Please forgive me but the Donald reminds me of Jackie Mason.

Trump took a big step towards the nomination today in winning Florida and other states. This is by Victor Davis Hanson, Time to Calm Down about Trump. It’s more than that. It is time that the Republican Party took him in and gave him their kindness and attention. The sub-head makes the point:

Trump is crude and politically clueless, but no more so than the Clintons, Sanders — or Obama

I will merely add that working for the Chamber of Commerce I met many like him. They knew everything, and when you have a billion dollars and a boat that’s bigger than my house, it’s not hard to think that way. But I also always knew how wary they were of me. My job was to make their vague capitalist notions fit into a wider economic and social narrative. Few of those at the top of a business conglomerate would have been able to carry on a conversation at Treasury or with the Fair Work Commission. That is what I did. And we were the most free market, anti-Keynesian operation in the whole of employer politics.

Trump is at the top of the league as a business strategist, and has a number of ideas that are sound and others which are not. But his core message works for me. He would have been the perfect Chairman of my Economics Committee. He won’t be a perfect president, but he will be better than any of the others who have sought the nomination on either side. Here is some sound advice from VDH:

I agree that it is disturbing that Trump does not grasp the nature of the nuclear triad, but so far he has not, as has Vice President Biden, claimed that a President FDR went on television in 1929 or, as has President Obama, that the Falklands are better known as the Maldives. His Trump vodka and steaks and eponymous schlock are a window into his narcissistic soul and his lack of concern with integrity; but I’ll say more about the size of his ego when he says he can cool the planet and lower the seas, and that he is the one we’ve all been waiting for — accompanied by Latin mottos and faux-Greek columns. Trump has no team to speak of. Is that because the ego-driven Trump fancies himself a genius in the manner of “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” . . .

Trump is hardly, by current standards, beyond the pale, much less that he is aberrant in U.S. presidential-campaign history. He is or is not as uncouth as Barack Obama, who has mocked the disabled, the wealthy, typical white people, the religious, and the purported clingers, and has compared opponents to Iranian theocrats and said that George W. Bush was “unpatriotic” — all as relish to wrecking America’s health-care system, doubling the national debt, setting race relations back six decades, politicizing federal bureaucracies, ignoring federal law, and leaving the Middle East in shambles and our enemies on the ascendant.

For those who point to Hillary Clinton as a more sober and judicious alternative, they might ask themselves whether the Trump financial shenanigans are on par with the quid pro quo Clinton Foundation scams, or whether the Trump companies are a bigger mess than Hillary’s resets. True, a historical precedent could be set in the current campaign, but that would be if Hillary Clinton was the first presidential candidate indicted before the election, given that all her serial explanations about illegally using a private server to send and receive various classified information have only led to updated and further misleading backtracking, and will continue to do so until she is either charged or, for political reasons, exonerated.

In politics, like war, you go with the army you have.

Although I have to admit that the incredible obtuseness that seems to invade normally sensible people is beyond me. Nick Cater has an article in The Oz today on Donald Trump’s primary appeal is that he’s not a politician. This is his point:

The inconvenient truth for the political class is that in so far as Trump exploits hate, the principal object is not Hispanics, Muslims or homosexuals but them. The anger welling up from below is anger directed at urban sophisticates like themselves.

Americans regularly elect presidents who are not part of the political class. Eisenhower was the last, and military leaders are a consistent theme. It is executive experience that is valued, of which Obama has none at all while Trump has a lifetime of running things behind him. So for those who still don’t get it, here’s the list of policy issues that matter.

First border protection. Here’s an article by Victor Davis Hanson, who because he works for National Review, cannot actually say he supports Trump (similar to working for Murdoch), but read the article and imagine him voting for anyone else: The Weirdness of Illegal Immigration. Note the word “if” that runs through the para:

If the border were to be closed, if immigration laws were enforced, if there were some reduction in legal immigration, if entry were to be meritocratic, if we reverted to the melting-pot ideal of assimilation, if we cut –studies courses and jettisoned therapy and ideology for hard science, math, and English language, in just two decades one’s particular ancestry would become irrelevant — the image of Oaxaca would be analogous to having a grandfather from Palermo or cousin from the Azores. In other words, things would work out fine.

Second, the economy. Trump has spent a lifetime creating value for money. The American economy, like so many others, is being ruined by Keynesian Crony Capitalism, where the government decides how to use large proportions of our national savings and determines what ought to be built. The US is heading for a $20 trillion debt if it hasn’t reached it already. Is there seriously anyone else within a thousand miles of being electable who has a greater likelihood of getting the American economy on the right track?

