Aftandilian in Al Jazeera on Trump and the Republican Establishment

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Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed in which he discusses presidential candidate Donald Trump’s anti-establishment position heading into the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Aftandilian published the July 17, 2016 Op-Ed, entitled “Republican Convention and Donald Trump’s Party Victory,” in Al Jazeera.

From the text of the article:

Presumptive Republican party presidential nominee Donald Trump is heading to the party convention in Cleveland, Ohio on July 18 – confident that his brand is working despite major misgivings by the party establishment.

Trump has deferred to the latter to draft the party platform to deflect any last-minute revolt against him, but he is likely to continue to chart his own course leading to the November election.

He defied conventional wisdom by being the “politically incorrect” non-politician during the primary season, winning the most Republican delegates in a crowded field of relatively well-known Republican politicians.

He used insults against his opponents, plus offensive language against Muslims, Hispanics, and others to score points with a major section of the Republican party base that were upset over the inability of politicians to get things done in Washington and who were fearful that the country was “changing for the worse”.

You can read the entire Op-Ed here.

Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999). Learn more about him here.