Tea Party Turns on ‘Megalomaniac Strongman’ Donald Trump
by Betsy Woodruff
A blatantly unconstitutional proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. was a bridge too far for many members of the Tea Party in Congress.
The Tea Party’s infatuation with Donald Trump may be over.
Now, “may” is the operative word, since rumors of Trump’s demise, as you might have noticed, have been a touch overstated. But the Republican presidential frontrunner’s recent call for a moratorium on Muslim immigration has put him at odds with some of the most conservative people on the right—including congressional Tea Party darlings.
Sen. Ben Sasse, a Tea Party favorite who won support from Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz in his Republican primary campaign in Nebraska, took to the Senate floor Tuesday to criticize the mogul.
“Monday night was a flood,” Sasse said, referring to Trump’s bombastic campaign-rally speech about Muslim immigration. “Neither are what our people need or really what they, at their best, want.”
Though the senator didn’t mention Trump by name, the allusion was clear as day.
Sasse then proceeded to characterize the mogul in extraordinarily harsh terms while blaming President Obama and other Washington insiders for Trump’s support.
“The people who are supposed to be laser-focused on defending the American people—that is us—mouth silly platitudes that show we’re either too weak or too confused to keep our people safe,” he said. “Then a megalomaniac strongman steps forward, and he starts screaming about travel bans and deportation, and offering promises to keep all of us safe, which to some and I think actually to many more than those of us in this body seem to understand, to some will sound much better than not being protected at all.”
Rep. Dave Brat, a Virginia Republican who defeated then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a shocking primary upset due in large part to his tough-on-undocumented-immigration stance, also criticized Trump’s approach.
“You gotta be very careful on lines of thought when you’re conveying these lines to the media,” Brat said. “The right way to go is just to talk about overseas threats, and quantifying those based on what’s in the best interests of American citizens.”
Rep. Randy Hultgren, an Illinois Republican who won his seat in the 2010 Tea Party wave, shared those concerns in a press release that criticized the mogul’s stance as a religious freedom problem.
“Singling out any faith community for the actions of extremists is not conservative, it is hostile to our founding,” Hultgren said.
Off the Hill, other movement conservative firebrands were distressed by Trump’s call for a religious test.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/09/tea-party-turns-on-megalomaniac-strongman-donald-trump.html?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
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