Rhetoric Ethos Pathos and Logos Political Writing Analysis

¶ … Mitt Romney and John McCain Denounce Donald Trump as a Danger to Democracy" on The New York Times website is framed by two images -- one, an image of the "religious family man" that the Times calls Mitt Romney; the other, an image of the "profane, philandering self-promoter" that it calls Donald Trump (Burns, Barbaro). Thus, while The Times attempts to give a balanced, objective viewpoint on the clash between the former Republican Presidential candidate (as well as the one before him -- John McCain) and the current Republican primary forerunner Donald Trump, it clearly sides with the campaign of Mitt Romney and the Establishment Republicans who resent being challenged by the "outsider" Trump.

The New York Times has paid for this ad, which is essentially endorsed by the Republican elites who seek to wrest control of the Republican primary away from the frontrunner and put it into the hands of someone more malleable like Rubio or Cruz.

The main binaries of the article are the two former Candidates Romney and McCain and the frontrunner of today and likely Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. On the one side are two failed bids for political power and on the other side is a momentum gaining rhino of a movement that threatens to overturn the establishment so long held dear by Republican elites. That Romney and McCain should voice denunciations against Trump is the height of hypocrisy and represents an implicit anomaly within the narrative offered in this article: why should the opinion of two failed candidates matter in a race that is clearly between PC (criminal) Culture (represented by Hillary Clinton) and non-PC (conservative) culture (represented by Trump). Also implicit in this narrative is the existence of two parties within the Republican party system -- the neo-conservative party, led by men such as Romney and McCain (and several others), and the old-school, traditional conservative party, now being led by Trump (with the support of hundreds of thousands of voters and pundits like Pat Buchannan and David Stockman).

While this article focuses mainly on how Trump is "dangerous" because of his stances on "trade" and "immigration," the article reveals the actual reason Trump is dangerous without really intending to do so when it describes David Duke as a "white supremacist." Duke is not a white supremacist and has said so on several occasions ("David Duke Responds to CNN - Speaks to Trump & All Americans") and this attempt to paint Duke as one by The Times covers up the fact that the real supremacists are those running the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party -- in fact, Romney, McCain et al. The article's aim is to show how much division the Trump candidacy is causing and how bad it could be for the Party (i.e., the controlling neo-conservatives): The Times concludes that "There probably hasn't been this level of personal invective by one Republican nominee against another leading candidate," Mr. Greenberg said. "Ever" (Burns, Barbaro). The implication is that Trump is destroying an institution and causing an historic rift between Republican mainstays represented by Romney and McCain and the party voters.

The article does not attempt to establish the credibility of Trump at all: instead it focuses on sound bites and terms from Romney's assault on Trump's credibility and then selects a few, terse sound bites and terms from Trump's rebuttal to illustrate the dynamic of the exchange. The ad does not go into detail about either individual and simply seems to be about showing how a great feud or drama is in the works within the Party. However, a fuller description of either side would surely give weight to the picture and provide a clearer and more satisfying ethos. But this is lacking and the sense that the reader should come away with is that this is simply sensational journalism attempting to rouse excitement and worry where there really is none. Obviously the voting electorate is not concerned about Trump's credentials, as he is winning the majority of the states in the Primaries thus far. And, clearly, Romney does not represent the voice of the American electorate as the writers of this ad seem to imply by acting as though his remarks are in any way relevant to what is an obvious going concern among Republican voters -- which appears to be backing a candidate that wants to challenge head-on the Republican neo-conservative establishment.

The logos of the article is that Republicans are at war with themselves and that Romney's wars may still be able to persuade some voters to back Rubio in the upcoming elections. Rubio, the reader is not told, is the establishment's preferred candidate, but one might surmise that since this article suggests that he has a chance of derailing Trump, even though every objective observer who isn't writing for The Times would more than likely disagree. There is no real logic presented in this article as there is nothing really that is presented at all, other than bits and pieces of a sound bite war of words between two individuals, making it seem like Romney's speech (and McCain's support of it) actually achieved anything of significance. Essentially, the piece is acting as a propagating force, or echo, of Romney's rhetoric, repeating the accusation that Trump is a "fraud" and a "phony" without offering any evidence of how or why this is so (Burns, Barbaro).