Well, there is one Republican congressman who has just gained my respect.
Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) is taking aim at fellow Republican Donald Trump, saying the party’s presidential front-runner for doing “serious damage to the GOP brand.”
“You can’t be calling women bimbos, we can’t just be kicking sand in the sandbox saying, ‘You’re dumb’ and ‘You’re a loser,’ ” Ribble told USA Today on Friday. “We actually need a grown-up, not a three-year-old in the White House.”
The lawmaker said Trump has gotten under his skin, calling his immigration plan “10 or 15 pages of blather.”
“These are very serious times, and they require serious people at the helm,” Ribble said. “And they require people who haven’t declared bankruptcy four times but want you to believe they’re great business people.”
“It’s not politics what he’s doing, it’s a carnival,” he added. “It would be one thing if he was a serious policy person, but he’s not.”
I like this quote because it’s very succinct, directly to the point, and doesn’t have the slightest bit of bullshit attached to it. It’s not possible for me to improve on this statement. It’s the plain unadorned truth.
I like this quote because it’s very succinct, directly to the point, and doesn’t have the slightest bit of bullshit attached to it. It’s not possible for me to improve on this statement. It’s the plain unadorned truth.
I agree with you on the quote, the problem is what comes after that quote. Ok, so Trump has all of those problems. But except for style what are the substantive differences between Trump and the GOP? Immigrants? Read the state party platforms – they are as anti-immigrant as any major party has been in a century. Serious proposals? C’mon, this Congresscritter voted for the Paul Ryan budget dozens of times, which is as much flim-flam as Trump’s immigrant paper, and included ending guaranteed medical care for seniors, starting with people age 55 and under.
Calling people dumb and losers? Trump gets a lot more attention but that’s what the semi-official Republican TV channel does every freaking night and has for 19 years.
The substantive differences are that Trump isn’t pushing unpopular proposals that the owners of the GOP want – he’s not for ending social security, he is (or was, who knows now) in favor of single payer, he does think that the government should provide social services to white people.
But it still looks great to see (R) after that quote! Like AG was saying the other day after the loyalty pledge. Does the GOP own Trump, or the other way around? Either way, at this point, they seem to be wed to each other, like it or not.
I would also say yeah, it’s the truth, but it’s beside the point. Donald T. Rump isn’t popular because of his wise policy positions, he’s popular precisely because he’s a bully and a blowhard. Pointing that out seems kind of superfluous.
At about 12 years of age my son said something to me that made me think he was going to be just fine in this world.
He said:
“Dad, did you ever notice that nobody likes the popular kids?”
Trump is “the popular kid” that almost nobody really likes. The people that hung out with that crew in middle school and high school were all losers/hangers-on. However, in high school when a vote was taken for King and Queen of the prom, the popular kids always won.
Hmmmmm…
Take Trump seriously.
Very seriously.
AG
All of these terrific predictions/warnings/worries about Trump’s electoral viability you are making will likely be very amusing to look back on in November 2016.
But, Trump is preoccupying you, the Republican Party base and establishment, so he’s adding to his already substantial entertainment value. It’s fun to read you lecturing us about What Trump Means. So much is revealed.
On the plus side, he’s stopped shilling for that pissant Rand Paul.
The emperor needs to get rid of his made-in-China Trump brand clothes.
Naw, I kind of like that look on him….might say it’s a perfect choice for that man.
Have said it from the beginning. Trump is NOT appealing to some ‘sliver’ of the Republican Party. He is speaking the language of the MAINSTREAM of this GOP, but he does not do it in Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles. It’s been interesting to see articles being written trying to dance around what Trump is saying, because the dogwhistles gave the MSM the cover to pretend that the GOP doesn’t represent what they represent. Now, we get the articles about how ‘there must be more’ to their support of Trump. No. He expresses their hatred of THE OTHER in plain language, and that’s what they want. There IS nothing deeper there.
………………………………………………………………..
What Donald Trump Understands About Republicans
SEPT. 2, 2015
Donald
Trump’s success is no surprise. The public and the press have focused
on his defiant rejection of mannerly rhetoric, his putting into words of
what others think privately. But the more important truth is that a
half-century of Republican policies on race and immigration have made
the party the home of an often angry and resentful white constituency — a
constituency that is now politically mobilized in the face of
demographic upheaval.
