Who is Trump's best historic/current parallel?

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Muhammad

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I'm sticking with Junichiro Koizumi, Juan Peron, Silvio Berlusconi etc.

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Wait no I've got it: a hybrid between the candidates of the 2013 Australian election Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and leader of the Liberals Tony Abbott.

I'll start with Abbott. Although I've seen Abbott worshipped around here by the American conservative movement, they are wrong to. TAbbott was never a doctrinaire economic conservative (he once commented that economics was boring). His campaign was feverishly opposed ny the ilk of the Economist and had higher costs in its promises (like his beloved Paid Parenthood scheme, designed ti increase the fertility, as such right-wingers are obsessed with birth rates).

What Abbott is, however, is a nationalist. Yes, right-Australian nationalism uses different tropes to the American version (namely worship of the motherland and an aversion to the cultural cringe all Aussie middle-class liberals exhibit in polite company), but it's the same thing. Trump and Abbott both simplified (some might say stupidified, but of course I'm coming from the sneering perspective they rail against) politics to a series of pithy, punchy phrases. Stop the boats. Build the wall.  

Abbott's fraught relationship with northern neighbour Indonesia, his tough guy promise to "shirtfront" Putin, his nigh on crusade outlook on the MENA  is a perfect picture of how right-wingers of their ilk (Abbott's simplistic but not unfair descripton of "baddies vs baddies" vis a vis Syria links with Trump's rejection of the Washington foreign policy synthesis) view the world: countries are bullies, and to survive you have to be the meanest and toughest of the bullies.

Compare with that their talent on winning elections (although whether Trump is a better manager than Abbott was not is yet to be seen), the sort of off the whim management style,, the creepy relationships with their daughters etc.

And Rudd? Well, he, like Trump, is a massive egotistical prick who the party hated but the grassroots loved.

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As I said, Abbott has no interest in economics beyond cutting taxes he sees as unfair. His budget, which was really inexplicably bad (even with the fall in mining at the time), came from his Treasurer who was an incompteent. Even so, ABbott pushed for a temporary income tax called something like the patriotism tax which really shows the difference national conservatism and the economic liberalism that is now conservative ideology.

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Discuss: Michael Heseltine