Charles C. W. Cooke wants a "Manhattan Project" to stop Donald Trump

Charles CW Cooke of National Review says he wants a "Manhattan Project" to stop Donald Trump [1].

The original Manhattan Project involved very smart, dedicated people who put their pride and other personal interests aside to achieve their goal.

Let's just say that the leading opposition to Trump hasn't exactly shown great competence: everything they'd done so far has only helped Trump become more popular. Cooke continues that failure with the few, vague action plans he proposes:

...[ Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio ] must explain that Trump is an entitled mess whose business record is so questionable that he managed to bankrupt a casino; that he is an unashamed fraud who didn’t even wait to be elected president before folding on Planned Parenthood and Obamacare, exactly like the “feckless” Congress he is running against; that he is feigning religiosity to appeal to people he believes are rubes; and, above all, that whatever he may be pretending now, he has spent a lifetime screwing the little guy. They must repeat verbatim his previous words on amnesty; they must outline in detail how his policies will make life worse for everyone; and they must point out that a Trump nomination designed to “mix things up” will result, eventually, in more of the same. In the meantime, conservatives who are not running for president must ensure that every spare dollar is spent attacking Trump... If Donald Trump can flood the airwaves with his nonsense, his opponents can counter it incessantly. And while they are at it, they can tie him up in court, just as he’s trying to do to Cruz. There are a good number of “just asking” questions ready to be put to them, among them “Trump’s mother was Scottish, can he really be president?” and “Trump ran a host of scams designed to rip off the poor; surely one of them would like to sue him?” Thus far, part of Trump’s media strategy has been to say something outrageous and then to move on before it can be rebutted or fact-checked. Why are his rivals not doing the same thing to him? ...

While ads do tend to work in most cases, the problem is that the same people who'd make the ads are those whose opposition to Trump has in effect helped him. Some of the rest of Cooke's ideas would be getting into the mud that Donald Trump is familiar with and could turn to his advantage.

If anyone wants to stop Trump, the answer isn't a New Manhattan Project that would have trouble making a paper airplane. The answer is to show Trump wrong to his base. If Trump's base can be shown that their leader is a charlatan leading them on, then many will abandon him.

The way to do that is using the Question Authority plan: asking Trump tough policy questions on video at his appearances. Plenty of people have asked him questions on the campaign trail and plenty have engaged in childish stunts at his events. The real New Manhattan Project should be to find smart people to ask Trump questions that would show him wrong. I've even done some of the work for you: see the tough questions at [site coming soon] .

Even if you aren't able to ask Trump a question, then you can use the same technique against his surrogates, leading supporters, and the two Congressmen so far who've endorsed him (see [site coming soon] for questions for one of those Congressmen).

It's going to be an uphill battle to get those like Cooke to do things the smart way, even though they claim to want to undercut Trump so much. Those like Cooke tend not to understand the value of Socratic questioning and they have emotional issues that prevent them from doing what's in their best interests. Those emotional issues include not being able to put their pride aside and do what they should, suffering from Not Invented Here syndrome, and suffering from Dunning-Kruger. The members of the original Manhattan Project didn't suffer from those issues and that's why they were able to achieve their objective. The leading opposition to Trump does suffer from those issues, and that's why they're in the shape they're in.

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[1] nationalreview . com/article/431858/donald-trump-2016-campaign-must-be-stopped