I’m a woman, a racial minority, and an immigrant, and I grew up in inner-city America. I have two university degrees, one from Cornell University and another from Stanford Law School. I have worked for some of the most elite institutions in America, including a foreign policy organization that counts Chelsea and Bill Clinton among its members.
According to conventional wisdom, I have no business being a Trump supporter. Yet I have been an unabashed fan since Trump declared his candidacy for president. In fact, never in my life have I been this excited about a presidential nominee.
Ying Ma appeared on Between the Lines on Australia’s ABC Radio National to discuss the campaign of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, his race against Hillary Clinton, his ability to unify the Republican Party, and the nervousness he is creating among U.S. allies.
Ying Ma appeared on Lateline, Australia’s leading daily current affairs program, to discuss the Donald Trump candidacy for president and some of the controversies he has generated. To view the discussion, please click HERE. Lateline airs weeknights on ABC in Australia.
With the Obama administration beating the drums for “limited” strikes against Syria last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called for decisive military action and chastised his Republican colleagues who might disagree. On MSNBC, he said, “We’re going to have to have a debate about the future of the party…[about] isolationism versus internationalism.”
However much Christie and McCain might wish to claim the mantle of internationalism, their attacks on the so-called isolationists of the Republican Party actually mask fundamental differences among the GOP’s internationalists, and reveal that the party’s foreign policy debate is still mired in the unhappy legacy of President George W. Bush.
Republicans cannot move past that legacy by taking potshots at libertarians and Tea Partyers who question the prevailing GOP wisdom on domestic and foreign policy issues. Instead, the party will have to resolve internal differences and chart a more coherent course for foreign policy. Welcoming the newcomers who articulate and apply conservative principles to the nation’s priorities would be a great start.
Since their defeat at the polls last November, Republicans have been desperate to recruit more racial minorities to their side. Some, like former Secretary of State Colin Powell, have exhorted the Republican Party to become more moderate and more “inclusive.” Others, like Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, have suggested giving the party a “hip-hop” makeover. President Barack Obama’s recent nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court should remind Republicans that a better approach would be a wholesale rejection of the perverse but pervasive framework of identity politics championed by the left.
Democrats have long ago bought into the idea that minorities can only relate to people who look like them and must be coddled by people who do not. The Party of Lincoln, on the other hand, carries the unenviable burden of telling black, brown, and yellow people that it welcomes them, even as it insists that they have no special place, purely as a result of their race, in the party’s core beliefs about the free market and individual freedom.
