TRUMP WINS THE DARWIN AWARD

If Donald Trump were a referendum, like Brexit, he’d win in a walk.

It came as a shock that Brits voted to leave the European Union because almost the entire ruling class/establishment/elite opposed Brexit.

“Levels of dissatisfaction with leadership have reached revolutionary levels,” wrote Gerard Baker in the Wall Street Journal. “It’s a paradox of mass modern democracy that voters feel themselves governed by rulers who ‘neither see nor feel nor know,’ a political-business nexus that feeds on itself and promotes its own interests while mouthing platitudes at election time to keep the populace at bay.”

Three-fourths of the American people believe the government in Washington no longer operates with the consent of the governed, wrote Greg Orman and Pat Caddell in RealClear Politics June 5. Two-thirds think America is in decline.

“Eighty percent of Americans also believe that an alliance of politicians, media pundits, lobbyists, and interest groups runs the country for their own gain at the expense of the American people,” said Orman and Caddell.  “Only one in four citizens…believe that politicians care about people like them.”

Little illustrates better why Americans feel this way than the report last week by the VA inspector general that bosses of VA facilities in Houston ordered staff records falsified to hide long wait times for vets.  The average wait time for vets whose appointments were cancelled and then rescheduled was 81 days – 78 days longer than shown in the electronic scheduling system.

The average wait time for vets has increased by nearly 50 percent since the VA scandal broke more than two years ago. Fraud has been uncovered in 40 VA facilities in seven states.  Few of the fraudsters have been punished.  Some got bonuses.

VA Secretary Robert McDonald compared the long waits for treatment to waiting to get on rides at Disneyland. He doesn’t care.  Neither does President Obama.

Extravagance, ineptitude and corruption are more the rule than the exception in federal agencies.  Senior bureaucrats take very good care of themselves, serve the public poorly.

The economy has grown more slowly during the Obama administration than during any other seven year period in American history, says the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The median wage has risen barely one percent a year.  The incomes of the top one percent rose more than three times that. Billions of “stimulus” dollars stimulated mostly the bank accounts of Democrat pols and contributors.

Hillary Clinton epitomizes all that’s wrong with the ruling class.  She and Bill became centi-millionaires peddling influence. She knew her use of a private email server endangered national security.

“The very idea that the state has a primary obligation to its native citizens has become unfashionable and virtually unsayable within the tightly controlled bounds of political correctness,” Mr. Baker said.

In desperation, millions turned to Donald Trump, who promised to blow up the system of which he was a major part.  They chose poorly. The Donald’s reaction to Brexit reminds us he’s a selfish ignoramus wholly unfit to be president.

Trump was at his golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland when the vote was taken. His first reaction was devaluation of the pound would be good for business at his golf club.  People he talked to were thrilled by the Brexit win, he said – evidently unaware that Scots voted nearly 2 to 1 to remain in the EU.

Hillary is so unpopular almost any normal Republican would be favored to beat her.  But her lead over Trump grows.

The Donald has changed stances on most issues, but it’s too late to walk back his “unending series of inane, ludicrous and deranged comments,” wrote Matt Continetti, editor of the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s not the media, the party elite, the Democrats sabotaging Donald Trump. It’s Trump.  This is self immolation on an epic scale.

“What disturbs me most is the prospect that Donald Trump is what a very large number of Republican voters want: not a wonk, not an orator, not a statesman, not even a leader, really, if by leader you mean someone who persuades and inspires and manages a team to pursue a common good,” Continetti said.  “They just want a man who vents their anger at targets above and below their status.”

“How cathartic it is to give voice to your fury, to wallow in self-righteousness, in helplessness, in self-serving self-pity. It’s what one expects of teenagers, artists, bloggers, pajama boys — immature, peevish, radical, self-destructive behavior,” he said.

For snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Continetti nominates Trumpkins for this year’s Darwin Award.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.