Wake Up Conservatives! Donald Trump Is Not The Second Coming Of Grover Cleveland

If Donald Trump’s clean sweep of the GOP primaries is any indicator, then the cause of liberty, peace, free market capitalism, fiscal rectitude, sound money and small government is at an all-time nadir.

The Donald stands for none of these core values. Yet Republican voters have greeted him like he was the second coming— if not of Jesus Christ, then at least Grover Cleveland.

That’s right. These badly deluded people apparently believe that another Trump run at the White House in 2024 will enable the Donald to replicate President Grover Cleveland’s lone case of winning in 1884, losing in 1888 and winning again in 1892.

But here’s the thing. Grover Cleveland stood for something worth winning the White House to advance. That is, staunch adherence to the gold standard, free trade, budget surpluses, non-intervention abroad and a small Federal government in Washington.

Indeed, without welfare domestically and foreign wars abroad, Cleveland was able to leave the $1.62 billion public debt he inherited 25% lower at $1.22 billion when he left office. Classic 19th century liberalism was then in its heyday and Grover Cleveland was the closest thing to its living, breathing embodiment to ever occupy the Oval Office. And that was notwithstanding the fact he was a Democrat to boot, albeit of the old-fashioned Jefferson/Jackson kind.

Needless to say, the Democrats gave up half of Cleveland’s classic liberal legacy under Woodrow Wilson and his foolish war to make the world safe for democracy aboard and government hospitable to interventionist progressivism at home.  And the rest of it disappeared entirely when the greatest egomaniac to occupy the Oval Office prior to the Donald—Franklin Roosevelt–installed the permanent Welfare State and Warfare State on the banks of the Potomac during 1933-1945.

As it happened, the Republican Party of Congressman Howard Buffett (Warren’s father), Senator Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan made worthy efforts to reclaim the mantle of Grover Cleveland during their time on the stage of American politics. But Cleveland’s only true heir in modern times was former congressman and presidential candidate, Ron Paul.

And that crystalizes the irony and tragedy of the current insipid GOP hero worship of a man who is no hero whatsoever when it comes to the true conservative gospel articulated by Grover Cleveland.

To the contrary, Donald Trump is the opposite of Ron Paul—a veritable anti-Grover Cleveland. That is, an egomaniacal big government Ceasarist who peddles a dog’s breakfast of protectionism, nativism, law and order demagoguery, monetary crankery worthy of William Jennings Bryan and fiscal profligacy that puts FDR, LBJ and Barrack Obama to shame.

Worse still, the foundation of his menacing brew of anti-liberty bromides, shibboleths and dime-store patriotism is an infantile egotism and obsession with “winning” that should leave any adult citizen—conservative or otherwise—cringing, if not downright nauseated.