Washington Post (The Fix)
By Callum Borchers
February 16, 2016
Donald
Trump said during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate that he’s
going to cut profanity from his famously fiery stump speeches. Why?
“Because if I say a word
that's a little bit off-color — a little bit — it ends up being a
headline.”
I’ll
believe it when I see it, and I’m certainly not convinced that the GOP
front-runner doesn’t want to make headlines. But Trump’s pledge to clean
up his act — however
sincere it might be — is a good cue for the mainstream media to take an
oath of their own:
It’s
time to focus on the billionaire business mogul’s policies as much as
his rhetoric, which is supposedly about to get tamer anyway.
For
the most part, the attention paid to Trump’s various inflammatory
remarks about Mexicans, Muslims, women and any number of other groups
has been warranted. We’ve never
seen a candidate quite like The Donald — certainly not one who
consistently polls so well. Novelty plus success equals news (and, if
we’re honest, entertainment).
But
beyond his plans to build that “big, beautiful wall” along the southern
border and “bomb the hell” (or is it “heck” now?) out of the Islamic
State, many voters probably
don’t know a whole lot about what Trump would actually do as president.
That’s partly because his campaign is short on specifics, but it’s also
because the most rigorous parsing of his positions has been left to a
particular strain of the conservative press
that contends Trump does not lean far enough to the right.
The
National Review, for example, published 22 anti-Trump essays by leading
conservative thinkers last month. They mostly set tone aside and zeroed
in on, as Mona Charen
put it, “Trump’s countless past departures from conservative principle
on defense, racial quotas, abortion, taxes, single-payer health care and
immigration.”
The
mainstream media should follow suit — but without the value judgments.
It’s time to give voters a clearer picture of where Trump stands.
One of the debate’s most heated exchanges would be a good place to start.
TED
CRUZ: You notice Donald didn't disagree with the substance that he
supports taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. And Donald has this
weird pattern, when you point
to his own record he screams, "liar, liar, liar." You want to go …
TRUMP: Where did I support it? Where did I …
CRUZ: You want to go …
(Crosstalk.)
TRUMP: Again, where did I support it?
CRUZ: If you want to watch the video, go to our website, at TedCruz.org.
TRUMP: Hey, Ted, where did I support it?
CRUZ: You can see it out of Donald's own mouth.
TRUMP: Where did I support?
CRUZ: You supported it when we were battling over defunding Planned Parenthood. You went on …
TRUMP: That's a lot of lies.
CRUZ: You said, "Planned Parenthood does wonderful things, and we should not defund it."
TRUMP: It does do wonderful things, but not as it relates to abortion.
CRUZ: So I'll tell you what …
TRUMP: Excuse me. Excuse me. There are wonderful things having to do with women's health.
Forget
the storyline about the end of the Trump-Cruz bromance for a second.
Trump’s position on federal funding for Planned Parenthood merits a
closer look. Based on previous
interviews, he clearly opposes the use of taxpayer money for abortion,
but he also seems uncomfortable with completely cutting off an
organization that also performs cancer screenings, tests for and
treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and even makes
adoption referrals.
That’s
a departure from the stance of many Republicans, who say they cannot
overlook Planned Parenthood’s abortion practices and therefore cannot
support funding it at
all.
It’s
unclear whether Trump, as president, would try to preserve the current
funding system that allows Planned Parenthood to use federal money only
for non-abortion services
or whether he would try to pressure the group to stop performing
abortions to keep its subsidy. He’s floated both ideas.
The
media should attempt to pin Trump down on this. His answer might alarm
some conservatives; it also might make some other voters see him as more
reasonable and willing
to compromise than they previously thought. Either way, the reaction
isn’t really the media’s concern.
Their
concern should be for voters’ understanding of Trump’s positions, which
remains underdeveloped. Whether Trump truly turns into a mild-mannered
version of himself
or not, it’s time for coverage to move beyond the polarizing things he
says and more thoroughly explore the things he would do in the White
House.
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