New York Times
By Trip Gabriel
August 5, 2015
He announced a “foolproof” plan to destroy the Islamic State, but said, “I’m not going to tell you what it is tonight.”
He proposed a “great wall” to keep out illegal immigrants, but changed his mind when he visited the Mexican border.
He
donated $10,000 to re-elect Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, but in
attacking Mr. Walker, blithely revealed that he had no idea of the
governor’s record when he made
the contribution.
Donald
J. Trump, who will be at the center of the first Republican
presidential debate Thursday night, may prove as elusive a target to his
rivals as a puff of smoke.
That
is because Mr. Trump’s popularity — his support in some polls is double
that of his closest competitors — is built on his unfettered style,
rather than on his positions,
which have proved highly fungible.
He may be the first post-policy candidate.
Mr.
Trump’s website, unlike those of nearly every other candidate, has no
issues page. He has given no policy addresses. He has boasted that he is
not spending time plowing
through briefing books or practicing answers to imagined questions, the
customary ways to prepare for a debate.
A
look at the line-up for Thursday night’s debate in Cleveland, the first
of the Republican primary contest, which will be broadcast by Fox News,
and how each candidate
could gain with a strong performance.
Yet
many of Mr. Trump’s positions have an improvisational air, shifting in
their specifics as he seems to dream them up or reconsider them on the
fly and out loud, in
free-associative speeches or shoot-from-the-hip interviews.
What
some have called “Trumpism” is founded not on a specific agenda, like
the bullet-point Contract With America in 1994 that led to the
Republican takeover of the House.
Rather,
it is built on boiling grass-roots anger over the ineffectiveness and
scripted talking points of conventional politicians on matters like
illegal immigration and
America’s global power.
“Everybody
in the establishment misunderstands the game he’s playing,” said Newt
Gingrich, the author of the Contract With America and onetime House
speaker who was himself
a Republican presidential candidate in 2012. “His opponents want to
talk about policies. He’s saying if you don’t have a leader capable of
cutting through the baloney, all this policy stuff is an excuse for
inaction.”
Anticipating
the debate on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said, “I’d rather just discuss the
issues.” But he added in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America”
that he would
respond in kind if targeted by a rival. “If I’m attacked, I have to,
you know, do something back, but I’d like it to be very civil,” he said.
Waffling,
flip-flopping and inconsistencies, all of which might hobble a
conventional candidate, have not dimmed Mr. Trump’s appeal to his
Republican supporters.
He
seemed to lose no ground as rivals and the news media pointed out the
stark reversal in his ideology since he flirted with a presidential run
in 1999. Back then, Mr.
Trump supported abortion rights and a soak-the-rich tax on fortunes in
excess of $10 million.
When
another presidential contender, former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, called
him “a cancer on conservatism” last month, pointing out Mr. Trump’s
previous advocacy for
single-payer health care and his support of Hillary Rodham Clinton, it
was Mr. Perry, castigated on social media, who paid a price.
A
senior adviser to Mr. Perry, Sam Clovis, the chairman of his campaign
in Iowa, called Mr. Trump’s appeal “a cult of personality,” and faulted
the news media for focusing
on his inflammatory remarks and insults rather than on the substance of
his candidacy. (On Tuesday, an online news site, Independent Journal
Review, posted a compilation of video clips showing Mr. Trump delivering
insults; it was 10 hours long.)
“When
are the media going to start asking for specific solutions to specific
problems?” Mr. Clovis asked in an interview. “I put that on you guys.”
Mr.
Trump’s positions and history as a political changeling have begun to
receive a vetting in the news media. Following up on his promise to
replace the Affordable Care
Act with “something terrific,” Bloomberg Politics dug into the somewhat
vague details he had cited and concluded that his plan “sounds quite a
bit like Obamacare.”
After
Mr. Trump dodged Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren on his plan to defeat
the Islamic State, pleading, “I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m
doing,” he told Anderson
Cooper of CNN, who also pressed him about the issue, that he would
“bomb the hell” out of Iraqi oil fields held by the Islamic group.
CNN followed up with military analysts who called this an ineffective strategy.
Still,
as a post-policy candidate, Mr. Trump may be somewhat impervious to
being pinned down, whether by the news media or by his rivals.
Citing
the danger that lurks for other Republicans in taking on Mr. Trump, a
ferocious counterpuncher, some debate veterans speculated that his
rivals would prefer to
demur.
“My
impression is every one of them will go in with a line or two ready to
go, if Trump seizes upon them and they can’t ignore it without looking
weak,” said Dan Senor,
who helped Paul Ryan prepare for his 2012 vice-presidential debate with
Joseph R. Biden Jr. “But I think they’re all hoping to not have to use
it.”
Mr.
Trump’s seeming mutability is not limited to his own positions; in Iowa
recently, he said he had not known much about Mr. Walker’s record as
governor before donating
to his 2014 re-election. “I didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but
he was fighting, and I like a fighter. Does that make sense?” Mr. Trump
said.
Perhaps
Mr. Trump’s most consistent policy stance has been his opposition to
trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that he blames for
the loss of blue-collar
jobs. His proposal of a 35 percent tax on goods from Mexico and higher
tariffs on Chinese imports is a ratcheting up, rather than a reversal,
of positions he took more than a decade ago. (Back then, as an
independent espousing liberal views, he called for
a one-time 14.25 percent tax on fortunes above $10 million.)
His
seizing on trade and immigration in this campaign has allowed Mr. Trump
to tap into the economic anxieties of American workers who have lost
out in the global economy,
and to capitalize on nativist fears.
Which makes attacking him on those issues, above all, a risky proposition in a Republican primary debate.
“This is a guy who’s saying some outrageous, but not inaccurate, things many people feel,” Mr. Senor said.
“I don’t think it’s any candidate’s best interest in trying to take him down.”
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