Jonah Goldberg on Bill Bennett's support of Donald Trump

      I am also an admirer of Jonah Goldberg, who is not an admirer of Donald Trump.  He believes what is happening with Trump's popularity resembles The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I have excerpted from the column his absolute confoundment of how Bill Bennett can speak words of praise for Donald Trump.  See his entire column entitled,  "In a Slow-Motion Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Media Figures Embrace Trump One By One."

 "...And that brings me to my friend Bill Bennett. I’ve known, admired, and defended Bill for years. He’s a mensch and a fighter of noble causes.

 I am a frequent listener to Bill’s radio show, mostly when perambulating my canines. Bill is not entirely pro-Trump, but he’s certainly anti-anti-Trump. Bill says concerns about Trump amount to “Trumpophobia.” Last week, he asked rhetorically, “Is it because he’s crude?” And then Bill Bennett rhapsodized about how he’s so worldly that a little profanity doesn’t bother him. Again, we’re talking about Bill-fudging-Bennett (that was a fantastic example of tmesis by the way). That’s not the Bill Bennett I know. 

Then there’s this from last week’s Washington Post: 

“I’m used to being the moral scold, but Trump is winning fair and square, so why should the nomination be grabbed from him?” asked Bennett, now a conservative radio host. “We’ve been trying to get white working-class people into the party for a long time. Now they’re here in huge numbers because of Trump and we’re going to alienate them? I don’t get it. Too many people are on their high horse.” 

Again: I love Bill. But I don’t know anyone who knows the view from the saddle more than Bill. 

Here’s an abbreviated list of his books: 
The Book of Virtues 
The Devaluing of America: Fight for Our Culture and Our Faith 
The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals 
The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Collapse of the American Family I
ndex of Cultural Indicators: Facts and Figures on the State of American Society 
The Children’s Book of Heroes; The Children’s Book of Faith 
The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood 
Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism 

And here’s just a few things that I would have thought the author of these books would find disqualifying for a president of the United States and de facto standard-bearer of conservatism. 

• Trump said it doesn’t matter what the media writes about you “as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” 
•  Trump boasted that his ordeal of avoiding the clap while sleeping around so much amounted to his own “personal Vietnam.” 
• He said that John McCain’s ordeal avoiding dying at the hands of his torturers wasn’t heroic. 
• As for everyone else’s Vietnam, Trump got out of that by claiming to have a medical condition that instantly healed when hostilities ended. 
• He bragged — in print! — about bedding married women and has admitted to cheating on at least two of his wives. 
• He boasted that he “whines until I win.” 
• He’s condemned Charles Krauthammer, George Will, and many other friends of Bill’s (including yours truly) with far, far more vitriol than he condemns Vladimir Putin, the butchers of Tiananmen, and David Duke. 
• The man is so lacking in moral clarity that he dismissed Vladimir Putin’s murdering of journalists by saying, “I think our country does plenty of killing also.” 
• This is a man who expresses a passionate desire to change the First Amendment so he can punish journalists who don’t kowtow to him. 
• This is a man who praised the mass murder at Tiananmen and criticized Gorbachev for not being as tough-minded. 
• This is a man who says he “reads the Bible more than anybody” but can’t — after months of opportunities — speak intelligently about it for 30 seconds. 
• This is a man who, by any objective measure, lies nearly as much as Bill Clinton but with a tenth of the skill. 
• He lacks the patriotic seriousness to do minimal homework, even when his ignorance has been pointed out time and again. (Bill’s colleague Hugh Hewitt asked Trump about the nuclear triad in August. Several months later, when the question came up again Trump was, if anything, more ignorant.) 
• This is a man whose business dealings have been shot through with shady practices, mob ties, and fraudulent claims (also known as “lies”). 
• This is a man with a totally thumbless grasp of what the Constitution is about or what conservatism is (“Conservatism means,” according to Trump, “to conserve our money”). 
• This is a man who boasted for months that he will torture our enemies and indiscriminately murder their children as a matter of policy. This is a man who says that the last Republican president deliberately lied us into war and plays coy about whether 9/11 was an inside job. 

Now, Bill has criticized some of these things, he just doesn’t think they add up to anything that justifies trying to keep this guy from taking over the GOP or the country. And, bear in mind, I haven’t even talked about Trump’s “policies.” 

To Bill’s credit, he had me on the show on Monday to argue with him about it all. We did. My heart wasn’t entirely in it because I hate being at odds with Bill. I think that’s one reason why I didn’t do as well as I could have. Another reason: I couldn’t believe what Bennett was saying. (Here’s the full audio.) Remember the aforementioned Reagan fallacy? "

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432708/donald-trump-media-supporters-principles-conservatism?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=KC103+3_14_16