And by this, she believes that the Republican party stands for free trade, welcoming immigrants, equal rights for everyone and respect for life.
It doesn't, of course.
Hasn't for more than forty years. Not even close.
But it has produced a boatload of people who talk like Navarro, who populate all of the US news and discussion media with their vision of a Republican Party that is not at all the shitpile of bigots, fundies, and imbeciles who elected W&Cheney and fully, loudly, publicly, intemperately, and violently, supported every horrible thing that administration did
right up until it publicly botched Katrina and crashed the entire economy and was suddenly found to have not only lied the country into a botched War but mistreated the veterans - overseen Veteran's hospitals that had rats and filth and mold,
at which point the media chorus turned on a dime, declared that they had never really liked W or supported him in what he did, that W wasn't a real Republican, that all along they had conflicting "views" about W's administration, and that the traditional Republican Party or Tea Party or something would now rise up and clean house and restore Republican principles.
That little dance was performed ten, twenty years ago - and it was old news then. For Ann Navarro's entire adult political life the Republican Party's central and defining ideological basis has been Rush Limbaugh's radio show and Newt Gingrich's political strategies. It's been ugly, and it's never been anything like Navarro's "views" describe.
So you have a couple of choices:
1) she is deluded, in the extreme, and knows nothing about the Republican Party. She believes her own line.
2) She is lying from a script she was hired to lie from, like almost everyone else on camera with her.
3) She is bullshitting on her own, with a personal agenda of some kind (the wingnut welfare trough is rich and bountiful - nobody willing to shill for the Republican Party and able to sell their pitch to an audience has to worry about the rent).
These choices are not mutually exclusive. In particular, #1 is worth careful consideration: as the saying goes, it is very difficult to get someone to understand something if their livelihood depends on their not understanding it. There are a lot of public intellectuals and media folks who looked directly at Trump's rallies and did not see the Republican Party - any more than they saw it in W's enthusiastic War and torture prison supporters, or the people who emptied the retail shelves of ammunition when Obama won in '08 - because their jobs depended on not seeing it.
What in hell they thought they were seeing we might be able to filter from the bs that came out of their mouths and keyboards, but it hardly matters - and neither does anything Ann Navarro says.
She doesn't like Trump or support him, really. It was interesting to see her views, and it goes to show how easily we make assumptions about people's political views, simply because they are affiliated with a designated party.
Her affiliation with the Republican Party does inform us about her views, because it shows what she is willing to be affiliated with in fact - in actual behavior. So we can see, right in front of us, that she is willing to be affiliated with, to ally herself with, complete and solid support of Donald Trump in all his glory and everything he does, Mitch McConnell likewise, etc. She's on board that ship. The Dems have actual factions, the Reps don't.
What she tries to build as a private lifeboat, by having "views" about icebergs or whatever, can be credited to her intelligence or foresight or maybe ambition, but should be burned on moral and ethical grounds. Trump=Republican, Republican=Trump. She can put up, or shut up.
