From this week’s excellent Goldberg File:

I was only half listening when Donald Trump came into the spin room on CNN to explain why he’s been audited every year for twelve years.

“I’m always audited by the IRS, which I think is very unfair — I don’t know

Compra Zitromax Online

, maybe because of religion, maybe because of something else, maybe because I’m doing this, although this is just recently,” Trump said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo immediately following the 10th GOP debate on Thursday night.

Cuomo cut in: “What do you mean religion?”

“Well, maybe because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it and maybe there’s a bias,” Trump said.

Cuomo cut in again: “You think you can get audited for being a strong Christian?”

“Well, you see what’s happened,” Trump said. “You have many religious groups that are complaining about that. They’ve been complaining about it for a long time.”

“Spit take” doesn’t even come close to describing my reaction. As it was, I gagged so hard my spleen almost came out my nose. It was nearly the first recorded instance of spontaneous self-mummification. I scared the cats because I reacted like members of Delta House when the picture of Flounder appeared on the screen.

There are two possibilities here. Either Donald Trump believes what he said, or he doesn’t. If he does believe this, he’s sufficiently delusional to disqualify himself for public office. If he doesn’t believe this, he thinks his conservative Christian supporters are morons.

I vote for option 2. And if he wins the nomination with the help of a significant percentage of “evangelical” votes, I’d say he’s right.

I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $'s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2016

Sounds like a threat

, doesn’t it? Here’s a pleasant thought: giving the full might of the Executive branch, with all its IRS auditors, machine guns, NSA/FBI/CIA agents, the whole smash, to a guy who thinks like Trump. For me the prevailing theme of this current election season is not liberal vs. conservative. This election seems to be pitting those who would like a Strong Man to come in, trample our (his?) enemies and solve all our problems versus those who still desire government restraint, especially in the Executive branch.

The Strong Man side is winning.

As Neo writes:

Some people do indeed want to do just that—they long for it and would celebrate it—right up until the moment the crocodile eats them. The human desire for tyranny knows no bounds, left or right, and people delude themselves when they say it won’t or can’t happen, or that it will be okay if it’s used in the interests of their own pet causes.

And by the way, this isn’t some anomaly on Trump’s part; it’s a deep and abiding character trait and favorite weapon. This is the pattern of his entire adult life: threaten, threaten, threaten; insult, insult, insult; sue, sue, sue. Anything he can to hurt his enemies. He makes Nixon and Obama look like pikers.

I suppose it is possible that Donald Trump — the man who supports single-payer health care (Obamacare on steroids), who didn’t know about the nuclear triad until a few weeks ago, who once proposed a 14.25% wealth tax on “the rich,” and until 15 minutes ago was an enthusiastic proponent of abortion on demand, even that form of infanticide euphemistically described as “partial birth abortion” by its partisans — I suppose it is possible that Donald Trump will get the country to rally around him and hand him the Republican nomination.

As of Sunday, February 21, 2016, I doubt it. There was a moment, just a few weeks back, when I thought the choice would be between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I have now privately reverted — well, I suppose it’s not all that private — to my earlier hypothesis that the GOP race will come down to Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

I say this notwithstanding Donald Trump’s lead in the polls. For one thing, the polls do not really make allowance for Trump’s astronomical, off-the-charts negatives, which have yet to be adequately factored into the psephologist’s handicaps.

I hope he’s right.

One way I express that hope: I’ve yet to create a “Donald Trump” tag for these blog posts. Hopefully I won’t need one in a few months. Time will tell.

Donald Trump won his second straight primary tonight and I am baffled but no longer surprised. I don’t normally go for apocalyptic thinking when it comes to politics, but I do believe that God will give you over to your desires and permit you to take the consequences, and as a country we’ve grown ever more voracious in our desire for ungodly things. So . . . maybe we’re being given over.

On the bright side, if Trump wins I will be, for the first time in my adult life, a man without a party. Well, good. I’ve always strongly identified with the conservative side of the house, but I started realizing over the past six years or so that there is no “fix” for what ails us in our political process. Good leaders can

, of course, make things somewhat better but I think our system becomes more unwieldy each cycle and I’m not sure that any of the required incentives for good government exist anymore. So this election cycle is just confirming what I’ve been slowly learning and hopefully will get me focused more on the One who really is going to fix everything.

Nominating a man like Donald Trump (if that happens) and electing him to the Presidency (an event I once would have thought completely impossible but now I think there’s an even shot) will be the dumbest thing we as a country have done for quite some time. We keep falling for the megalomaniacs and narcissists who tell us what they think we want to hear. Trump’s supporters are convinced that he is going to take care of our Biggest Problem™: illegal immigration.

Who says that’s our biggest problem? Here’s a list of what I believe are some of our biggest problems, just to name a few, each of which dwarfs the illegal immigration problem:

1. The absolute destruction of the African American family unit, largely due to idiotic government policies and perverse incentives. Seriously, the societal problems that spring from the dissolution of the family (regardless of your color, but the African American community has been the hardest hit) are akin to taking a bazooka round to the abdomen compared to the pinprick of illegal immigration. According to the CDC (referenced in this article among many others), the out-of-wedlock birthrate among African American women is 72%, with not as high but still very high rates among other groups.
    
2. The breakdown in our system of separation of powers. Seriously, the President these days can do almost anything he or she chooses, or at least can attempt to do anything he or she chooses and force the opposition to mount an expensive and time consuming legal challenge to stop it. Between executive orders, presidential memoranda, and the all but unstoppable and almost completely unaccountable regulatory regime of the executive branch, the President wields more power than ever. By the way, Trump supporters, your man doesn’t even act like he’s ever read the Constitution and I have zero confidence that he will roll back the current trends toward Executive hegemony. He’ll do the opposite, I believe. But, hey, you wanted a strong man who “gets things done” so enjoy the ride.
    
3. We don’t know how to reason or think anymore, or how to have a congenial and good-faith debate with those who differ from us. Tolerance, that vaunted character trait everyone has always at least pretended to value, is almost nowhere to be found in our public discourse. We’ve become one big, ongoing, never-ending food fight.
    
4. As a country we owe 19 trillion dollars to creditors.
    

None of these issues are going to be seriously addressed by the next President if current trends hold.

Sorry for the doom and gloom. Hopefully I’m wrong.

True
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