Hillary: Donald Is Dangerous On Foreign Policy

This ought to be good:

Hillary Clinton to Portray Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Positions as Dangerous

Little Ms. Libya speaks and anyone with an irony-poor diet ought to listen.

Hillary Clinton plans to deliver a scorching assessment of Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy prescriptions on Thursday, casting her likely Republican rival as a threat to decades of bipartisan tenets of American diplomacy and declaring him unfit for the presidency.

This characterization of Trump, while accurate, will be news to no one. So will it change anyone's mind?

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides said the speech, which she will deliver in San Diego, would be the start of a persistent assault to portray a potential Trump presidency as a dangerous proposition that would weaken American alliances and embolden enemies.

He will weaken our alliances and embolden enemies. Yeah, Trump is a loose cannon who so loves the sound of his own voice that he is likely to indulge in riffs that criticize the Brits, mock the French and leave the Saudis feeling abandoned. My goodness, he might even engage in a bit of live improv to invent new policy, to the surprise of his national security advisers.

Yet the Republic has endured.

Jonah Goldberg reprised an interesting argument I have grappled with at social occasions:

During a panel Q&A, a passenger on the cruise made a strong case for voting Trump. He ably argued that we know Hillary will be terrible, while we can only suspect Trump will be. Trump will probably do some things conservatives will like — Supreme Court appointments, etc. — while we know for a fact Hillary will not.

And here’s what I said: I agree. If the election were a perfect tie, and the vote fell to me and me alone, I’d probably vote for none other than Donald Trump for precisely these reasons.

Hmm, "Better the devil you don't know"? I have said (and blogged? Tweeted?) that with the deciding vote I would pick Hillary in a heartbeat. She will be a mediocre President in all the ways we have seen before. Tempermentally she is slightly left-of-center but in order to rally her skeptical base she will need to inflame wars on women, ethnics, gays, and anyone else who might be near a political fault line. Bringing the country together would be an electoral disaster for her, so, as with Obama, it won't happen. But, like Obama and unlike Trump, she will at least pretend that national unity is aspirational.

 

As to policy, anyone who like the crony capitalism of the last few decades will welcome Hillary. Big business has nothing to fear; nor do stock market players and other investors. On foreign policy, her instincts are notably more hawkish than Trump or any normal Democrat acceptable to her party, but Ladyparts!

 

So sure, she will be a debacle of a very conventional and predictable type. Trump, on the other hand, is a deliberately inflammatory demagogue whose actual principles and level of knowledge are scarce. Republican voters respond to his press conference improvisations with a "Donald being Donald" shrug - ISIS is Putin's problem, we are going to bomb the hell out of ISIS, whatever; he will retire the national debt, he won't, whatever. Taxes on the rich will go down, they might go up, whatever. Unless we are confident we can train the world to respond as Republican voters do to his blatherings, electing Trump will be a full-employment act for press spokesman and spinners everywhere.

 

So to Jonah's point - maybe a world in which we all learn to tune out the US President would be a better place, but is running that kind of Bold Experiment an example of conservative prionciples? Trump v. Hillary boils down to a mean/variance exercise. I'll grant that a Trump Presidency has more upside for conservatives and (we might hope) the nation, but it is crystal clear to me that it has a lot more downside as well. So, even if a voter thinks that Trump has a higher expected value (for conservatives, anyway), should that voter maximize (possible) opportunity by betting Trump or minimize (possible) regret (i.e., MiniMax avoidance of a downside disaster) by voting Hillary? Not obvious!

 

Hillary will be a conventional dumpster fire owned by the Democrats. Trump on a good day will easily be better than that. However, Trump on a bad day will be - well, some metaphor worse than dumpster fires, but with Hiroshima fresh in my mind I'm stuck.

 

Comments

[cheerleader]

Battlegator,

Great post.

Mr. Trump has many talents, (great fathering skills, building, communications, etc.) but chief among them is his ability to negotiate.

That particular talent is the opposite of dictatorial tendencies. The noteworthy thing about dictators is that they don't negotiate, they decree.

One of his major themes is that politicians don't know how to negotiate, that is why America is stuck with so many bad deals that are draining the life out of her.

[Marlene]

Good Morning! The attacks against the Trump supporters are disgusting. It looks like the rent-a-mobs are prepared for a long summer.

Iggy,how is Chester feeling this morning?

