Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens explained why in his view Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “vision” is wrong for electoral success and questioned if it was something the GOP can recover from post-election, which Stephens said would be a loss for Trump.
“This is the standard line of the Trump side of the party, that us who oppose him are just a bunch of elites who live in the Acela corridor in this bubble of unimaginable wealth,” Stephens said. “I wish I had been born into an extremely wealthy New York real estate family and been given multi-million dollar loans to get my start in life. I started at the bottom like so many of us did and to the extent that I achieved anything I think it’s on merit. A lot of Americans feel the same way. It’s not a convincing argument. And it’s particularly not convincing, when Trump is telling so many people who are at the bottom, who are first-generation Americans who are trying to rise, that he has a different vision.”
“It’s not a vision of opportunity of mobility,” he continued. “It’s basically increasingly a vision of the privileges of a white ethnic bloc who he is speaking to. If the Republican Party essentially becomes the white party, it is going to be the death of it — not only for demographic reasons but for reasons of principle. The party of Lincoln is a party of opportunity for everyone. It’s a party about the right to rise and Mr. Trump unfortunately doesn’t represent that view. Can the Republican Party recapture that after his loss I think is the great question.”
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