It's a pleasure to explore C. Edmund Wright’s critique of Donald Trump in the American Thinker, now that the Orange Beast is apparently on course to the White House -- if Cruz, Hillary, Soros, Bernie and the GOP-Democrat-One-Party Machine don't shoot him down first. Mr. Wright has shown his insights and concern for the country many times in the pages of AT, very much to our benefit. He is raising questions that need to be asked. Predicting what politicians will actually do if elected is extremely hard, but we can't avoid it today.

So this is the toughest of all questions, and one of the most important. No matter who gets in we have to watch 'em like a hawk. Your political activism can't end at the voting booth. 

I've trended toward liking The Don, with Cruz as a strong second. I would like a Trump-Cruz ticket.

But I take it for granted that the national disaster of the Obama-Clinton years is so much worse than any of our candidates, that we must -- repeat must -- unite against the Far Left come election time.

On the socialist side, we have an unrepentant Stalinist running against a likely national security felon and Saul Alinsky acolyte. After the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and almost all the gruesome little Marxist tyrannies 25 years ago, this Return of Frankenstein in America is plainly insane. 

Even Putin must be repelled by these throwbacks. But the Left is stuck with them. 

A Hillary & Huma administration would be secretly shaped by the paleo-Nazi Jihadist movement of the Muslim Broederbund, which is not just a fantasy, but a powerful, shadowy Jihad network out to kill its enemies big time. We are looking at a deadly ideological plague from the Muslim world, and Hillary is already sleeping on the job (after a stroke or near-stroke), while official Muslim Sisterhood honcho Huma controls access to She Who Must Be Obeyed.

H&H would be a national disaster, and our two-party establishment seems to be too ignorant, afraid or sold out to see clear and present danger. Even Speaker Ryan grew a Jihad-chic black beard when he was elected by the House.

In the real world voters are faced with choices, not fantasy alternatives. Come the election it will be Hillary or Bernie against one of ours. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan won’t be on the ballot.

Mr. Wright’s foremost critique of Trump is that he’s against free trade. Trump certainly sounds like it.

However -- I can’t really believe that Trump hasn’t noticed that South Korea is fabulously successful while the North is stuck in a Stalinist control-freak nightmare without end. Free trade, free speech, free life has made all the difference. If Trump doesn’t read the WSJ editorial page, his children who are in business certainly do, and his long-time friend and political adviser Rudi Giuliani has talked for years with the economic libertarians of the Journal Ed Page. I just can’t believe that Trump would really be a rigid economic nationalist.

Trump constantly over-promises on renegotiating international trade agreements, claiming powers the president doesn’t have. When a candidate makes promises he can’t keep, chances are that he’s just raising the stakes, just like The Art of the Deal. You start with big demands and then work out a deal that allows both sides to claim a win.

Trump’s daily media dump always goes over the top. Our One Party Line media can’t help themselves, poor things, they just fall for those headline-making outrages every single day. The next day he takes it all back, but that’s too much like common sense, and the media don’t want common sense. They’re out for blood and guts, and by now they expect a daily outrage from The Don.

Trump Hates Women! Trump is Hitler! You know the drill. Mr. Trump keeps throwing shark bait and they keep snapping it up. Which is why Trump is leading the GOP pack.

For Republicans and regular folks, the media are a minefield, worse than KKK night riders. Talk about a bloodthirsty mob… and they bring down their scapegoats most of the time. They are still trying to destroy Justice Clarence Thomas today, decades after his nomination battle. They are evil personified.

The big news in this election is that somebody has managed to beat the Power Class at its own game of intimidation and fear mongering. That person would be Donald Trump. The media are a Free Fire Zone for anybody who doesn’t bow to their sacred cows. Mentally they may rank D-, but they don’t care, because they have the power of fear.

Zigzagging through that minefield is the Don’s first real achievement. The media minefield must be his first objective. Without that you never get chance to run against Hillary, or -- Gawd help us -- the Bern. The throwback Left is intellectually bereft, but it understands power.  They followed their prophet Karl Marx to Conquer the Organs of Propaganda, and today that’s all they’ve got.

Trump is not headlining sensible policy ideas every day, because he has to feed the sharks. But he does have policy proposals (see here), which have too many multisyllabic words for the press to understand.

The underlined specifics of Trump’s proposals don’t sound insane. France and Japan have been pursuing similar policies for decades without dropping free trade completely. I think they lean too much in the control-freak direction. Free trade is theoretically optimal, but in fact we end up with some practical compromise. There are no metaphysically free markets.

On balance, Trump is following a rational course. I would love to see real policy debates among his advisers, who are generally very solid. But we may have to do some homework for that, like reading up on whatever they have written before.

Then be careful to step over the snoring reporters in the hall.