OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 9, 2016
The earthquake and the aftermath
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Two sockeye salmon swim in the Columbia River with a Chinook salm-
on, middle, at the Bonneville Dam fish-counting window near North
Bonneville.
Feds are running out
of half measures
New judge rebukes NOAA and
Army Corps on salmon recovery
D
ASHINGTON — What
lies behind Donald
Trump’s nomination victory?
W
Received wisdom among con-
servatives is that he, the outsider,
sensed, marshaled and came to
represent a massive revolt of the
Republican rank and ile against the
“establishment.”
This is the narrative: GOP politi-
cal leaders made promises of all kinds
and received in
return, during
President
Obama’s years,
major
elec-
toral victories
that gave them
the House, the
Senate, 12 new
governorships
and 30 state
houses. Yet they
Charles
didn’t deliver.
Krauthammer
Exit polls con-
sistently showed that a majority of
GOP primary voters (60 percent in
some states) feel “betrayed” by their
leaders.
Not just let down or disappointed.
Betrayed. By RINOs who, corrupted
by donors and lobbyists, sold out. Did
they repeal Obamacare? No. Did they
defund Planned Parenthood? No. Did
they stop President Obama’s tax-and-
spend hyperliberalism? No. Whether
from incompetence or venality, they
let Obama walk all over them.
But then comes the paradox. If
insuficient resistance to Obama’s lib-
eralism created this sense of betrayal,
why in a ield of 17 did Republican
voters choose the least conserva-
tive candidate? A man who until yes-
terday was himself a liberal. Who
donated money to those very same
Democrats to whom the GOP estab-
lishment is said to have caved, includ-
ing Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and
Hillary Clinton.
Trump has expressed sympathy
for a single-payer system of social-
ized medicine, far to the left of
Obamacare. Trump lists health care
as one of the federal government’s
three main responsibilities (after
national security); Republicans ada-
mantly oppose federal intervention in
health care. He also lists education,
which Republicans believe should
instead be left to the states.
As for Planned Parenthood, the
very same conservatives who railed
uring the decade that U.S. District Court Judge James
Redden rejected Paciic Northwest salmon-restoration
plans, detractors quietly pushed the view that he had become
an “activist” judge, blinded by personal opinions.
Last week, a judge new duced some decent salmon
to the case — Michael H. runs in recent years. But a
Simon of Portland — ruled run considered excellent in
on the U.S. government’s these times would have been
latest Northwest salmon viewed as disastrous in the
plan. If anything, Simon pre-dam era. This year’s pre-
was even less impressed dicted dismal coho returns
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times News Service
with arguments by NOAA demonstrate the fragility
Fisheries, the Army Corps of any recovery in current
hen Caitlyn Jenner was irst
of Engineers and the Bureau salmon populations.
emerging from the shell
of Reclamation, which claim
Taking out the Snake River of gold medalist Bruce Jenner,
they are doing enough to dams — or lesser actions Americans were riveted, voyeuris-
stave off extinction for 13 like bypassing one or more, tic — and surprisingly accepting.
So much has changed since then.
iconic endangered and threat- or drastically increasing the
Hesitant acceptance of transgen-
ened salmon and steelhead quantity of water spilled from
der
has dissolved into a national
runs.
them to mimic natural-low furor people
over bathroom laws. And among
Fishing groups and con- conditions — is politically liberals, initial enthusiasm for Jenner
servation organizations say dificult. Even environmen- faded with the discovery that she is a
Republican who
the government is contort- tally minded Democratic admired Ted
ing the plain meaning of the politicians are loath to offend Cruz!
I
accom-
Endangered Species Act and powerful economic inter- panied
Jen-
the National Environmental ests lined up to defend dams. ner as she vis-
Policy Act, doing all they But the judge is right to sug- ited a Brooklyn
school,
the
can to avoid confronting the gest dam breaching as per- Academy for
“original sin” of erecting four haps the only way to actually Young Writ-
that is in
major dams across the Snake obey the clear mandates of ers,
a gritty, work-
Nicholas
River, the major tributary of the Endangered Species Act. ing-class neigh-
Kristof
borhood
and
that
the Columbia.
