Donald Trump is not now, nor has he ever been, any sort of conservative in the traditional or classical sense of that term.<\/p>\n
This being said, those self-declared \u201cconservatives\u201d in the media who have been tirelessly blasting Trump on this score are motivated by, not the love of truth but, rather, political partisanship.<\/p>\n
To hear them go on incessantly about Trump\u2019s past outspokenness for positions that are typically associated with liberal Democrats, one could be forgiven for thinking that for these anti-Trumpsters the idea of nominating for the presidency anyone who is not <\/em>a rock-ribbed conservative is unacceptable.<\/p>\n Yet these are the same folks who have spent every presidential election cycle until now lecturing their audiences against <\/em>succumbing to the trap of \u201cpurism,\u201d the trap of holding out for the \u201cperfect\u201d (most conservative) candidate\u2014even while they<\/em> endorsed one candidate after the other\u2014think George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney\u2014who was anything but conservative.<\/p>\n To see that these \u201cconservative\u201d commentators are behaving more than a bit hypocritically now, let\u2019s play a little game. In the following list of multiple choice questions, let\u2019s see if we can\u2019t figure out the correct answer.<\/p>\n Who said: A \u201cuniform standard [of gun-control] across the country\u201d is necessary, for \u201cthis level of [gun] violence must be stopped?\u201d<\/p>\n Who said: There\u2019s \u201cno reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons,\u201d for guns are \u201ca ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will?\u201d<\/p>\n Who supported the \u201cTherapeutic Abortion Act?\u201d<\/p>\n Which American president deployed hundreds of Marines to the Middle East, got them murdered, and then \u201ccut and run\u201d in spite of having promised to \u201cstay the course?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Who said: \u201cI believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally?\u201d<\/p>\n Who raised taxes 11 times while president; increased the debt to unprecedented levels; preserved every government program and department; grew <\/em>the federal government by creating a new agency; and created a progressive system of taxation to continue funding Social Security?<\/p>\n Who decried tax \u201cloopholes\u201d for millionaires while complaining that they don\u2019t pay their \u201cfair share\u201d in taxes?<\/p>\n Which president nominated to the Supreme Court two <\/em>justices who maintained\u2014and ruled\u2014that it was unconstitutional to both deny women access to abortion services and deny homosexuals the right to marry?<\/p>\n If your answer to each of the foregoing questions was \u201cRonald Reagan,\u201d the most \u201cconservative\u201d president in all of modern American history, to hear the anti-Trumpsters tell it, then you can go to the front of the class!<\/p>\n And while Reagan was governor of California, he didn\u2019t just support <\/em>the Therapeutic Abortion Act.<\/p>\n He made it law.<\/p>\n Consequently, the number of abortions in California increased exponentially.<\/p>\n Governor Reagan can also be credited with having burdened Californians with the largest tax increase in the history of their state, and he passed into law the Mulford Act, which made it illegal for legal gun owners to carry their guns anywhere <\/em>in public.<\/p>\n Moreover, Reagan, in spite of having once rejected Medicare as \u201csocialist,\u201d went on as President to support it (and Medicaid). When, in 1980, Carter challenged his earlier denunciations of Medicare, Reagan replied that he never opposed \u201cthe principle of providing care\u201d for the elderly.\u201d The only reason that he opposed Medicare is because, at the time, Reagan said, there had been an alternative piece of legislation that would have done the work of Medicare\u2014but do it better.<\/p>\n It seems, though, that there was no alternative piece of legislation. But even if there had been, Reagan in effect had admitted that his earlier argument against Medicare, his argument from socialism, had been rhetoric, that it wasn\u2019t the socialist character of Medicare that he opposed, but the fact that it wasn\u2019t his <\/em>brand of socialism.<\/p>\n At any rate, when Reagan was president, he signed the \u201cEmergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act<\/a>,\u201d a law\u2014a federal law, mind you\u2014that compels hospitals to provide emergency care to anyone, irrespectively of whether they can afford to pay for the care or even whether they\u2019re citizens.<\/p>\n And Medicaid was expanded<\/a> multiple times <\/em>during Reagan\u2019s two terms.<\/p>\n In fact, long before there was Obamacare or Romneycare, there was Reagancare<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n
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