hard on the state of the economy — negative growth in the first quarter, joblessness far worse than the official rate, “a stock market that is so bloated” — and promised to be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
He’s proud of making himself rich (“I’ve done an amazing job”), and rightly so. He didn’t even have to mention that he’s a guy who gets things done, because everybody already knows it. More, he knows his success is an asset, “the kind of thinking you need for this country . . . because we’ve got to make the country rich.”
With a dose of that attitude, Mitt Romney might be living in the White House right now.
Does candidate Trump have big problems? You bet; full-bore populists always do.
He’s got weird asides about how “we should’ve taken” Iraq’s oil “when we left”; silly stuff about a trade threat from Mexico; long anecdotes the fact-checkers will chew to pieces; bluster on trade and immigration that will turn lots of folks off.
And he’s viewed unfavorably by over half of GOP voters. No one’s ever turned around numbers like those.
Then again, “no one’s ever” are fighting words for Donald Trump.
This will be fun to watch.
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