The GOPe is accustomed to decorum, and safety. No feel-bad, no criticism, and never do anything unpleasant. Enter Donald Trump.
Speaking in front of hundreds at a rally in South Carolina on Tuesday, Donald Trump read a number he said people could use to reach South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s private cell phone…
“Give it a shot,” Trump said, urging people to call the state’s senior senator.
When CNN called the number, it went directly to voicemail and the recorded message said it was the phone number for Graham. The mailbox was full.
Giving out Lindsey’s phone number seems insignificant, and to us it would be. But to a GOPe politician, that is indescribably irritating. These are people who expect to insult Trump, and suffer no consequence. Now Graham is cut off from all his contacts, and will need to track each down and let them know his new number. When other politicians consider attacking Trump, they will need to ask if they want that headache, or if it might be easier to just keep their mouths shut.
Then there is Rick Perry.
Rick Perry is a good guy personally. He has privately reached out to veterans throughout Texas to help them however he can. But he suffered a brain freeze during a debate in the last primary season, and then made it worse by saying, “OOOuuuuuppppps!” The media jumped on, and not being an unshakable Alpha personality like Trump, he had no idea how to handle it.
Now this time around he is wearing glasses, probably to give himself a smarter image, and Trump used it to hit back at him.
Trump even took a shot at former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for wearing glasses.
“He put on glasses so people think he’s smart. People can see through the glasses,” Trump said.
If you want to create a perception and you expend the effort to do a make-over around it, you are not going to like somebody calling you on it and undoing any effect of the makeover.
Then Trump attacked Perry as a weak and groveling hypocrite.
On Wednesday morning, Trump posted an old photo of him and Perry in his office from the 2012 election season. In the true fashion of the Donald, he wrote: “[Rick Perry] in my office last cycle playing nice and begging for my support and money. Hypocrite!”
Regardless of the quality of any potential Trump Presidency, he is firing up the aggressive members of the Republican party, injecting raw confrontation into our political debate, and putting those political pacifists who have deadened our movement on notice that they are not welcome. In truth, Perry should be fighting illegals for Americans, attacking the RINOs with Trump, and just generally giving everyone who would betray conservatism flack.
If Trump gains success through this mode of attack, you can expect more of this. Nothing will drive the RINOs from Republican politics like the thought that they would have to run a Trump-esque gauntlet of insults, pranks, and bareknuckle fighting from multiple Trump-like candidates, in order to attain the pleasurable life of ease and power they so ardently crave.
To that I say, “Go Donald.”
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