HOTTEST THING EVER!!!
HOTTEST THING EVER!!!
TRUMP LOSES A POLL!!!
But of course almost no news outlets are naming the poll, and if they do, they are not pointing out the history of one of its sponsoring entities.
The poll is labelled NBC/WSJ. WSJ stands for Wall Street Journal which is now owned by Rupert Murcoch. It is his “clean” voice as opposed his many and various obviously dirty, tabloided-out voices like Fox News, The NY Post;and The Sun. A cursory look at the last couple of months of the WSJ coverage of Trump is all you need to know about where that particular bastion of establishment criminality lies as far as Trump goes.
Following is some typical WSJ anti-Trump boilerplate. True, false or anywhere in between, it is proof positive that Trump scares the pants off of the right wing of the PermaGov.
Read on.
Trump’s Hostile GOP Takeover
How can evangelicals support a candidate with such deep-seated character flaws?
As the South Carolina presidential primary looms, the Republican Party faces a moment of truth. Since 1980, the winner of the state’s Republican primary has gone on to win the nomination every time except 2012. This time, with less than a week to go, Donald Trump leads his nearest rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, by a margin of more than 2 to 1. It would take a seismic shift in the contest’s closing days to produce victory for anyone other than the New York billionaire.
Not long ago, longtime leaders of the Republican establishment seemed poised to make their peace with Mr. Trump. As a man of no fixed principles, they reasoned, he was someone with whom they could do business. Without deep roots in their party, he would leave the current structure and personnel pretty much as they are. Faced with the challenges of actual governance, he would end up staffing his administration with their people and taking their advice.
After Mr. Trump’s beyond-the-pale debate performance on Saturday, they may want to reconsider. The front-runner declared war on the entire Republican Party and made clear his intention to execute a hostile takeover. Jaws dropped from coast to coast when he accused George W. Bush of lying about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction so that he could plunge the nation into a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
To state the obvious, this accusation is false, and recklessly so. Although I was an early, fervent opponent of the Iraq war, it was clear to me and most others that senior Bush administration officials and the president himself believed what they were saying.
In advance of his 2003 U.N. speech, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent nearly a week at the CIA vetting the intelligence supporting the claim that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and a rapidly advancing nuclear-weapons program.
Mr. Powell emerged satisfied enough to deliver the speech he came to regard as a blot on his record. Although he later pronounced himself “devastated” that some intelligence officials muzzled their doubts about the reliability of the evidence against Saddam Hussein, he never intimated that President Bush was party to a world-historical deception.
In the wake of behavior that plumbs the depths of irresponsibility, one might imagine support for Mr. Trump among the party faithful would collapse. Perhaps it will, but there is as yet no evidence of such a development.
A survey sponsored by the South Carolina House Republican Caucus and conducted on Sunday, the day after the debate, found Mr. Trump’s support holding firm at 33%, with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz at 14%, Jeb Bush at 13% and John Kasich at 10%. The front-runner led in every category, topping Mr. Cruz among tea party identifiers and libertarians, topping Mr. Rubio among conservatives and Mr. Kasich among moderates. Mr. Trump led among seniors, young adults and every age cohort in between.
—snip—
The Trump phenomenon offers a moral challenge not only to evangelicals, but to the entire Republican leadership. Nine months ago I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which Mr. Trump would receive his party’s nomination and go on to win the presidency. Now I can. If he wins in South Carolina, conscientious Republicans will have to ask themselves whether they can be complicit in a course of events that hands the Oval Office to a man so manifestly unfit for the presidency. It is hard to decide which is a greater threat to the republic–Donald Trump’s pervasive ignorance or his deep-seated character flaws.
Some leading Republicans have quietly told me that they would break ranks if Mr. Trump wins their party’s nomination. A few have said so publicly. Unless a viable alternative emerges soon, every Republican will face the same dilemma.
And…mirabile dictu…not 24 hours later a magic NBC/WSJ poll appears (as said, largely unsourced in the mass media) that basically declares “TRUMP BUBBLE NOW BROKEN!!! YOU CAN SAFELY IGNORE HIM!!!
Will it work? As the old saying goes, “No one has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
Not yet, anyway…
We shall see.
If Trump’s numbers actually begin to fall nationwide, then it worked.
THAK GOD IN HEAVEN!!! NOW WE CAN GET ON TO A REAL CONTEST.
LIKE BETWEEN TWO REAL CANDIDATES.
LIKE JEB BUSH AND HRC!!!
‘Scuse me while I go puke.
If his numbers don’t fall…and I am betting that the American public’s admittedly low IQ has at least been bumped up enough by the ongoing bipartisan depredations of the PermaGov Dems and RatPubs over the past 20 years or more so that they will see through this particularly lame and transparent maneuver…if Trump’s numbers don’t fall, then the PermaGov’s final playable card (except for the old derringer-up-the-sleeve routine, of course) will be to throw Bloomberg at him.
Watch.
AG
To Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum of Non-Personed PermaGov Personae non Gratae With Him!!!???
I dunno.
Sump’n tells me that Trump’s personal heat…onanistic though it may well be…will melt that wax before it has a chance to set.
A l’il ol’bird tells me.
Trump doesn’t seem to mean to take down the PermaGov…although maybe he’s cagier than any of us realize…but he may be the instrument of its destruction nevertheless.
We shall soon see.
Won’t we.
Later…
AG
Ironically the same poll promotes Cruz as in the lead; given his wife’s former employer does Cruz qualify as evangelically-flavoured but PermaGov approved?
Dunno, Shaun. In martial arts we are taught to take pout the most threatening opponent first. By any means necessary. The others will get scared and be easier.
AG
>>I dunno.
I have a lot of thoughts on what you’ve written or quoted here, but adding them all up that’s what I get. I don’t know. There are fewer sides here than the war in Syria, but there I think I can understand the motivations of the various players. Not here.
when it plays out, would the permagov be OK with Trump, considering that any other play has risks too? He’s worked with the mob, why wouldn’t he work with them? Trump might have correctly called out Bush for lying us into war, but he’s clearly happy with dumb military adventurism.
i dunno either, esquimaux. It is hard to predict the course of something as new as Trumpism. It could not have existed without the past 10+ years or so of reality TV and Twitteresque news coverage. It’s a new world, and like all new worlds, it is not necessarily a better one.
We’ll know more by November.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. In Shakespeare”s The Tempest, Act 5, scene 1, 181-184, poor, sheltered young Miranda finally sees “normal” people.
Miranda:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!
And worldy-wise Prospero answers sadly:
Prospero:
‘Tis new to thee.
We shall see…