No experience necessary. Will train.
Hey, have you noticed that the leading Republican presidential candidates, the ones that have never held elected office and have no particular qualifications for the job, don't seem to actually toe the party line on the conservative issues their voters supposedly care about? Because the supposedly deeply conservative Republican base hasn't figured that out yet, and it's
beginning to peeve the other candidates mightily.
Donald Trump and Ben Carson collectively are capturing 40 percent of poll respondents’ support. But issue by issue, both fall short on positions that test how conservative they are. Trump likes to talk about universal health care. Carson has been leery of gun ownership for city dwellers. Both are late-comers to the anti-abortion cause.
Their opponents so far have ignored these ideological hiccups. But that is beginning to change. Rival campaigns are complaining publicly and privately that the two front-runners are, at best, new to the issues party activists care about most, and their activist supporters are starting to needle Trump and Carson on questions of orthodoxy to GOP principles.
It must be maddening to have spent a decade or two polishing your conservative credentials on every last sub-issue, crossing your t's and dotting your i's so that none of the seemingly infinite number of conservative interest groups can give you a bad score on their pet issue, sucking up to the NRA at every turn, putting out statement after statement about how you'll never, ever compromise with the bad Not Conservatives who might want to do Not Conservative things, weaving your way through primary challenges from party members who even
then think you're far too liberal for their taste—and then it turns out that any idiot can just waltz in and claim to be just as conservative as you and the voters, as it turns out, really don't give nearly as much of a damn as you thought they did.
A Republican president who himself did fetal tissue research? No problem! A pompous richer-than-thou blowhard from New York City, that most hated and non-heartlandy of liberal cities? Well, he does say the right things about immigrants, and isn't that more important than all his other supposed "beliefs" combined?
So yeah, the knives are out for Trump and Carson, or will be soon. Will it help? It's hard to say, but it should be fun to watch. Both of them know exactly what to say in order to convince conservative voters that they're true believers, but neither of them has enough control of their word-holes to necessarily pull it off.