It was only a matter of time before Maurice Newman got his election on. Donald Trump represents the will of the people,he suggests, of the candidate who wins 35% of the vote of the 20% of adults registered as Republicans, and who, most polls suggest, would lose to Hillary Clinton by eight points, and to Bernie Sanders by 11 points.
Along the way, there’s a delicious “Maurice”, the sort of hamfisted, multi-part error for which the ex-banker is famed: “… after two generations of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s aim to capture America by a ‘long march through the institutions’ is complete.”
Haha, OK, first Italian Marxist Gramsci was more interested in, amazingly, Italy than the US. Secondly he never said a “long march through the institutions” for anywhere. The phrase is from the German activist Rudi Dutschke, in the 1960s, 30 years after Gramsci died. Apart from that, spot on.
Amazingly, the one feature of Trump’s policies the banker doesn’t mention is Trump’s protectionism, and his plan to slap global outsourcers with a 35% tax — by far Trump’s most popular policy in the rustbelt. What could possibly have caused the ex-head of the Australian stock exchange to forget that? We’ll keep a lookout for future Maurices, from the master himself, and others.
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