Demographic upheaval may be understating it. From 1970 to 2010, the Hispanic population of the United States grew fivefold,
from 9.6 million to 50.5 million. From 2000 to 2010, the number of
white children under 18 declined by 4.3 million while the number of
Hispanic children grew by 4.8 million. In 2013, white children became a minority, 47.7 percent of students ages 3 to 6.
We have become familiar with Trump’s selling point — that he, more than any other Republican candidate, voices nativist and protectionist views in aggressive and abrasive terms, without qualm:
“I Love the Mexican people. I do business with the Mexican people, but you have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they’re bad. They’re really bad.” He has vilified Latin American immigrants as “bringing drugs, bringing crime” and as “rapists.”
Not very subtly, Trump conflates American blacks with Mexican immigrants. “I know cities where police are afraid to even talk to people because they want to be able to retire and have their pension,” he declared in Nashville on Aug. 29. “That first night in Baltimore,” when rioting broke out in protest over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, “they allowed that city to be destroyed. They set it back 35 years in one night because the police weren’t allowed to protect people. We need law and order!”
Urban gangs, in turn, provide Trump with an opportunity to link immigration and crime.”You know a lot of the gangs that you see in Baltimore and in St. Louis and Ferguson and Chicago, do you know they’re illegal immigrants?” Trump vows that after the election, “they’re going to be gone so fast, if I win, that your head will spin.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/opinion/what-donald-trump-understands-about-republicans.html?_r=1
This, all election long.
The reason why I don’t care about what Ribble said is that Trump isn’t saying anything that the other Republican candidates don’t all believe and espouse. It’s just that the other Republican candidates have to whisper it and occasionally pull out their dog whistles.
Trump, God save him, is just saying it out loud and proud without walking any of it back.
That’s the GOP’s problem with Trump.
I for one welcome the Republican ID to be put out in the open for all to see. The media is going to have to spin faster and tighter and faster and tighter to try to play the BothSidesDoItTM BigLie. The faster it spins, the more chunks of actual truth will fly out, accidentally but publicly.
Please, proceed Donald.
September 05, 2015 7:30 AM
Why Donald Trump Will Defeat the Koch Brothers for the Soul of the GOP
By David Atkins
In order to understand how Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican field despite openly promoting tax hikes on wealth hedge fund managers, hedging support for universal healthcare and other wildly iconoclastic positions hostile to decades of Republican dogma, it’s important to note the that the Republican Party was teetering on the edge of a dramatic change no matter whether Trump had entered the race or not.
Demographers and political scientists have long been predicting that the Republican Party is due for a realignment–the sort of tectonic political shift that occurs when one of the two parties either take a courageous political stand or falls into danger of becoming a permanent minority, shifting the demographics and constituencies that sort each party. The last big realignment in American politics is generally considered to to have occurred in the wake of the Civil Rights Act, when Democratic support for civil rights legislation moved racially resentful, mostly Southern whites into the arms of the Republicans while picking up support from women and minorities. Republicans, of course, hastened this process through their use of the Southern strategy to maximize conservative white fears and resentments. It is arguable that the Democratic shift toward the conservative and neoliberal economics beginning the late 1970s as a response to the increasing power of money in elections and the rise of Reagan was also a minor realignment that moved many wealthy social liberals out of the Republican fold at the expense of blue-collar Democratic workers.
Conventional wisdom has argued that demographic trends showing the rise of Latino and Asian voters would spell the need for another GOP realignment–this time away from minority-bashing Southern Strategy politics, toward a more ecumenical, corporate-friendly fiscal libertarianism and militaristic foreign policy that would in theory attract conservative-leaning voters across the racial spectrum who had previously felt unwelcome in the Republican fold due to its racial politics. Republican leaders are well aware that every election year the voting public becomes more diverse, and that permanently losing the Latino and Asian votes the way Republicans have the African-American vote would mean a permanent disaster for their party. The Blue Wall becomes more formidable for the GOP with every presidential election cycle, largely due to demographic change.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_09/why_donald_trump_will_defeat_t057458.php
I wonder what the endgame is for the Confederate revanchists in the Republican Party. They’re already at the point where they can’t win national elections without luck significantly breaking their way. And even if they do get that lucky break, it’s not going to last long for them — Watergate was the mother of all counter-cyclical trends and it only gave Democrats a 4-year reprieve from demographics.
