Columnists don’t like Trump
As the editorial page editor of the 蘑菇视频, one of my jobs is to select the national columns, mostly political, which generally run on our A4 page.
We subscribe to several syndicates, including the Washington Post and Cagle, who supply us with a variety of national columnists. I select the columnists, looking for ones who are both interesting and informative. I also try to come up with a balance between conservative and liberal columnists. The goal is to try and provide as many different viewpoints as possible so that people have a variety of opinions to choose from. Then, they can make up their own minds as to which columnists they believe or not believe.
That’s one of the reasons why we run liberal columnists Al Owens and Gene Lyons along with conservative columnists George Will and Michael Reagan on a weekly basis.
We try to be fair and down the middle, even if most of our readers think we’re either too far to the left or right, depending on who’s doing the complaining.
However, there’s one group of political supporters who might have a case for calling us biased.Those are the backers of Donald Trump. But it’s not our fault. The problem is that Trump has somehow managed to offend both liberal and conservative columnists alike to the point that no one is coming to his defense these days.
You might figure that would be the case with liberal columnists, who can always find something wrong with conservative politicians. That’s certainly been the case with Trump as Lyons, Owens and others have been quick to paint a target on his back. In their view, he’d be the worst president ever. They’ve been saying that about GOP presidential candidates for some time, but they seem to find something particularly loathsome about Trump.
But the big surprise has been that conservative columnists such as Will, Reagan, Jennifer Rubin, Rick Jensen and Christine Flowers have had nothing good to say about the Republican front-runner. Will, Reagan and Rubin, in particular, have been criticizing Trump non-stop since he first threw his hat in the political ring.
Certainly, Trump has split the Republican Party, with a number of establishment Republicans saying there’s no way they could ever support him. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened there will be a riot if he’s denied the nomination at the GOP convention this summer in Cleveland.
It does seem peculiar that there are so many long-time, dyed-in-the-wool, Republicans who say they won’t be able to bring themselves to support Trump if he’s nominate. Usually, no matter how badly the party is divided in the primary campaign, they always close ranks behind the nominee and do everything possible to help him win in November.
But who knows what’s going to happen this time around. Most of the conservative columnists seem to have two main problems with Trump. First, they contend that Trump is not a true conservative, pointing to his ever shifting views over the years. Second, they say Trump has alienated so many women and minorities with his campaign that he’s unelectable.
The columnists fear Trump will drag many Republican candidates down with him, perhaps even costing them control of the Senate and possibly the House of Representatives. They view Trump as a complete disaster for the GOP, no matter what his hard-line supporters think.
We’ll see how this all plays out. Maybe Trump will eventually be able to unite Republicans behind him and present a solid front in the November general election. Maybe even someday one of our national columnists will say something nice about Trump. I wouldn’t bet on it, but miracles have been known to happen. If one of our national columnists does have a change of heart and praises Trump, you can be sure that I’ll run it. That’s my job.
Mark O’Keefe can be reached by email at mokeefe@heraldstandard.com or by phone at 724-439-7569.