David Karki

Donald Trump is not a serious presidential candidate. He’s just being what he’s always been – an egotistical publicity hound. Or, if you prefer, a self-important attention whore. Or fill in your description of choice for a pompous blowhard who loves the limelight almost as much as he loves hearing himself talk.

He’s neither a liberal nor a conservative, though he’s backed politicians of both parties at times in order to buy whomever he had to for the sake of his business interests. If I am forced to put a label on him, I’d call him a Trump-ist. He’s in this for the same reason he’s been in everything he’s ever done – himself.

But in temporarily grabbing the spotlight, The Donald has performed a useful service: he has illustrated the total dearth of guts in the current slate of Republican presidential contenders.

I don’t know that he even realized what he was doing, and I certainly don’t think he intended it as such. But merely by speaking a few political incorrect things in plain language for the sake of his usual “Hey, everybody, look at me!!” selfish purposes, he stepped into a huge vacuum. (Which politics, like nature, abhors.)  And has, for the moment at least, made it a bit less empty than it was before, though not coming close to filling it.

Trump has been a spoonful of sugar to a populace very hungry for someone to grow a set and take on Obama before he completes his well-underway mission of destroying America completely.  The sugar tastes good for a moment and briefly takes the edge off the hunger, but it ultimately has no substantive nutritional value and quickly leaves one just as hungry for a real meal as before.

So too it is with Trump; he sounds good for a moment by being the only person to harshly criticize Obama, and it momentarily stanches our despair. But before long, we realize he’s not presidential timber and in fact would not be someone we’d remotely consider under more normal circumstances. And we feel our despair and hunger for a true leader all the more.

The real story on the GOP side in 2012 is just how small and tiny the entire bunch is. And Trump, through all his publicity grabbing hot air, is exposing that as much as he is himself. Once he passes from the scene – probably the day after the season finale of “Celebrity Apprentice” airs on NBC to record ratings from all the chumps anticipating a presidential announcement that never comes – the other candidates will all try to sound the same way. The vacuum, after all, must be filled somehow, by someone.

And they’ll all fail. For some, their attempts at big talk will just be laughable on the face of it. For others, their long and well-documented records as liberal RINO squishes will completely belie their newfound “dislike” of Obama. One way or another, there will be no credibility in their Johnny-come-lately attempts to puff out their chests and poke their index fingers into Obama’s. They’ll look even more foolish than they already do.

There is only one standard, one criterion that will – or should, anyway – determine the Republican nominee for 2012:  willingness to fight, no matter what it takes. Why? America as a constitutional republic and very possibly modern western civilization itself hang in the balance. We are on the verge of becoming – and really, in large measure already have become – the very thing we spent 40+ years of a Cold War doing everything in our power to defeat.

And an even more intractable foe than the domestic communism Obama is ramming down our throats at warp speed every way he can lies waiting for its moment to strike:  radical Islam.  They are both totalitarian systems, neither leaving the slightest trace of anything resembling personal liberty or freedom, as they dictate private behavior and control every individual’s life down to the tiniest detail. Hence their otherwise seemingly unlikely alliance against a common foe:  an America that stands as a beacon of truth, the “shining city on a hill,” thwarting both by its mere existence. They will stop at nothing to destroy it. (Where the radical left screws up is in thinking the radical Muslims won’t turn on them in a heartbeat the instant that job is done; do they really think they’ll let feminists and gays live? Talk about feeding the crocodile in hopes it will eat you last, as the old saying goes.)

That 2012 Republican candidate, by default and circumstance, will be more than Obama’s opponent. He or she will have to be the general that raises a banner and leads the counter-attack which reverses the tide of the last 50 years before it’s too late, and gets America to a place where, in having defeated the enemy within, she can then defeat the enemy at the gates.

It will not be a job for a bunch of scared, wimpy midgets and dwarfs. (And frankly, such a comparison to the GOP bunch insults little people.)  It will not be a job for someone who values compromise, “getting along,” and who naively and stupidly thinks the Democrats mean well. Even if they did, they’re so nuts in their total denial of reality and complete consumption by their own egos that it matters not a whit. When the captain of the Titanic is holding the iceberg warning firmly in hand and ordering more speed, does it matter whether he intends to sink the ship? You’re dead either way! So, the only options are to organize a mutiny or head for the lifeboats and abandon ship while you still can.

It will be a job for someone who sees that major conflict, while certainly not desirable, is at this point absolutely necessary. It will be a job for someone who sees that the goal isn’t to jump the car off the cliff at 55 mph instead of warp speed but to stop the car, turn it around, and drive it the opposite direction. And it will be a job for someone who can rally and motivate the “troops” to accept their mission with determination and high morale, despite the cost it will impose upon them.

Most of all, it’ll be a job for someone who has the courage to stay the course despite personal sacrifice, for whom this battle is the calling of their lifetime.  As we’ve seen with Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and most recently Sarah Palin, when one truly threatens the power of the establishment, they ferociously attack with a seething hatred straight from the darkest place imaginable and go right for the jugular and the kill. Families, children, nothing is out of bounds for them if it can suit their purpose of total personal destruction for the sake of maintaining absolute power.

That is a very high price to pay and I think that the current GOP slate, having seen what was visited upon Palin (and Thomas and Bork), doesn’t really want any part of that. While understandable on one level, it’s nevertheless disappointing.  If founding this nation cost “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,” will keeping it require any less? It has ever been thus, and shall ever be.

I don’t know that such a leader exists for 2012, and maybe that’s not the point. Perhaps this is something of a mirror of self-examination held up to each of us, to find out if we possess those traits, for there cannot be a leader without followers. And we can’t expect someone else to win the day if each of us refuses to do our own part.

As Patrick Henry said, “[Three] millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Beside, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”

So, to Donald Trump I say “Thank you. Now get lost.” May a real leader emerge and take his – or her – rightful place, in front of a citizenry ready to fight.

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