By winning the election, Donald Trump only started the process of sending official Washington into a hysterical meltdown. Conventional wisdom was that he couldn’t win, and he defied that. But there is an even more ingrained piece of conventional wisdom in Washington, and Trump is now sending the Beltway into convulsions by defying it too.
This conventional wisdom says that candidates can promise whatever they want during the course of a campaign – red meat the base, whatever you want to call it – but once it’s time to govern, the Washington establishment will set the parameters that limit what you can do, and you cannot go outside those parameters.
Mexico border wall
Another element of this conventional wisdom is the presumption that candidates know this, and have no intention once in office of defying it.
Those who assume this will always be the way it works weren’t counting on Donald Trump.
Consider the matter of the Mexico border wall. The money to build it was actually allocated in 2006, but the wall hasn’t been built in the ensuing decade because there’s a general understanding that the political class doesn’t really want the wall. It’s the sort of thing you can talk about at times when it serves your interests politically, but those in the know understand it will never be built.
Donald Trump doesn’t operate like that. We need a wall. The money’s been allocated. He’s given the order to build the wall. There’s going to be a wall.
Or take the matter of the United Nations. Conservatives often complain about the UN and talk about how we should stop funding it, since it’s fundamentally anti-American. But all we ever do is talk, and we keep on sending the checks. This past week, Trump ordered a review of that practice. It’s not yet an order to defund, but it’s farther than any president has ever gone toward possibly cutting off the UN – and the political class is going insane.
Voter fraud
These are things you only talk about doing! You don’t actually do them.
Except that Donald Trump does.
Finally, the matter of voter fraud. The media would have you believe there’s a widespread consensus that voter fraud doesn’t exist. What they really mean is that the political class is united in refusing to admit voter fraud exists, and in not wanting to find out if it does. That’s because any voter fraud that’s discovered will almost certainly turn out to benefit Democrats, and might very well implicate Democrat election officials in big urban centers.
When anyone starts talking about voter fraud, standard procedure is to hoot and holler that person down. The person gets the message and shuts up.
Not Donald Trump. He’s ordered a wide-reaching probe of the problem, if there is a problem. If there isn’t, the political class should have nothing to fear. The way they’re reacting to this, however, tells you they’re terrified about what might be discovered.
But what’s really upsetting the political class is that Trump isn’t playing the game. He said during his campaign that if he won, he would do certain things. He won. He is doing the things he said he would do.
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The indigestion of the political class is only just beginning
You’re not supposed to do that. You’re supposed to be like Bill Clinton, who promised a middle class tax cut but announced 17 days after taking office that he couldn’t do it because the deficit was too high or something. That’s how the game is played. Promise. Renege. Make an excuse. Please the political class and avoid media criticism.
Official Washington would now have you believe Trump is a buffoon because he doesn’t know how to play the game. No. Trump knows exactly how the game is played. And as he made clear in his inaugural address, he was elected expressly for the purpose of not playing it.
The indigestion of the political class is only just beginning.
