Ivanka Trump is in the news for not being registered to vote in the Republican primary in New York, her home state. Her father, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, will have to try to win the state without his daughter’s direct help. (Though she’s working hard on the campaign trail.) Ivanka, who at age 34 has enjoyed a record of business success, has said that registering to vote in the New York primary is just too hard. She called the voter registration process “onerous.” Ms. Trump considers herself an independent and therefore wasn’t registered as a Republican, a requirement to participate in the primary. When she tried, she found out she was too late.
It’s the second time recently that Ivanka Trump has led her father in the news. Earlier this month 20,000 “Ivanka Trump-branded scarves” were recalled because they did “not meet the federal flammability standards for clothing textiles, posing a burn risk.” The dangerous Ivanka scarves, manufactured in China, have been called out as an example of a potential double standard attaching to the Trump campaign. Donald Trump publicly rails against manufacturing jobs going overseas, while his daughter profits handsomely from this same globalism. For some, Ivanka’s failure to register to vote in the New York primary paints her as a political dilettante whose interest in the duties of citizenship are limited only to those instances when it benefits her personally — e.g., her father’s candidacy. Some critics equate Ivanka’s opportunism in the political realm with a similar opportunism in business, exemplified by the scarves. But globalism is here to stay, and there’s nothing wrong or illegal with Ivanka Trump scarves being made in China (catching fire is another thing). But does it mean that Donald Trump’s call to “make America great again” by reinvigorating manufacturing applies selectively? The candidate will say no, explaining that the way the rules are set up now, Ivanka would be a “dummy” not to make the scarves in China. That’s why, Trump can plausibly claim, he wants to change the rules. The rules of globalism and the Republican party.
