Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post explores, “What Trump can teach the GOP field:”
The most important lesson? Confrontation is good. Confrontation works.
“Donald Trump was an anti-establishment figure who demonstrated the importance of taking the debate right to Obama — frontally and hard, which the the eventual GOP nominee mist do daily to win,” said Scott Reed, a senior Republican strategist.
Polling bears this sentiment out.
As Cillizza adds, “Trump’s willingness to fight mattered more than the substance of what triggered the fight.” But the racial demagoguery that Trump received in return from the MSM — because in a sense, he was doing a job they wouldn’t do themselves — is a stern warning to every legitimate GOP candidate to come: the stronger a candidate you are, the more likely you’ll be attacked by the racers in the MSM.
It’s not personal, Sonny, it’s strictly business. Just ask Bill, Hillary, and the late Geraldine Ferraro, all Democrat superstars, but in opposition to Obama.
Who in the GOP is prepared to fight back, and hard when the R-word starts flying from the MSM? Because even beyond Trump, it’s already being played by the president’s Ruling Class defenders. Perhaps the most chilling sentence to emerge from the Washington Post-centered JournoList scandal was this:
“[T]ake one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country?”
It worked in 2008 — to the point where John McCain was so scared to salvage his reputation, he was more than happy to lay down in the last few weeks of the election for Obama. Will the GOP candidate in 2012 show up to play and fight back against Obama’s surrogates in the media? Or will he be intimidated and be the next McCain, Bob Dole, or Gerry Ford?
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