Sunday’s Obligatory Trump Post

Actually, I got nuthin’. So I’ll just post a funny video below of Darth Vader as rendered by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Hat tip: JZ.)

But other people have thoughts. S.E. Cupp argues that it not the weakness of the GOP establishment that explains Trump’s success, but rather the fact that he stands up to liberalism more robustly than anyone has for a long time (which is, again, a variation of Angelo Codevilla’s theme):

I have a different explanation for ascendant Trumpism. It isn’t the result of conservatism but of liberalism. Thanks to unrelenting demands by the left for increasingly preposterous levels of political correctness over the past decade, people are simply fed up. Trump survives — nay, thrives! — because he is seen as the antidote, bravely and unimpeachably standing athwart political correctness.

The new era of liberal political correctness — in which colleges designate “free speech zones,” words like “American” and “mother” are considered discriminatory, and children are suspended from school for firing make-believe weapons — has reached critical mass. If not for the loony sensitivities foisted upon us by the left, someone like Trump would be immediately dismissed as unprofessional and unserious, an incoherent blurter. Instead, he’s the equally extreme response to extreme correctness — if everything is offensive in Liberalville, then nothing will be offensive in Trumpland.

Ross Douthat, meanwhile, sees much the same thing, and in a typically elegant and complex article (worth reading the whole thing) believes that the likely establishment beat down on Trump that is surely coming might fatally damage the Republican Party, which seems plausible. We’re in a new era, Douthat argues, and most Republican grandees haven’t figured this out (which is a variation of my argument yesterday):

In a healthy two-party system, the G.O.P. would treat Trump’s strange success as evidence that the party’s basic orientation may need to change substantially, so that it looks less like a tool of moneyed interests and more like a vehicle for middle American discontent.

In an unhealthy system, the kind I suspect we inhabit, the Republicans will find a way to crush Trump without adapting to his message. In which case the pressure the Donald has tapped will continue to build — and when it bursts, the G.O.P. as we know it may go with it.

And now, for your Sunday amusement, Darth Vader crossed with the Governator:

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