Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 219, Ed. 1 Tuesday, March 8, 2016 Page: 4 of 16
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OPINION
4A
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
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( SENATE JUDICIARY CHAIRMAN4
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Trump
supporters
rage against
the present
3
Published by Denton Publishing Co.,
a subsidiary of A.H. Belo Corporation
S| Founded from weekly newspapers,
■ the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
^3 and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Scott K. Parks
Managing Editor
Mark Finley
City Editor
Mariel Tarn-Ray
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
HgPH 1
■'-f
ure, Donald Trump has the support of
David Duke. But the membership of
the Ku Klux Klan is small. So anyone
hoping to understand Trump’s electoral ap-
peal must assume it goes beyond those
whose favorite pastime is burning crosses.
Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., recently ex-
plained why he en-
dorsed the GOP front-
runner. “I come from
an interesting rural
county with a lot of
Rust Belt union folks,
and Donald Trump is
truly
through western New
York,” he told The New
York Times. “It starts
first and foremost with
the leader who is going
to make our borders safe again.”
His district is actually on the border —
the border with Canada. But that’s not the
one Trump wants to secure with an impene-
trable wall. Collins’ constituents are about as
far as you can get from the Rio Grande, and
they have not been overrun by Mexican im-
migrants, legal or otherwise. Hispanics of all
types make up just 2.6 percent of the pop-
ulation there.
Trump’s ability to inflame such passions
in so many places is puzzling because the
number of foreigners coming here illegally
has been declining. The number living in the
United States is down by nearly 1 million
from the 2007 peak. The volume of appre-
hensions by the Border Patrol along the bor-
der with Mexico has plunged.
Fear of terrorism has something to do
with this urge to seal off the southern border.
Republican presidential candidates have
raised the terrifying specter of Islamic State
terrorists sneaking into the country from
Mexico.
None of them mentions that the 9/U hi-
jackers came here legally. Nor does anyone
seem to recall that in 2011, the head of Cus-
toms and Border Protection said, “We have
had more cases where people who are sus-
pected of alliances with terrorist organiza-
tions or have had a terrorist suspicion in their
background — we see more people crossing
over from Canada than we have from Mex-
S
Ate
-V; /SSaB
I L
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m
Editorials published in the Denton Record-Chronicle
are determined by the editorial board.
Questions and suggestions should be directed to the:
Denton Record-Chronicle
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Phone: 940-387-3811
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The Donald fine-tunes
art of the insult
IP
\
resonating
Steve
Chapman
ahbelo.com NYSE symbol: AHC
POWs and a growing list of other targets.
“Trump is what the psychologists call the
‘empathic bully’” said best-selling human-
behavior author Malcolm Gladwell on The
Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore the
night after Super Tuesday.
It sounds odd to put “bully” together with
“empathy.” But as Gladwell explained, the
ability to understand what and how others
feel is very helpful to the bully who wants to
read your weaknesses and exploit them to
make you feel that much worse.
“The best bullies are people who are bril-
liant at reading your weaknesses and ex-
ploiting them,” Gladwell said. ‘When
[Trump] makes fun of the other candidates,
it’s not some bad crude insult. It’s actually an
insult that cuts into the quick of who they
ou can’t insult your way to the
White House,” Jeb Bush told
Donald Trump in an early Re-
publican presidential debate. Oh, really?
Trump has since seized a commanding
lead as the party’s
frontrunner. Jeb Bush, ^
who entered the race
with the biggest war
chest outside of
Trump’s pocket
change, has dropped
Other voices
Farewell to
Nancy Reagan
out.
ancy Reagan, who died Sunday at 94, devoted her
life to fiercely protecting her husband, whether
that be as his most steadfast helpmate in the Oval
Office or his most tireless caregiver when Alzheimer’s left
him unable to even recognize her.
After Ronald Reagan’s death in 2004, the former first
lady retained guardianship of the legacy of the beloved
and important 40th president. She endeavored at every
opportunity to remind Americans of his brand of hopeful
and constructive conservatism.
A woman who knew the heights of power in the 1980s
— and whose stylish sensibility brought back to the White
House an air of glamour and confidence not seen since
Jacqueline Kennedy’s day — saw her world crumble with
the former president’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
The depth of her devotion during Reagan’s long illness
seemed to shift the public’s perception of a woman who
was more admired than loved during her years as first
lady. Advocating even after his death on behalf of stem
cell research, she became a voice for the millions of Amer-
icans grappling with Alzheimer’s grim reality.
Fewer remember that in 1987, Nancy Reagan spoke
out on yet another health challenge. After undergoing a
mastectomy, she openly discussed her operation to en-
courage women to have mammograms every year. She
also worked hard on behalf of her “Just Say No” anti-drug
campaign.
As first lady, she also was harshly criticized for what
some considered her undue influence on the president.
