The Other McCain

CLEVELAND
The hysterical reaction by many journalists to Donald Trump’s speech last night was further evidence of their absurd bias.

Donald Trump’s RNC Speech
Was a Terrifying Display of
Nightmarish Authoritarianism
— Peter Suderman, Reason

The Demagogue Rises
— Matthew Continetti, Free Beacon

Donald Trump’s Un-American Acceptance Speech
— Franklin Foer, Slate

Donald Trump’s Angry, Dark Speech
Caps Off a Disastrous RNC
— Joan Walsh, The Nation

What speech did they watch? Angry? Dark? Terrifying? This negative perception was entirely subjective, a product of irrational bias. The speech I watched here Thursday night was awesome:

Zak Hasanin was walking along a downtown sidewalk Thursday afternoon when he said, “Did you hear that? ‘America Was Never Great’?” He was quoting a slogan shouted by left-wing protesters near the Republican National Convention here. “Those people need to go to Africa. They don’t know how good they’ve got it.”
Hasanin’s family immigrated to America from Sudan when he was a child, and the 23-year-old recent graduate of North Carolina State University was angered at the anti-American protest slogan.
“How is this not great?” Hasanin said, gesturing at the scene on Euclid Avenue, where vendors were hawking Donald Trump T-shirts outside shops and restaurants crowded with delegates. “This is Cleveland. Anywhere in Africa, this would be the greatest city in the country.”
The hope of renewing American greatness was what brought Hasanin and thousands of other Republicans to Cleveland, and Thursday night Trump delivered what was without doubt the strongest speech of his campaign to date.
“America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics,” Trump said near the end of his hour-plus address to an enthusiastic crowd at Quicken Loans Arena. “Remember, all of the people telling you that you can’t have the country you want, are the same people telling you that I wouldn’t be standing here tonight.”
Indeed, in the past year, Trump’s success has confounded the cynics and critics who at first did not take his campaign seriously. The same doubters, including many conservative pundits, subsequently panicked when Trump’s populist campaign caught fire with primary voters who ignored the pundits and voted for the billionaire businessman who promised to put a stop to illegal immigration. Trump took special aim at “elites in media” who he said are “lining up behind the campaign of my opponent.”
Indeed, liberals reacted with alarm to Trump’s speech. Former MSNBC personality Melissa Harris-Perry walked out 10 minutes into his speech, declaring “I left early because I was afraid.” CNN personality Sally Kohn seemed traumatized, moaning on Twitter: “The problem is, this speech seems believable and convincing, especially in a vacuum. I’m scared.” On NBC, former Bush aide Nicolle Wallace announced, “The Republican Party that I worked for for two decades died in this room tonight.”
Of course, the GOP couldn’t beat Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, and none of the regular Republican candidates could beat Trump for the nomination this year, so what were the chances that a Nicolle Wallace-approved Republican could have defeated Hillary Clinton this year? . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. What frightens so many elitists about Donald Trump, I believe, is that his views represent the non-elite majority of Americans. Nicolle Wallace attended Cal-Berkeley (Class of ’94) and got her graduate degree at Northwestern University. She got hired by the Bush family in 1999, married a Bush staffer, and has spent her entire adult life among the Republican Party elite, looking down her snooty nose at the rest of us. Nicolle Wallace despises ordinary Americans quite as thoroughly as any liberal elitist despises ordinary Americans.

To hell with such establishment snobbery, and good riddance to Bushism.