Donald Trump seems to be playing for a general election candidacy and is completely breaking Reagan’s 11th Commandment, which says that one should never speak ill of fellow Republicans, says Ted Rall, American political author and cartoonist. The six GOP candidates for president clashed Saturday in a final debate ahead of the crucial February 20 South Carolina primary. Frontrunner Donald Trump had a series of fierce exchanges with his rivals, during which he accused George W Bush of “not keeping America safe” by failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks and called the Iraq War “a big fat mistake” that “destabilized the Middle East.”
RT: From relations with Russia to the war on terror - Donald Trump's position is in stark contrast to the rest of the Republican camp. How is Trump able to garner so much support from the party's voters?
Ted Rall: It really is remarkable. Trump is completely breaking the idea that the Republican commandment that was enunciated by Ronald Reagan – that one should never criticize a fellow Republican, in this case President George W. Bush who invaded Iraq, and all the Republicans on stage who supported the war and support militarism in general. Trump seems to be playing for a general election candidacy. If he is the Republican nominee, this will help him to run against Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, whoever is the Democratic nominee in the fall. I don’t even know if this is something that you can even say is a tactic or a strategy, as much as just something he is trying out. It didn’t play very well in the audience in South Carolina. But the real audience is on television. It remains to be seen how the vast majority of the American people, who do believe, according to the polls, that the Iraq War was a mistake, will take this. It may be that Iraq is just isn’t going to be a major issue this year.
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