Salmon face mount-
has been a leader in making LGBT stu-
The agencies have under- ing existential challenges. dents feel welcome. The meeting was
taken valuable habitat-res- The judge ruled the agen- a collision of sorts: a wealthy transgen-
celebrity encountering a group of
toration projects here in cies’ plan fails to acknowl- der
low-income LGBT teenagers of color,
the Columbia estuary and edge catastrophic impacts coming from different worlds but shar-
anxieties and pain.
upriver — basically trying they may face from climate ing The
students challenged Jenner, and
to do all they can for salmon, change. Oficials are on thin some had earlier pulled down a photo
short of major modiications ice legally when they assert of Jenner from a wall because they felt
she wasn’t doing enough for LGBT
to the hydro system. The salmon are “trending toward people. Jenner spoke with the students
Columbia is healthier thanks recovery” when actual for hours, winning them over by air-
differences (and taking selies with
to the agencies, taxpayers and salmon returns fail to show ing
them) while also bonding over com-
electric ratepayers. Restoring a sustainable recovery, the mon concerns — like the North Caro-
lina bathroom law.
and protecting tidal wetlands, judge said.
“It’s a total misunderstanding of the
controlling pollution, dra-
Simon’s ruling — though issue,” Jenner said, arguing that there
matically increasing research stopping short of imposing an are already laws to deal with predators
that there have been no reported
and the level of monitor- action plan — is one more in and
case of a trans woman ever entering a
ing of river conditions, con- a long series of repudiations women’s restroom and abusing anyone.
“There are three Republicans who
trolling predation and other of half-measures. Federal
have been arrested in men’s bathrooms
steps are all worthwhile.
agencies and Congress are for lewd behavior,” Jenner noted. “So,
These efforts, sometimes fast-approaching a time of you know, maybe we should kind of
the Republicans from going in
coupled with favorable reckoning when it comes to ban
there!”
ocean conditions, have pro- ensuring salmon survival.
The real people to worry about,
AP Photo/Steve Helber
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump puts on a miners
hard hat during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday.
against the Republican establish- They cheered Cruz when he led the
ment for failing to defund it now rally government shutdown in the name of
around a candidate who sings the conservative principles. Yet when the
praises of its good works (save for the race came down to Cruz and Trump,
provision of abortion).
these opinion-shaping conservatives
More fundamentally, Trump has who once doted on Cruz affected a
no afinity whatsoever for the central studied Trump-leaning neutrality.
thrust of modern conservatism — a
Trump won. True, the charismati-
return to less and smaller government. cally challenged Cruz was up against
If the establishment has insuficiently a prepackaged celebrity, an already
resisted Obama’s Big Government famous showman.
policies, the beneiciary
True, Trump appealed
should logically have been
to the economic anxiety
‘At this of a squeezed middle class
the most consistent, indeed
most radical, anti-govern-
the status anxiety of a
point, and
ment conservative of the
formerly dominant white
bunch, Ted Cruz.
working class. But the pre-
who
Cruz’s entire career
vailing conservative nar-
has consisted of promot-
cares?’ rative — of anti-establish-
ing tea-party constitution-
ment fury — was different
alism in revolt against party leaders and is now exposed as a convenient
who had joined “the Washington car- fable. If Trump is a great big middle
tel.” Yet when Cruz got to his one-on- inger aimed at a Republican estab-
one with Trump at the Indiana OK lishment that has abandoned its prin-
Corral, Republicans chose Trump and ciples, isn’t it curious that the party
his nonconservative, idiosyncratic has chosen a man without any?
populism.
