Miranda Devine: The revenge of the deplorables
THE underdog Trump has done it. The outsiders have given a black eye to the Establishment, just as they did with Brexit in the UK and the rise of Pauline Hanson here, writes Miranda Devine.
NSW
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IT’S the revenge of the deplorables. The silent majority has roared. The underdog has triumphed. The outsiders have given a black eye to the Establishment, just as they did with Brexit in the UK and the rise of Pauline Hanson here.
The US election is a repudiation of political correctness and identity politics, the modern tools of tyranny. It is the end of the Clinton cult that swept up two of our former prime ministers and cost taxpayers almost $400 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation, aka, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea slush fund. Can we get a refund now?
President Trump. Read it and weep, insiders. Trump owes nothing to anyone, unlike Clinton whose foundation took tens of millions of dollars from such unsavoury donors as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
He won against the combined might of the Clinton machine, the Republican establishment, the Democratic Party’s much vaunted “ground game”, and the great and the good of the media. All the pundits and pollsters and smug experts who declared so confidently that we could bank on a Clinton victory, all have egg on their face.
“You can take it to the bank — the American election is effectively all over, Hillary Clinton has won,” The Australian’s respected foreign editor Greg Sheridan wrote on the front page on Tuesday, perfectly reflecting the establishment consensus. Sydney Morning Herald chief foreign correspondent Paul McGeough declared: “Americans will awake from a nightmare — Donald Trump will not be their president.”
They were all blindsided.
The fact the media got it so wrong is proof of how incorrigibly out of touch the insider class is.
They got it wrong because they were scared to risk social death by admitting affinity with the “deplorables”.
They ignored the obvious, that a third term for the Democrats was a big ask, that “crooked Hilalry” was an unlikeable candidate of questionable character, burdened by insurmountable scandals.
All that seemed to count was she identified as a woman and that Donald Trump had made lewd comments about women 10 years ago.
The media was so busy vilifying Trump they didn’t see what was in front of their faces. The transparent hypocrisy of their mock outrage and sudden prudishness didn’t fool anyone with common sense.
But they made it so unfashionable for average people to support Trump that they probably thwarted their own polls.
Only a handful of commentators in Australia defied the consensus to call it for Trump. So how does Bill Shorten back down from his denigration of Trump as “barking mad” and “entirely unsuitable to be leader of the free world.” Or Josh Frydenberg who called him a “dropkick”. Or the NSW Upper House which voted unanimously to condemn Trump as “a revolting slug unfit for public office”.
Trump’s victory is a wake-up call to conservative parties: You cannot get away with being a “cuckservative” — cuckolded conservative — all tough talk until you win office and then you cave in to identity politics and political correctness.
Voters are over it. It’s time to drain the swamp.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” Trump said last night as he claimed a remarkable victory.
Clinton played true to form right to the bitter end, refusing to face the Democrat faithful and instead sending out her campaign chairman at 2am, not to concede defeat but to tell the crowd to “head home” because Clinton was “not done yet… We can wait a little longer, can’t we?”
No. It’s over.