Montini: Trump’s (new?) Reverse-Roosevelt strategy: ‘Fear is good’

Just about every American knows the famous Franklin D. Roosevelt quote from his first inaugural address, the one that goes, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

The guy now running Donald Trump’s campaign would have his candidate say just the opposite.

Fear is not bad, according to Trump’s guy.

Fear is good.

Trump selected as his new campaign CEO Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News, a website that tilts to the right — steeply, ferociously, unrelentingly, unapologetically.

In a blog, The New York Times points out that Breitbart News “recently accused President Obama of ‘importing more hating Muslims’; compared Planned Parenthood’s work to the Holocaust; called Bill Kristol, the conservative commentator, a ‘renegade Jew’; and advised female victims of online harassment to ‘just log off’ and stop “screwing up the internet for men,” illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child.”

Bannon once said in an interview, “Fear is a good thing. Fear is going to lead you to take action.”

It's like multiplying Trump by Trump.

And he might be right.

In this year’s election fear just might lead voters to take action.

But will it be for his guy … or against him?