[crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore]’s new ad hitting Donald Trump over a transgender bathroom law will likely be derided by the chattering classes, but Cruz has a point. Regardless of how one feels about the substance of the issue, Trump’s comments serve as yet another example of how his “New York Values” make him an unlikely hero of a silent majority yearning for a savior to rise from these streets.
Think about the average guy out there who wants to make America great again. The notion that gender identity is fluid, rather than fixed, might not be what he had in mind when he signed up.
Conservatives yearning for simpler times — or for a fighter to stand up against political correctness — might want to reflect on this. It’s not that Trump’s not a fighter; the question is whether he would really expend energy and capital fighting for a traditional worldview he doesn’t really share.
Let’s be honest: if Trump is already taking these culturally relativistic positions before he wins the Republican primary, imagine what positions he will take when he is “negotiating” with a general election audience.
Now, I know that many of Trump’s supporters are secular or socially liberal, so this ad won’t really speak to them. Instead, I suspect this ad is targeted to all of those naive evangelicals who think they can outsource the culture war to Donald Trump.
(An admission: Yes, Cruz is blatantly fear-mongering with this ad. This is politically necessary because otherwise the benefits of changing cultural norms are always concentrated, while the costs are inherently dispersed. When one side has an individual victim and the other side has a more esoteric argument about civilization and values and unintended consequences, guess which side wins? Like the gay marriage issue, there is very little reason to fear that changing bathroom laws will actually endanger your individual safety or happiness. Instead, it’s the incremental erosion of fixed objective truth in favor of an Orwellian redefinition of damn near everything permanent that is the greater threat to civilization.)
Regardless, when it comes to relying on Donald Trump as your last-ditch effort to fend off the Left, culture warriors probably do have something very real to fear.
WATCH:
Donald Trump won’t take on the PC police…https://t.co/IZ1Xo3gxOg
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 22, 2016
