A friend recently asked me if I prefer Trump to the other Republicans in the field. My response was that this was like asking if I prefer rat poison to the bubonic plague? I know we all agree it would be a disaster to allow any of those fools anywhere near the White House.
I set out my thoughts as follows:
Trump isn’t a movement conservative. He’s a megalomaniac and complete loose cannon. Right now he’s riding a wave of anger, racism and nativism. That’s the crowd to which he’ll be beholden in the extremely unlikely event he could overcome the antipathy of liberals, women, Latinos, other minorities, other Democrats, Independents and those with educations beyond the 8th grade and IQs over 70.
I guess if forced to choose, I’d say Cruz is the scariest because he appears to believe the nonsense that spews from his mouth. However, in some ways Rubio is far scarier because he’d be more electable and way more effective once in office. Kasich in his heart of hearts is politically closest to you and me. But he’d know who butters his bread and it’s not us.
One could say this for Trump. If elected, he’d have no real friends. Since he doesn’t believe most of what he says, he might sell out in favor of another constituency. That’s what happened with Schwarzenegger in California. He rode into town as a celebrity spewing a nativist, angry message. Once in office, he governed that way for a time and, when his polls dipped, began to moderate. As he was rewarded for his moderation, he moderated yet more. Eventually the Republicans came to detest him and the Democrats found they could work with him. By the time he left office, the Republican party in California was a shadow of its former self (for reasons broader than but inclusive of the governator) and it remains both weak and dysfunctional to this day.
I think movement conservatives fear Trump most of all for the potential impact on their party and movement. Many of them would likely vote for Clinton or at least stay home. Others would get on board and hope for the best.
It’s fascinating that a party whose real agenda has always been deregulation of industry and eliminating taxes on the wealthy has been more than happy to ride a wave of xenophobia as long as they could control it. Then along comes Trump, with his arrogance, disrespect for institutions and education, and willingness to give voice to the most extreme ethnocentrism and co opts the entire ugly crowd and dark energy that’s been driving the Republican party to victory in mid-term and regional elections.
The Republicans created Trump by not standing up to those who questioned Obama’s citizenship and those who suggested he was Muslim (or, for that matter, that there’s anything wrong with being Muslim). They created the opportunity for Trump (and the inevitability of someone like him) when they embraced the teabaggers. They sold their soul (if they ever had one) and now they’re paying the price. From a karmic perspective, I love Trump. There isn’t enough popcorn in the universe to cover this particular train wreck. I’d love him to win the nomination and then for the forces of nature and politics to take over and rip him to shreds, together with the sad excuse for a party that lent him the tattered remnants of its legitimacy.
Trump is like a Pied Piper. He’ll play the tune that resonates with just enough of the GOP base to get the nomination. After that he can change tune to gain new followers and his original ones will keep hearing the old one. Thus, where he ends up, nobody can predict.
Whether he gets it or not, the GOP (and most religions) have to keep selling the same product over and over again because it’s not good enough to sell itself. Trump is the product and once a sale is made, the buyer remains sold. Therefore, for the previous purchasers, the product remains good regardless of how poorly it functions. With them, he can do no wrong. We see the same phenomenon on the DEM side wrt politicians being the product and the fans incapable of tolerating any criticism of the person they’ve put on a pedestal. A serious shortcoming of democracy when an electorate declines to be informed and rational.
Overall, agree that Rubio could cause the most damage because the agenda he’ll be given by his masters will be of a piece. Cruz will act like a little king and unless he links up with a craziest wing in the MIC, will accomplish nothing and be gone in one term. The danger with Trump is that he’s the beginning of a new personality cult and political dynasty.
Yes.
Ian Welsh somehow scrambles together a post about how “Trump’s economic policies will work”. How he does that without any details, I don’t know. At best you have a “35% tariff”. He also says the power of the presidency includes the black box agencies, and to use them to essentially blackmail Congressmen into doing his bidding, if he so chooses.
Can’t tell if Ian is really endorsing these things, or methods, but a lot of his commenters seem to be. Scary shit.
