ON TRUMP: Quotes of the Day

The Z Man:

We have two primaries going on in which immigration is the defining issue. On the one side, the guy promising to build a wall and bar Muslims from entry crushed the field, despite being outspent a million-to-one. On the other side, the old-time socialist, who preaches worker’s rights and obliquely opposes the immigration lobbies, is making life hell for the party candidate…

…Despite this year long news story, the politicians and their backers in both parties want to increase immigration! Obama is violating Federal law so he can import hundreds of thousands of Islamic terrorists. You could be forgiven if you started to wonder if these people actually hate you. How is it possible to be this blind to daily reality in America? It’s as if these people live on another planet and pop in every once in a while to stage a political show…

…If the people in Washington insist on flooding the country with helot labor, despite what’s happening in the election, the people are going to insist on building scaffolds in Washington. The Trump phenomenon is the warning.

John Hinderaker:

…I, and many others, have said repeatedly that Trump is no conservative. He is, however, pro-America. His slogan, make America great again, resonates with conservatives of all stripes. On the other hand, it is anathema to liberals, who believe that America never was great, and certainly don’t want her to start being great now. And Trump, like no one else, pushes back against the Left’s efforts to suppress free speech, which usually go under the too-generous rubric of political correctness.

A new conservatism is, to paraphrase a long-dead crank, struggling to be born. It will not emerge between now and November, but the next six months should shed considerable light on the shape of the conservative movement in a post-Reagan era.

One more thing: if the conservative alliance of the last 40 years is fragmenting, the liberal coalition is in far worse shape…

Philip Klein:

Trump has effectively led national polling of Republican voters from wire-to-wire since joining the race last summer. He won when there was a large field and when the field had narrowed to three candidates. He has won big states and small states. He nearly swept the Northeast and the South, and has won in the Midwest. He’s attracted the support of moderates and conservatives, of evangelicals and non-religious voters…

…There will be a lot of second-guessing and “what ifs” thrown around about whether this could have been prevented. What if there weren’t as many candidates to begin with? What if Cruz had attacked Trump earlier? What if the anti-Trump movement had started spending money on attack ads in December? What if Sen. Marco Rubio hadn’t stumbled at the pre-New Hampshire debate? What if candidates had dropped out sooner, allowing anti-Trump Republicans to rally around an alternative before it was too late?

This is mostly a wasted exercise. It’s quite possible that if Cruz had attacked Trump earlier, he would have collapsed ahead of Iowa, as with other candidates who got in Trump’s way. It’s unclear why ads attacking Trump’s character, business record, electability, or conservatism, would have proven any more effective months earlier.

Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.