[Buckeye]

Sooner or later the rent-a-mob will overstep.

The backlash against that will leave a mark too;)

[Janet]

This is a good point -

Dan ‏@DoghouseDano 10h10 hours ago

@Jacobnbc No one throwing eggs and bottles at a person deserves to keep the title of "protestor". That's a lot more like a violent mob.

[buccaneer morgan]

Ximelo ( tell me about it ) James d. The she cover looks a little you megyn before she shorn her locks.

[pagar a bacon, country ham and sausage supporter]

IMO, this is insane.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-administration-hosts-cuban-border-guard-visits/

Why?

[James D.]

Can someone translate the 8:29 for me, please?

[buccaneer morgan]

Why not they both think single payer is great, peasants should be unarmed, and free choice (except for Moloch is overrated)

[buccaneer morgan]

I was going for spanish, got I got portuguese, I think re the rendition, and the Pinterest cover.

[Marlene]

Wow,that jobs report number is pretty bad. How is Hillary going to campaign on the great (snort) economy?

[Porchlight]

Why don't the Dem candidates have to answer for this mob violence? Rhetorical question.

[James D.]

Got it. That makes more sense now.

[buccaneer morgan]

So zaphod was quoting ice cube re his Norman the android meltdown

[jimmyk]

James D, I believe narc was just seconding your comment about the Clinton thugs, and then jumped to clarify his 12:29 of last night.

This Daily Mail piece about Hillary and Vince rings true:

Hillary violently disagreed with a legal objection Foster raised at the meeting and ridiculed him in front of his peers....

During the White House meeting, Hillary continued to humiliate Foster mercilessly, both former FBI agents say.

'Hillary put him down really, really bad in a pretty good-size meeting,' Copeland says. 'She told him he didn't get the picture, and he would always be a little hick town lawyer who was obviously not ready for the big time.'

Indeed, Hillary went so far as to blame Foster for all the Clintons' problems and accuse him of failing them, according to Clemente....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3620742/Hillary-triggered-suicide-President-Bill-Clinton-s-counsel-Vince-Foster-attacked-humiliated-White-House-staff-one-week-death-FBI-agents-claim.html

And this too:

another FBI agent working on the Foster investigation made the mistake of saying hello to Hillary as she passed him.

'She had a standing rule that no one spoke to her when she was going from one location to another,' Copeland says. 'In fact, anyone who would see her coming would just step into the first available office.'
But the agent 'didn't know the ground rules,' Copeland says. 'He dared to speak to her in the hallway,' he says. 'As he was leaving, she got out of the elevator and was approaching him.'

'Good morning, Mrs. Clinton,' the agent said.

'She jumped all over him,' Copeland says. "How dare you? You people are just destroying my husband."

'It was that vast right-wing conspiracy rant. Then she had to tack on something to the effect of, "And where do you buy your suits? Penney's?'

For many weeks, the agent told no one about the encounter.

'Finally, he told me about it,' Copeland says. 'And he said, "I was wearing the best suit I owned."'

[buccaneer morgan]

So adultery of the heart@captain, was basically flounder when it came to khomeini, back in January of 79.

[James D.]

jimmyk @ 8:50

But it's Trump who doesn't have the temperament to be President.

[Captain Hate on the iPhone]

Is the PGA aware the Golden Bear is a Trump supporter? Or is this just more of the strange types of dumb PGA decisions.

[Porchlight]

She is a horrible human being.

[buccaneer morgan]

Its all Goodell, captain, it will probably end up like the miss universe pageant.

[JeanD]

new thread!

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--They are well aware of what's on the line, trust me.--

I have a hard time seeing how that is true.
I think they believe something is on the line that isn't.
Any person who believes in the rule of law, the constitution, the well being of America and our rights who can then compare the two choices and choose Hillary, may be sincere in what they think they're aware of but they are immensely and catastrophically wrong.
And they are wrong in a way that is hard to fathom given the long trail of destruction left in the wake of the corruption, mendacity and hard left aspirations that beat in the hummingbird sized heart in the chest of that vile harridan Hillary.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--I think you're wrong about the above. I think he's going to seek out every nook and cranny where he can cut government bloat, corruption, unnecessary bureaucracy and mismanagement.--

He had no problem toadying up to the ethanol subsidies so I'm going to remain pretty skeptical of that statement until he proves otherwise.