By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Just as European explorers “discovered” the North American continent centuries ago — even though it already was inhabited — a similar spirit of adventure seems to be leading Republican voters into uncharted territory in 2016.
The GOP voters are sure there’s a prize if they just keep pushing toward the frontiers. Whether it’s first prize, a consolation prize, or a booby-trapped disappointment is uncertain. And will the territory they claim really be virgin land, or is it already populated by others lying in ambush?
As he continues to win with pluralities in primaries, Donald Trump has been sized up by many energized voters as the answer to their prayers against an overweening establishment.
Not that prayer seems to be the strong point of Trump, who’s arid of religious fervor, but voter desperation may have them hoping they can irrigate some raw Donaldian desert into blooming victory gardens, just as 19th-century pioneers did to rugged Arizona and Utah, where GOP voting activity traipses on March 22.
Rob Haney is a conservative Catholic and retired chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, headquartered in Phoenix, who told The Wanderer he likes what he has been seeing with the progress of the presidential candidacies of Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
Haney long has opposed the open-borders priorities of both the national and Arizona GOP establishments.
In an email while votes still were being cast in the March 15 primaries, Haney said:
“Thus far, I have been encouraged with the results. . . . I see the illegal-alien invasion as the number one issue which needs to be aggressively attacked in order to save the country. The GOP voter appears to have two champions, Trump and Cruz, who are willing to challenge the GOP hierarchy on the illegal-alien invasion.
“The invasion has a negative impact on national security, jobs for citizens, quality education for citizens, welfare costs, crime statistics, taxes, and political corruption,” Haney said.
“Catholic pro-life and pro-family fundamental positions also suffer at the hands of illegals because they campaign for — and, when it is not opposed by the authorities, vote for — Democrat politicians.”
Although Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) dawned on the national scene six years ago as a symbol of great hope to conservatives, he seriously wounded himself when he locked arms with open-borders warriors like Senators John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) to fight for their “Gang of Eight” bill for immigration amnesty in 2013.
The bill failed, even though Rubio had been recruited as a sponsor to give it respectability on the right side of the political spectrum.
Rubio never seemed to regain his footing with conservatives. He finally dropped out of the GOP presidential race on March 15 after New Yorker Trump, who talks tough on border security, trampled him in his home-state Florida primary election — even though a tsunami of anti-Trump advertising swept over Floridians.
Meanwhile, Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich emerged as the liberals’ preference when the Republican presidential field was whittled down in a few months from 17 hopefuls to four, then, as Rubio withdrew, to three.
Kasich finally won his first primary when his home state voted on March 15, easily dispatching the opposition including Trump — although “strategic voting” for Kasich by some Democrats and Republicans was a factor, hoping to prevent Trump from becoming the GOP nominee this summer.
Rubio had asked his fans in Ohio to vote for Kasich rather than himself as a ploy to prevent a Buckeye State victory for Trump.
Using a kindred strategy, some Democrats had been voting for Trump, hoping he’d be a weak nominee against the Democrat candidate in the general election.
Trump won the day’s other three GOP primaries, in Illinois, North Carolina, and Missouri, although the Missouri win over Cruz was so narrow it could be subject to a recount.
While votes were being cast on March 15, a Politico reporter on Hugh Hewitt’s national political radio program referred to Kasich’s “insufferable” attitude. The comment probably rang a bell among conservatives who hear Kasich’s patronizing posture on massive illegal immigration as coming straight from a liberal Democrat playbook.
Kasich probably doesn’t think many Republicans buy his amnesty rhetoric, but he’s still more than ready to raise specters of midnight raids on millions of hardworking — albeit border-jumping — people who have their crying children torn from their arms.
Haney, the retired GOP county chairman in Arizona, doesn’t like the pro-amnesty stands of either Rubio or Kasich. He told The Wanderer:
“When Rubio sided with McCain on amnesty and Kasich took the Catholic bishops’ and Catholic Vote position on illegals, they were exposed as closet liberals. I believe the election of Rubio or Kasich would mean more of the same in Republican politics.”
Political Violence
A few days before the March 15 primaries, supporters of far-left presidential candidate Bernie Sanders shut down a Trump rally in Chicago and celebrated their victory at suppression. This was the most serious of recent liberal attacks against Trump gatherings.
However, Trump’s GOP foes laid the burden on Trump instead of blaming yet another round of left-wing strong-arm tactics so familiar these days in cities and campuses.
When The Wanderer asked if Haney thought Trump was inviting violence, he replied:
“As far as the anarchists who attacked free speech at the Trump rallies are concerned, we have come to expect them at any venue where conservatives are gathered to be heard. I felt it was outrageous for Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich to blame the Democrat Party rioters on Trump’s rhetoric. I believe Cruz will lose conservative votes to Trump as a result of his careless political blunder.”
Writer Molly Ball noted in an article posted March 15 at The Atlantic: “Why, (Trump’s) supporters ask, do protesters — many of them part of organized leftist campaigns — get to disrupt and even shut down his events, while Trump and his supporters are expected not to respond? Why is Trump asked to condemn and discourage violence, while the protesters aren’t criticized for coming and starting trouble?”
The article was titled, “The resentment powering Trump.”
And writer David French observed at the National Review site on March 15: “It will be impossible, over the long term, to maintain peace and even national unity if elite media and the Democratic Party continue to condone and even encourage political violence and the systematic violation of individual rights by its radical progressive base.
“From Occupy to Ferguson to Baltimore to the unrest on campus, Americans have watched the liberal establishment trip over itself to express solidarity and sympathy with protesters who’ve burned, looted, shut down roads and parks, and violated the fundamental rights of American citizens,” French wrote.
Left-wing lawlessness and violence back in 1968, French recalled, “helped usher in an era of Republican presidential dominance” from voters worried that the U.S. was unraveling.
With GOP presidential hopefuls thinned to three, Washington Post writer Chris Cillizza told the Hewitt radio program on March 15 that it’ll be “trench warfare” until primary season ends.
It’s off to uncharted territory again, exploring for convention delegates in every lonely thicket.
Remember those European adventurers landing on our shores, and ending up partying with the locals on the first Thanksgiving? If the territory hadn’t already had some population, whom would the Pilgrims have celebrated with?
In 2016, when the shouting and political spouting are all over by Thanksgiving Day, what new political world will be celebrated?
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