Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

That didn’t take long. Donald Trump The Untouchable has suddenly become a cuddle doll within Connecticut’s GOP establishment. The word “establishment", it should be understood, is a fighting word among Trumpeters. Anyone who has been tainted by political office is, in the view of Trump supporters, a member of the corrupted establishment. Establishment candidates have been given the bum’s rush by primary voters this year. The Trump campaign easily managed to polish off a number of conservative Republican anti-beltway presidential candidates, including Bobby Jindal, Carla Fiorina, and Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz, recently condemned by establishment Republican John Boehner as a Luciferian constitutional conservative, unlike the former RINO Speaker of the U.S. House, is still plugging away.

Apart from being friendly to each other in the past, what do Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic Party presidential candidate, and Donald Trump, Hillary’s counterpart in the Republican Party, have in common? Both are leading in the polls, and both are flawed candidates; Mr. Trump because he’s a shallow thinker, however entertaining, and Mrs. Clinton because both her distant and recent past are pockmarked with irregularities.

Many Trump critics, most scornfully Kevin Williamson in National Review, find Donald Trump abhorrent because he is a Republican In Name Only (RINO). Mr. Trump seems to gravitate between the parties as circumstances dictate. Mr. Williamson notes  that Mr. Trump is “a tax-happy crony capitalist who is hostile to free trade but very enthusiastic about using state violence to homejack private citizens — he backed the Kelo decision '100 percent' and has tried to use eminent domain in the service of his own empire of vulgarity — and generally has about as much command of the issues as the average sophomore at a not especially good college, which is what he was (sorry, Fordham) until his family connections got him into Penn.”