Elections: If you listen to the leading candidates in both political parties these days, you’d think everything in this country is “rigged.” It’s a terrible message that simply excuses irresponsibility.
Donald Trump is the latest to toss around the “rigged” claim, which is a bit ironic since he was on the other end of that allegation not too long ago.
Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin made headlines in 2012 by claiming the five finalists in the Miss USA pageant had been pre-selected. Trump, who was a co-owner of the pageant, called her a sore loser and then successfully sued Monnin for $5 million.
Now Trump is the one the one yelling “rigged” after losing a delegate contest in Colorado.
“Our Republican system is absolutely rigged. It’s a phony deal,” Trump said Tuesday. “This is a dirty trick.”
If anything, Trump’s claim is less credible than Monnin’s. Colorado’s delegate selection process has been in place since 1912, and while Cruz had a very effective ground game in the state, Trump ignored it until the last minute.
Trump’s broadside against the Republican Party captured all the headlines, but it’s what he said next that should alarm conservatives.
“We’ve already been disenfranchised,” he growled. “Because if you think about it, the economy is rigged, the banking system is rigged, there’s a lot of things that are rigged in this world of ours, and that’s why a lot of you haven’t had an effective wage increase in 20 years.”
That is an almost word-for-word copy of what socialist Democrat Bernie Sanders has been saying.
“Millions of Americans are giving up on the political process. And they’re giving up on the political process because they understand the economy is rigged. They are working longer hours for low wages,” is what Sanders said at a February Democratic debate.
Indeed, the claim that the economy is rigged has become a staple of the increasingly leftist Democratic Party.
President Obama says “the system (is) rigged for those at the top, and rigged against the middle class.” So does Hillary Clinton.
Far-left Sen. Elizabeth Warren got the phrase into the recent political lexicon when she exclaimed in 2012: “People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part — they’re right. The system is rigged.”
Sanders and Co. argue that the economy is rigged because they want to expand the size and scope of government to “un-rig” it — through still more intrusive regulations and higher taxes.
So why is Trump mimicking this language?
Saying everything is rigged does nothing but stoke envy and animosity. It provides a ready excuse for those who are lazy or irresponsible. It suggests that rich people — like Trump himself — got ahead only because they gamed the system. Inevitably, it leads to calls for more government intervention. And, it is untrue.
People aren’t suffering because the economy is “rigged.” They’re suffering because the free market is being smothered by Washington regulations, mandates, taxes and interference.
It would be nice if one of the leading presidential candidates understood this distinction.
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