TRUMP’S BATHWATER VS HILLARY’S

The Great Donald Trump Pivot is still very much in progress.

Who knows where his position on illegal immigration is going.

If he does anymore specials with Sean Hannity, he’s liable to replace his signature border wall idea with a big open gate in El Paso manned by volunteers from Welcome Wagon.

What’s the next late-August surprise going to be?

That he’s fired Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon and replaced them with James Carville? That he’s offered the secretary of state job in advance to Khizr Khan?

Someone had better put a suicide watch on poor Ann Coulter. Her book “In Trump We Trust”came out Wednesday —- two weeks too late.

Trump is pivoting, changing, evolving, selling out — whatever you want to call it. It’s long overdue.

We’ve been saying here all along he had to change the way his campaign was being run, but that even if he didn’t do it, all Republicans needed to fully support him.

It may be too late for the New & Improved Trump and the GOP.

He has only two months to retrieve the millions of conservative Republican faithful who have been disgusted or embarrassed by the original Trump.

Meanwhile, I think I’ve figured out one reason why so many conservatives in the GOP aren’t publicly supporting him.

It’s kind of like guilt by association, only with Trump it’s shame or discomfort by association.

Trump is being subjected to a double standard in the media and in the political arena that hurts him and helps Hillary Clinton.

Someone can endorse Lying Hillary and they are not seen as a liar.

Someone can say they’re going to vote for Crooked Hillary and they’re not seen as a criminal.

Someone can say they voted twice for President Bill Clinton and they’re not thought of as a sexual predator.

Hillary and Bill are career liars and crooks, in office and out, who’ve recently become quarter-billionaires by globalizing the concept of good old-fashioned political graft.

But no one who says they support Hillary for president is splashed with thirty years of the Clintons’ dirty bathwater.

With Trump, it’s different. Anyone who endorses him, or merely says they’ll vote for him, is automatically labeled a racist or a misogynist.

That’s why people like Paul Ryan and so many congressmen running for reelection senators are so scared of Trump.

They endorse him halfheartedly or not at all because they don’t want to be thrown into the same bathtub with him.

The mainstream liberal media are a big part of the problem, as usual.

They make sure a vote for Trump is seen as a vote for racism, yet they would never dream of saying that a vote for Hillary is a vote for lying or influence peddling.

Republicans at all levels have to understand that endorsing Trump or voting for him doesn’t make you a racist or a woman-hater — neither of which describes the real-life Donald Trump, by the way.

Lots of people —- including lots of blacks and Latinos —- are going to vote for Trump but will never tell their neighbors. So will lots of conservatives who say they hate Trump.

Heck, my dad voted for Gerald Ford in 1976 and didn’t even tell Nancy. He didn’t want to sleep on the couch.

It’s up to Trump to add a few gallons of chlorine to his bathwater so conservatives who aren’t Ann Coulter don’t mind bathing in it, which, figuratively, is what he’s trying to do now with his Great Pivot.

It’s up to Ryan and the other party leaders to give Trump their full support as we head for November.

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Copyright ©2016 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

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