John Manuel: Blinded to the facts

Two columns and a Point of View on Donald Trump on the Sept. 15 Opinion pages illustrated the yawning gap between reality and what apparently represents modern conservatism.

Thomas Friedman (“The man he respects”) and Froma Harrop (“His ‘alleged Christian faith’ ”) had easy pickings taking apart Trump’s outlandish policy positions, such as his respect for Vladimir Putin.

That’s because they had real-world, provable examples. Indisputable facts were on their side, and they were able to draw opinionated but easy to justify conclusions.

Raleigh’s Garland Tucker III (“Grappling with the choice”) opined that as a conservative, he has to vote for Trump because Clinton would just mean “four more years of economic stagnation, government expansion and foreign policy retreat.” He even quoted Bobby Jindal, which is pretty rich considering the ex-Louisiana governor’s track record.

Jindal, like Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, stuck to his ideology over reality, and their states are far worse off. Conservatives like Jindal, Brownback and Tucker don’t acknowledge any economic progress of the last eight years under Obama. Their ideology blinds them to facts, such as 5.2 percent wage growth in 2015 or unemployment under 5 percent, that prove their ideology wrong.

And that’s how their party nominated Trump, imperiling our country and the entire world in the process.

This story was originally published October 1, 2016 at 4:14 PM with the headline "John Manuel: Blinded to the facts."