Milbank: Donald Trump, America’s modern Mussolini

[cali]

Before posting the article except, I'd like to point out that no one in the MSM has been blunter about Trump than Milbank. He has never been high on my list of pundits I admire, but for repeatedly calling out Trump for the hateful bigot he is,



By Dana Milbank Opinion writer December 8 at 5:14 PM

In an internal Republican Party memo, officials tried to come to grips with the possibility of Donald Trump as their nominee by comparing Trump to Wendell Willkie, the businessman who won the 1940 Republican nomination.

“Willkie and Trump have a lot in common,” Ward Baker, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote at the beginning of the memo, obtained last week by my Post colleagues Robert Costa and Philip Rucker. “Both were seen as fresh-faced outsiders. .?.?. Willkie would go on to lose to wartime President Franklin Roosevelt, but this time it’s harder to predict an outcome.

Thus placing Trump squarely within the party’s traditions, Baker suggested that Republican candidates should embrace some of Trump’s “character traits” and “limit the Trump criticisms.”

Um, no.

It’s hard to imagine a less apt analogue for Trump than Willkie. If the current front-runner for the Republican nomination is to be compared to a 1940 political figure, he comes closer

Willkie was an outspoken proponent of civil rights and a special counsel to the NAACP. He was an avid internationalist and proposed a postwar plan for international peacekeeping. He was denied the 1944 Republican nomination because he was too liberal.

Trump is the very opposite of Willkie, pulling the party to the black-shirted right by playing on fears of foreigners and racial and religious minorities. “The analogy is ludicrous,” says David Hart, a political scientist at George Mason University.

Indeed, Trump owes less to Willkie’s tradition than to Benito Mussolini’s, and not only because of the superficial: Trump’s chin-out toughness, sweeping right-hand gestures and talk of his “huge” successes and his “stupid” opponents all evoke the Italian dictator’s style. Monday’s breathtaking announcement that he would block all Muslims from entering the United States has many pointing out the obvious fascist overtones.

But Trump has built toward this for some time, beginning with his pledge to round up and deport millions of illegal immigrants. A couple of weeks ago, after Trump said he would consider forcing Muslims in the United States to register in a database, the conservative military historian Max Boot tweeted: “Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-isnt-todays-wendell-willkie-hes-todays-benito-mussolini/2015/12/08/77c81b0c-9ddc-11e5-a3c5-c77f2cc5a43c_story.html

[Fumesucker]

1. Il Douche isn't going anywhere a portion of the public hasn't been primed to go for twenty years

The establishment is horrified that Trump is ripping down the carefully constructed façade of dog whistles they've been hiding behind for a couple of generations now. Let the suburban soccer moms and dads see what they've really been voting for all these years and I suspect a lot of them will keep right on voting for it.

[cali]

2. Astute analysis, Fume.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. Sadly true

This is what they are. When I bring up Trump's racism people deflect and move on to something other than discussing the racism.

[IDemo]

3. Missing "to Il Duce." at the end of paragraph 5

I'm in agreement with Fumesucker.

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[Laelth]

4. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[hobbit709]

5. Trumpolini!

[cali]

6. ....

[awoke_in_2003]

10. I would laugh

if it weren't so scary. I won't breathe easy until he is actually defeated.

[mgardener]

7. And he

Married 2 immigrants.
His children are children of immigrants.

I hope his followers realize that he could just as easily decide that they could become the next targeted group whenever he feels like it.

Questions also need to be asked of Trump about his financial dealings with Muslims.
Will he give up his financial deals in Muslim countries? Are any of the men/companies he deals with involved with radical Islam?

[awoke_in_2003]

11. That's different

those are white immigrants.

[pampango]

8. "hard to imagine a less apt analogue for Trump than Willkie. He was an avid internationalist and

proposed a postwar plan for international peacekeeping. He was denied the 1944 Republican nomination because he was too liberal."

The other republicans contesting for the 1940 nomination were all avowed isolationists: Taft, Vandenberg, Dewey and Hoover. None of the were considered "too liberal", just unelectable.

[napkinz]

12. yep ...