Donald, You Make It Difficult

Last week, the Commonwealth of Virginia joined ten or so other states in having a primary for the Republican presidential nomination.  The winner, as you recall, was Donald Trump, who was a couple percentage points higher than Marco Rubio with both a bit over 30% of the vote.  The two received about the same number of delegates, while the other three (now two) candidates trailed behind them.

I voted for one of the five of them, and I'll keep my ballot secret as we all have a right to do.  The main reason for doing so -- frankly, in another year I might have shared it regardless -- is, because of, like almost everything else to do with this campaign on both sides of the aisle, of course, Donald Trump.

Here's the thing.  My best girl and I go back and forth and back and forth about The Donald, probably changing 2-3 times a week whether or not we would vote for him if the primary were that day.  Now, the primary has already happened, and whether or not we voted for him or one of the other candidates is now a matter of private record and cannot be changed.

But Lord knows, both of us have gone back and forth even since our vote.  People who supported Trump and go back and forth tend probably to react more negatively to his debate performances, which lately have tended to go all junior high when not saying the same things over and over without depth or clarification.

The problem is that the "same things" he says repeatedly resonate -- with us and presumably most of his supporters -- because they are precisely the things that bug us about (1) the Obama administration, and (2) the Republican-dominated Congress doing so little about #1, as if they share some vested interest in "going along to get along" (i.e., reelected).  We don't understand how "going along to get along" actually works, so we get frustrated and understand the appeal of Trump.

Of course, the above paragraph applies just as well to Ted Cruz, who over the weekend won two out of the the four states contested, with surprising strength.  He is "in" that Republican-dominated Congress, but he certainly isn't "getting along."

But I digress, a little.

The thing is, since even last week when we actually voted and had a heck of a time deciding right up until we parked at the polling place, even since then we have gone back and forth.  We are reasonably intelligent people, so we do occasionally remember to point out that keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House, if she is not in prison by then, is really important.  Just for the record.

But with Trump, however much one might go along with those few, key points he does make, he provides you about three avenues for evaluation -- the debates, his many interviews, and his speeches.  I've heard many examples of the latter two and all of the first.  And they can be summarized as I did above.  The speeches pound the same high-level points; the interviews consist of those points plus refusing to apologize for something he said that he generally shouldn't have to apologize for; and the debates are the points plus the junior-high attacks.

So if you like the points and detest the 7th-grade aspects of the persona, you are going to change your view frequently.  Because Donald Trump makes it so, so hard for even those of us who agree with him to be as supportive as we would otherwise be.  If indeed you are like that, then you can be comforted in the knowledge that you are far from alone.

Welcome to the club.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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