But she stood her ground as her husband’s protector,
telling a 1987 audience, “I make no apologies for looking
out for his personal and political welfare.”
By the end of the Reagan years, most Americans
thought she’d done just fine.
The Reagan love story was described by the late Charl-
ton Heston as “the greatest love affair in the history of the
American presidency.” Even their detractors conceded the
power of their mutual fidelity and regard.
They met in 1949, both Hollywood actors, and married
in 1952.
Nancy Reagan told Vanity Fair in 1998: “When I say
my life began with Ronnie, well, it’s true. It did. I can’t
imagine life without him.” By then, however, Reagan had
already begun to slip away. In that decade, the former first
lady guarded him more fiercely than ever and lived what
she termed “the long goodbye.”
At his state funeral, the frail widow of unshakable
dignity bore up stoically through the ceremonies. She
captured the nation’s heart when, in her final farewell
before burial, she kissed her husband’s casket, clutched
the American flag draped over it and, tears coming at last,
said, “I love you.”
“I live in a permanent Christmas because God gave me
you,” Ronald Reagan once wrote to his wife, whose im-
portance in the drama of his life and his consequential
presidency cannot be denied. Nancy Reagan poured her
life out for her husband, and in so doing, for the nation.
— The Dallas Morning News
Two of his remain-
ing competitors, Sens.
Marco Rubio of Flori-
da and Ted Cruz of
Texas, belatedly are
trying to bully the Donald. That’s a tough
battle. History may well remember Trump’s
campaign as an ongoing imitation of his
near-namesake, the foul-mouthed puppet
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
It works because, despite his lack of expe-
rience in public office — or, for that matter,
public service — Trump has studied the po-
litical scene closely over the past two decades
as he contemplated and repeatedly backed
away from the presidential run he finally is
making now.
Why now? Why not? As the world can
see, the Republicans have been limping
through an odd state of disarray for years.
They control most of the state governments
and both houses of Congress, but they’ve lost
the popular vote in five of the past six presi-
dential races.
National leaders in the Grand Old Party
urge outreach to women and minorities.
Trump has taken an alternative path urged
by numerous hard-core right-wingers: Beat
the bushes to roust out conservatives who
have stayed home on Election Day out of dis-
may and outright anger with a Washington
that they feel has sold them out.
That’s why the Donald has carved out
what amounts to a third party in the mak-
ing: tougher on illegal immigration and for-
eign trade deals, for example, than the con-
servative think-tank establishment but also
more protective of Social Security, Medicare
and other entitlements.
But before Trump could sell his agenda to
the public he had to get our attention. That’s
where his insult-dog act came in. He aston-
ished us with his affronts to Fox News’ Me-
gyn Kelly, a disabled New York Times re-
porter, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and other
N
Clarence
Page
are.
So when he called Jeb Bush ‘low energy,”
the son and brother of former presidents
suddenly seemed to become more low-ener-
gy in public and probably in his self-percep-
tions.
We should have seen this coming. Trump
loves professional wrestling. He’s co-spon-
sored “Wrestlemania” events and even per-
formed, playing — who else? — himself.
And it works for the same reason that the
Wharton-educated billionaire often talks
like a lunch bucket-carrying blue collar
worker from Queens. When he recently said,
“I love the poorly educated,” he sounded like
he meant it.
Of course, Bush, Rubio and Cruz have
tried belatedly to return fire. But the insult is
not a game for the squeamish or ill-pre-
pared. Trump’s skills come from decades of
his strategic obnoxiousness.
That’s why, instead of calling Rubio inex-
perienced, Trump talks about how the Flo-
ridian “sweats a lot.” When conservative ra-
dio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump in an-
other debate about his overdue promise to
release his tax returns, Trump responded by
belittling Hewitt’s audience ratings.
And when Mitt Romney courageously
stood up and denounced Trump as a “pho-
ny” “a fraud” and a danger to democracy,
Trump pointedly called Romney a “stiff” and
a “choke artist” who “failed horribly” in his
2012 election bid “that he should have won.”
But Mitt did the right thing. Good people
need to speak up against Trump’s put-
downs.
CLARENCE PAGE writes for the Chica-
go Tribune. His column is distributed by
Tribune Content Agency.
ICO.
Oddly, Trump pays no attention to our
northern frontier. Something about Canada
just doesn’t frighten people — even people
who can see Toronto from their homes — the
way Mexico does.
Trump is fond of saying that the southern
border is so porous as to be no border at all.
“If we don’t have a border, we don’t have a
country,” he asserts.
As a matter of history, he couldn’t be more
wrong. “The Mexico-U.S. border remained
little more than a line on a map, entirely un-
guarded by federal authorities until 1924,
when the U.S. Border Patrol was estab-
lished,” writes Princeton sociologist Douglas
Massey. Ronald Reagan, the hero of every
Republican, envisioned a North America
without border controls.
