Yeah, pretty much [1]…
Trump won because he convinced a great number of Americans that he would destroypolitical correctness.
I have tried to call attention to this issue for years. I have warned that political correctness actually is a problem on college campuses, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing. And ever since Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the GOP presidential primaries, I have warned [2] that a lot of people, both on campus and off it, were furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.
I have watched this play out on campus after campus. I have watched dissident student groups invite Milo Yiannopoulos to speak—not because they particularly agree with his views, but because he denounces censorship and undermines political correctness. I have watched students cheer his theatrics, his insulting behavior, and his narcissism solely because the enforcers of campus goodthink are outraged by it. It’s not about his ideas, or policies. It’s not even about him. It’s about vengeance for social oppression.
Trump has done to America what Yiannopoulos did to campus. This is a view Yiannopoulos shares. When I spoke with him about Trump’s success months ago, he told me, “Nobody votes for Trump or likes Trump on the basis of policy positions. That’s a misunderstanding of what the Trump phenomenon is.”
He described Trump as “an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness.” Correctly, I might add.
Frankly, that’s been my objection to Trump from the beginning. His success has been based more on emotionalism than on policy. Certainly none of his campaign could be charged with promoting conservatives thinking and conservative policy.
My focus is on policy. Actual accomplishment, not emotionalism.
The only reason he managed to get by with it is because of the corruption of Hillary Clinton, a point which even a lot of Democrats acknowledge. As my wife said earlier today, Trump didn’t win because he’s Trump, Hillary lost because she’s Hillary. Remove Clinton from the picture in 4 years and what do you suppose is going to happen?
I have made reference several times over the last 6 months to a failure of a Trump presidency specifically because it is not conservative policies that he will pursue. Despite this of course, conservatives will get the blame when his policies fail.
Which of course means a Democrat in the White House four years from now… a double disaster no matter how you slice it.