Their only long-term hope is that they gain enough of the levers of powers to institute a Bismarck-style (or more accurately, a Milosevic-style) kulturkampf. Good luck with that one; the United States military is over-represented by racial minorities in the enlisted ranks. And there’s the fact that over 50% of the people in the miilitary are aged 30 or younger and that >50% of children aged 10 or younger are racial minorities…
I suppose their other hope is to try to lure Hispanics into the fold of whiteness. I have a feeling that the current generation of white supremacists would rather slit their mamma’s throats than do that, though, so it’ll be at least a 25-year long project.
The most important polling I have seen yet:
From the Monmouth poll
“Regardless of who you support, what do
you think the country needs more in the next
president: someone with government experienc
e who knows how to get things done or
someone outside of government who can bring a new approach to Washington?
2015
Someone with government experience
26%
Someone outside of government
67
Most of the writing about Trump talks about him and the Tea Party. Of course no one actually bothers to look and see if this is true – since pundits want to write about their theory, and not what is true. Pundits always overstate the role of ideology in presidential primary politics.
“Trump (28%), Carson (20%), and Cruz
(17%) are the top vote getters among
very conservative voters; Trump (29%) leads Carson (21%) among somewhat
conservative voters; and Trump (34%) has
a commanding edge over Carson (14%) and
Bush (11%) among moderate to liberal voters”
Trump’s number is really independent of ideology. THIS IS ABOUT AN ESTABLISHMENT THAT WITHIN THE GOP IS DISCREDITED.
What is unclear to me is how broad this sense is withing the country. I would love to see those numbers for the general electorate.
My guess is they would be similar. And they scare the shit out of me because our likely nominee is as establishment a figure as you get.
I’d rather have a figure that was more willing to tap into the restless mood of the public, too. Sanders would be good for this but his numbers aren’t rising quickly enough to mount a credible challenge to Hillary.
However, in the end I don’t think that it’s going to matter. Obama won by 4% in 2012 with 8% unemployment. If no further economic calamity happens (which isn’t assured, of course) Hillary Clinton can pad that number by around 2% just from the impact of Millenials and racial minorities. That’s not going to be enough to win the House, but it’s enough to easily win the Presidency.
As long as pollsters continue to sort voters into self-identified political groups — “very conservative,” etc. — they will continue not to understand the real dynamics of presidential races. As those self-identified, very conservative voters what very conservative means and the answers won’t fit neatly into a single category.
My guess too.
And I share your fright.
AG
Trump is a capital-P Populist, like WIlliam Jennings Bryan and Pitchfork Ben Tillman. Unlike Tillman, Trump has not yet murdered anyone that we know of.
Capital-P Populist are against millionaires and tramps, but they are more against tramps. (h/t to digby’s Salon article)
Meanwhile no one noticed that Colin Powell confessed to be an accessory after the fact to a war crime — as it turns out, the second time he has covered up evidence of a war crime.
Calvin would suggest that before giving Mr. Ribble credit for anything that you need to find out more about him. Calvin’s kiddies live in his district and HATE him because he’s really a tool.
Can Ribble get credit for that statement or did one of the Koch Bros. PR boys write it for him?
Knowing WI politics and knowing of Mr. Ribble, I’m betting on my hypothesis.
Ribble is as rabid a winger as you can find in WI.
Thanks — had to wonder how any Republican pol these days could claim that Trump is tarnishing the GOP brand. At least not for the reasons he cited given the racist and non-serious performance of the GOP Congress. Perhaps he means Trump’s call for higher taxes on the wealthy and universal healthcare is where he’s hurting their brand. That would be true, but it’s not what he cited.
Ribble as a paid-off shill for the Kochs makes perfect sense, regardless if it’s true or not.
Perhaps it’s the truth as far as he went, but there’s a heckuva lot he neglected to mention. 1. The republicans don’t have any policies worth a hill of beans and if they did, they could never pass them even in a republican controlled congress. 2. Trump and his followers are the pure distillation of the attitudes the gop has been encouraging for the last 20 years. I’ll respect the first person in the gop who admits this.
Shorter Ribble:
That Trump guy is saying everything we believe, but he’s saying it out loud, on camera, and not Etch-A-Sketching back on it. We can’t be bigots out in the open, and Trump is ruining it for the rest of us.
You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t give a shit about Ribble’s worries that it’s going to be a lot harder to hide their actual beliefs behind dog whistles from now on. Because that’s his “substantive” problem with Trump.