Trump doesn’t even pretend to
Which makes Indiana a truly his- have any, conservative or otherwise.
toric inlection point. It marks the He lauds his own “lexibility,” his free-
most radical transformation of the dom from political or philosophical
political philosophy of a major polit- consistency. And he elevates unpre-
ical party in our lifetime. The Dem- dictability to a foreign policy doctrine.
ocrats continue their trajectory of
The ideological realignment is
ever-expansive liberalism from the stark. On major issues — such as the
New Deal through the Great Society central question of retaining Amer-
through Obama and Clinton today. ica’s global pre-eminence as leader
While the GOP, the nation’s conser- of the free world, sustainer of West-
vative party, its ideology reined and ern alliances and protector of the post-
crystallized by Ronald Reagan, has World War II order — the GOP candi-
just gone populist.
date stands decidedly to the left of the
It’s an ideological earthquake. How Democrat.
radical a reorientation? Said Trump
And who knows on what else.
last week: “Folks, I’m a conservative. On entitlements? On health care? On
But at this point, who cares?”
taxes? We will soon ind out. But as
Who cares? Wasn’t caring about Trump himself says of being a conser-
conservatism the very essence of the vative — at this point, who cares?
talk radio, tea party, grass-roots revolt
As of Tuesday night, certainly not
against the so-called establishment? the GOP.
Caitlyn Jenner’s calling is to tell her story
W
one-third of 1 percent — is transgender,
a far smaller share than is gay. Jenner
thus puts a face on a category of peo-
ple prone to be viliied, a group that
may be among the most marginalized
in America.
“Maybe this is the reason God put
me on this earth, to tell my story, to try to
make a difference in the world,” Jenner
said. “Because this story and this issue
— trans, gender identity, nonconform-
ing, whatever it may be — is bigger than
what I did back in ’76 and winning the
Games. It’s bigger than breaking world
records and doing all that kind of stuff.
This is about life. This is about life and
death. People destroy their lives over
Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
what we all kind of deal with.”
Caitlyn Jenner, top, poses for
Jenner says that the hardest thing
photos with audience members about coming out as a woman was the
during the 27th Annual GLAAD criticisms from the transgender com-
Media Awards at the Beverly Hil- munity, and she acknowledges she had
ton in April, in Beverly Hills, Calif. a lot to learn: Until a year ago, she had
never met a transgender person. But she
she said, are trans kids who are strug- says she inally feels authentic about
gling with bullying and ostracism. her identity.
One national study found that 41 per-
“For so many years, little Cait-
cent of trans people surveyed had lyn has lived inside,” she said. “And
attempted suicide, 57 per-
Bruce kind of took over
cent had experienced fam-
the world, and did his
This is thing. It was time to put
ily rejection and almost
one-ifth had endured
inside and let’s let her
about him
homelessness.
live, OK?”
“And now the state life and
I became interested in
joins in the bullying and the
these issues after com-
harassment,” Jenner added.
death. ing across homeless kids
“You will lose lives because
struggling with school,
of it in our community.”
drugs, police, sexual abuse and sui-
Some of the students in the room cide — and disproportionately they
have faced just these challenges. Spen- were transgender kids who had been
cer Washington, a black 17-year-old rejected by family and society.
who was assumed female at birth but
That’s what I think the public
has felt male since he was a toddler, doesn’t get: Sure, there are complicated
once attempted suicide (fortunately, he issues of which sports team a child
couldn’t manage a hangman’s knot and should be on, or which shower to use,
cried himself to sleep).
but those are secondary. The primary
“Let people pee in peace,” Spencer concern should be to keep kids safe and
pleaded.
alive — and not in crisis each time their
Jenner said she was working bladders ill.
“behind the scenes” to address the
So remember, this isn’t about Jen-
North Carolina law and criticized ner, who can look after herself. It’s
Republicans on that issue. But she was about the thousands of kids across the
unapologetic about being a Repub- country who, on top of all the craziness
lican, saying that she was conser- of adolescence, are also realizing, often
vative on economic issues. (For my to their horror, that their bodies and
part, I believe in being accepting not souls do not align, and that as a result
just of transgender people but also of they may face a lifetime as pariahs. We
can do better than that.
Republicans!)
Let’s listen to Spencer, who says, “I
Less than 1 percent of the popula-
tion — one rough estimate is perhaps just want to be loved for who I am.”