It’s not just illegal immigration that
alarms Trump fans. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-
Ala., who endorsed him recently, favors a re-
duction in legal immigration. So does the
Federation for American Immigration Re-
form, which has praised Trump’s immigra-
tion plan. “I’m opposed to new people com-
ing in,” he said in 1999.
Racial prejudice undoubtedly motivates
many of his supporters. One thing Mexicans
and Central Americans sneaking over the
southern border usually have in common
with Middle Eastern refugees is a dusky
complexion.
That doesn’t win them points with the 70
percent of Trump voters in South Carolina
who think the Confederate flag should still
be flying at the state Capitol or the 16 percent
who believe “whites are a superior race.”
UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck
has documented that many of his supporters
are “people who are responsive to religious,
social and racial intolerance.” Latinos and
Muslims get the blunt end of their response.
It clearly infuriates those drawn to Trump
that they have repeatedly failed to get their
way on the issues they are passionate about.
Most Americans, polls show, are in favor of
giving unauthorized immigrants a path to
citizenship. Most think immigrants
strengthen America. Most want to let those
brought here illegally as children gain legal
status. Most are fine with the country’s be-
coming browner and more diverse.
On these and other matters, Trump’s sup-
porters have been losing, year in and year
out. That’s not the fault of corrupt Washing-
ton insiders or cowardly politicians or weak
leadership. They have been losing because
the majority of Americans have considered
their views and rejected them.
The fantasy Trump holds out to his fol-
lowers is that despite being out of step with
the majority of their fellow Americans, they
can dismantle all the changes they detest.
Win or lose, they’re in for a disappointment.
STEVE CHAPMAN writes for the
Chicago Tribune. His column is distrib-
uted by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Letters to the editor
Occupational ‘fiefdoms’
Occupational licensing creates monopo-
lies and always leads to scarcity of services
plus higher prices with fewer jobs, and may
not even result in safe or competent service.
This is true whether it’s lawyers, hair
shampooer assistants, plumbers, engineers
or doctors. To not violate the Sherman An-
titrust Act, there must be close oversight of
licensing boards by the state government,
not the usual control by members of the oc-
cupation.
A Supreme Court case decided this early
last year, protecting non-dentist tooth-whit-
eners from a dental board.
The lawyers run the mother-of-all-mo-
nopolies, the Bar-and-Bench. Why a sup-
posedly intelligent public would allow law-
yers in different costumes to monopolize
justice is beyond this writer’s understanding.
Lawyers must be in free competition
with non-lawyers, and must argue their
cases before non-lawyer judges, but they
desperately cling to power. How can lawyers
charge many hundreds of dollars per hour
SUBMISSIONS
Letters for publication must include the writer’s
name, address and telephone number. Au-
thorship must be verified before publication.
The Record-Chronicle reserves the right to edit
letters for length. Letters should be typed or
legibly handwritten and be 250 or fewer words.
We prefer email submissions.
Send to: drc@dentonrc.com.
Otherwise, fax to 940-566-6888, or mail to:
Letters to the editor
P.0. Box 369
Denton, TX 76202
when they are just librarians?
There’s a possible middle way between
monopoly and anarchy: certification. Mean-
while, we are becoming a myriad of occupa-
tional “fiefdoms.” Regardless, everyone must
inquire carefully to decide whether the ex-
pert they’re dealing with is competent.
It’s cute that we don’t license politicians!
Ross Melton Jr.,
Denton
This day in history: March 8
favor of a provisional govern-
ment. The U.S. Senate voted to
limit filibusters by adopting the
cloture rule.
In 1930, the 27th president
of the United States, William
Howard Taft, died in Washing-
ton at age 72.
In 1944, two days after an
initial strike, U.S. heavy bomb-
ers resumed raiding Berlin dur-
ing World War II.
In 1965, the United States
landed its first combat troops in
South Vietnam as 3,500 Ma-
rines arrived to defend the U.S.
Today is Tuesday, March 8,
the 68lb day of 2016. There
are 298 days left in the year.
On March 8, 1966, Nel-
son’s Pillar, a 120-foot-high col-
umn in Dublin honoring British
naval hero Horatio Nelson, was
bombed by the Irish Republican
Army.
In 1702, England’s Queen
Anne acceded to the throne up-
on the death of King William
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In 1854, U.S. Commodore
Matthew C. Perry made his sec-
ond landing in Japan; within a
month, he concluded a treaty
with the Japanese.
In 1917, Russia’s “February
Revolution” (referring to the Old
Style calendar) began in Petro-
grad; the result was the abdica-
tion of the Russian monarchy in
air base at Da Nang.
In 1979, technology firm
Philips demonstrated a proto-
type compact disc player during
a press conference in Eindho-
ven, the Netherlands.
— The Associated Press
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 219, Ed. 1 Tuesday, March 8, 2016, newspaper, March 8, 2016; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1127422/m1/4/?q=technical+manual: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .