What the Trump protests really mean

I always thought it would be a gas to join a really raucous protest.
 
I’d be the guy with the drum. The drummer always has beautiful young women gyrating around him, and oh the joy of making all that noise.
 
Go figure. I had to become a Republican.
 
Republicans stink at protesting. Sometimes we counter protest. But we look like dancing white boys at a college fraternity party when we do it -- that or the mob that chased Frankenstein through the countryside in the old black-and-white classic.
 
Either way, it’s inelegant.  
 
That doesn’t mean we don’t get riled. Those of us watching Donald Trump hijack the GOP with a little more than a third of the presidential primary vote are at our wits’ end. I spoke with a friend and former Reagan White House aide Friday afternoon, and we agreed that for the first time we’d truly consider going to a Trump rally and yelling our heads off until they dragged us away – purely for the emotional satisfaction.
 
A few hours later, several thousand protesters in Chicago beat us to the punch. And they knew what they were doing.
 
I watched news coverage of that protest for longer than I care to admit Friday night. I wish I could say I viewed it with ambivalence, but I did not.  I cheered the chaos – if only the man who reached the stage had kicked over the podium, I kept thinking, the photo would have become an instant American icon – but by the end of the night, like with so many others watching, the spectacle left me feeling ashamed, depressed and more than a little nauseous.
 
We know better. I know better: Shouting down speakers isn’t the way to go.  The way to challenge speech we don’t like in America is to engage in more speech and to promote superior arguments – even if Trump supporters refuse to listen to any of them.
 
But even knowing and believing that to the core of my soul, there’s still part of me itching to get a pair of drumsticks in my hands. Such is the level of frustration Trump has engendered.
 
The greater concern now is that these protests, which will only grow after Friday’s success, will drive more conservative voters into Trump’s arms. There was a smattering of Republicans at the Chicago protest we are told, but make no mistake about it, these demonstrations are being driven by the usual characters on the organized political left -- MoveOn.Org, unions, and the old ACORN crowd that now calls itself #BlackLivesMatter. The more they focus their ire on Trump – the more they exploit him as an organizing tool – the more the so-called silent majority will rally around populist Trump.
 
This couldn’t come at a more pivotal time in the Republican primary: Conservatives may be about to get the two-candidate race they’ve needed all year.  We may be about to see a head-to-head matchup between Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Dollars to donuts Cruz beats him – unless the left messes it up.
 
In other words, MoveOn.org, please stop helping us over here on the right. This is our civil war, not yours. How about focusing on Hillary Clinton until after the conventions. We’ll meet you back in the arena after that.
 
William F. B. O’Reilly is a Republican consultant.