Third, foreign policy. Trump wants to rebuild America’s national defence but is not in the business of nation building in third world countries. He will defend our interests, but with the additional thought that maybe those who America has been defending might chip in a bit in their own defence.

Fourth, he would get to choose the new justices for the Supreme Court. Fifth, he not taken in by global warming. Sixth, has the ability to achieve his agenda because he knows how to get things done. Seventh, represents a return to traditional American values. Eighth, he opposes the thug tactics of the left. Ninth, he is the most non-politically correct politician in years and is unafraid of the American media.

Tenth, he is far and away more likely to win than any other Republican who might be nominated. Ted Cruz would lose to Hillary in a landslide and he is the only alternative. Trump is reconfiguring politics in a way that could renew the American system for a generation in the direction that might actually appeal to a conservative.

If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. But it really should not be that hard to see his appeal. And as for his attitude to violent protest, see the video of Ronald Reagan above for a useful comparison.

Does anyone have any doubt what Trump believes or what he intends to do? Picked up in the comments, the video supposedly shows how Trump is able to get his message across by speaking simply and forcefully. Others apparently speak over the heads of their audience. Trump makes his points in a way that everyone can follow. For those who made the video, this is apparently a bad thing. For me, it is what a leader needs to do.

Apparently this is becoming a common hashtag among Republicans who will vote Clinton before they let a Donald Trump become President. The article is titled, What Would Hamilton Do? which is based on a request among established Republicans to answer the question, What’s Wrong with Donald Trump? Before I continue, I will note that hundreds of emails is a drop in the ocean, but this is what we have:

Hundreds emailed; the breadth of response — across all regional, social, professional, and class divides and every conceivable wing of the party; and the depth of feeling, with her correspondents being “appalled, repulsed, afraid, and dismayed” at the prospect of Trump being either nominee or president. Their concerns included his authoritarian conduct, his lack of principle, his racism, his conduct toward women, his erratic behavior, and his potential access to the nuclear arsenal. They were party stalwarts who had voted Republican on a regular basis, served in Republican administrations, and raised money for and volunteered in campaigns.

Out of which a profile emerged:

“I’m a 40-year-old National Review and Instapundit-reading conservative who has voted for the Republican in every election since 1996. I intend to vote for Cruz in the primary and would be happy to vote for Cruz or Rubio in November. My opinions about Hillary Clinton are about what you would expect, and if it’s Hillary vs. Trump, I’ll most likely vote Libertarian. I’ve spoken with many of my friends from my College Republican days and it seems they all have the same thoughts. I will never vote for Trump. Ever. And if that brings about the end of the GOP, so be it. Any party that picks Trump as its voice is not a party I want to be affiliated with. He has no moral compass and no abiding principles except for self-promotion. Being in the wilderness, politically speaking, is preferable to being complicit in the election of Donald Trump, and with it the destruction of the party I have supported my entire adult life.”

Well, let us get down to it then. First, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to destroy the Republican Party as it now is. As useless at protecting what matters to me as the Democrats. I will happily exchange your aimless and worthless hides for the millions who are seeking a refuge from the mess you have made of the United States.

Second, if Hillary Clinton President does not fill you with horror then you are dead from the neck up. Your views and your values are dead to me. You have nothing you can say that will get us to agree. Off you go, you Democrat numbskull.

Third, if you are looking for a moral compass, you will not find it looking inside your own misbegotten souls. You cannot see what is at stake and care little about preserving your own society as it was and as millions wish it to be. Every new refugee hostel should be put up within princincts that have voted Clinton in the next election and then we will see how things go in 2020.

Fourth, you have no idea what democracy means. One vote per person, and no more than one vote per person. If you really do side with those who seek a borderless USA, then you have no clue what a nation state is and why there really is value in a continuity between something called America in 1816 and that entity with the same name in 2016. What exactly you are trying to preserve by voting Clinton escapes me since absolutely nothing that truly matters will survive eight more years like the the last eight have been.

Fifth, speaking about those last eight years, where have you been? The clamour you have been making about Obama all this time has been so quiet that I am not sure it could even have been detected. You have been given votes and seats year after year and have achieved nothing at all. So something else is going to be tried, and you can sit there with your hands covering your eyes but this is your fault since you allowed the system to break and did nothing to fix it.

So be off with you, you useless cowards. There is a new American about to be made, which we hope will be more like the old one you have been so willing to see go by.