Frankly, I think that was done during Bush’s second.
http://www.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/188936/trump-negative-image.aspx
JANUARY 30, 2016
Trump’s Negative Image
by Frank Newport
Most political and media commentators have at this point installed Donald Trump as the GOP front-runner on the eve of the first actual voting set to begin on Monday in Iowa. But this narrative tends to obscure the fact that Trump is the most unpopular candidate of either party when the entire U.S. population is taken into account — and that he has a higher unfavorable rating than any nominated candidate from either of the two major parties going back to the 1992 election when we began to track favorability using the current format.
At this point (two-week average through Jan. 27), 33% of Americans view Trump favorably and 60% unfavorably. It’s that 60% unfavorable figure that I can focus on here.
Hillary Clinton currently has a 52% unfavorable rating among all Americans, while Jeb Bush is at 45%, Chris Christie 38%, Ted Cruz 37%, Marco Rubio 33%, Bernie Sanders 31% and Ben Carson 30%. Trump’s 60% is clearly well above all of these. Putting his favorable and unfavorable ratings together yields a net favorable of -27 for Trump, far above the -10 for Clinton and for Bush, the next lowest among the major candidates.
I wanted to see how Trump’s unfavorable played out in the context of previous elections, so I went back to look at the unfavorable ratings of the major-party candidates from 1992 through the current election. The bottom line is that Trump now has a higher unfavorable rating than any candidate at any time during all of these previous election cycles, and that conclusion takes into account the fact that unfavorable ratings tend to rise in the heat of a general election campaign as the barbs, negative ads and heightened partisanship are taken to their highest levels…
…
Looking across all of these candidates’ unfavorable ratings outside of election years yields this conclusion: Only one of them, George W. Bush, ever had an unfavorable rating of 60% or higher. For Bush, his unpopularity crested in his final lame-duck year in office, with an unfavorable rating that hit 66% in April 2008.
By comparison, Bill Clinton’s highest unfavorable rating in Gallup’s history of rating him has been 59% in March 2001 after he left office amid criticism of his pardons and issues relating to White House furniture. The highest unfavorable for his wife, Hillary, came in that same March 2001 poll — at 53% — a figure she has matched several times in the current campaign.
One candidate I haven’t mentioned here is Ross Perot. The maverick third-party candidate’s unfavorable rating did reach above 60% at points in both the 1992 and 1996 campaigns, no doubt because neither party had any loyalty toward him. Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992 and 8% in 1996.
Mental health professionals define ‘histrionic disorder’ as ‘a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.’
For diagnosis, the person must exhibit five or more of the following traits: (1) he or she is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the centre of attention; (2) interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behaviour; (3) he or she displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions; (4) he or she consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to themselves; (5) he or she has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail; (6) he or she shows self-dramatization, theatricality, and exaggerated expression of emotion; (7) he or she is suggestible and easily influenced by others; and (8) he or she considers relationships more intimate than they actually are.
Most, if not all, of these characteristics describe
Kaiser Wilhelm IIDonald L. Trump.For the first time, today……I believe we are going to get Clinton vs Trump.
Trump! It’s fucking unbelievable! He’s actually going to do it.
I’m with Atrios. No more fucking around, no more games…whomever is the democratic nominee HAS TO FUCKING WIN. Even if Trump fails…Cruz or Rubio? One is Satan’s doppelgänger, the other a skin suit inflated with elevator farts.
Whomever is the democratic nominee HAS TO WIN.
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Or what? We get the fake Republican instead of the real one?
I’ll add that Trump’s 35% tariff is a lot better for working people than Clinton’s sell out to the multinationals.
Latest, Chris Christie has thrown his weight behind candidate Trump and would be an excellent running-mate for the slot of VP in the Trump administration. The post of Secretary of State has already been claimed by Alaska’s Sarah Palin. Ms Palin had the great advantage that she could observe Russia from her Alaskan hometown of Wasillan. Sarah is armed with her pink AR-15 and knows how to handle firearms. You’ve got to hand it to him, he knows how to select his apprentices …
Palin is definitely stupid enough to think that Trump will appoint her SOS. Trump not so much. He might give her that “faith based initiative” office because it wouldn’t require her to come to work or do anything.
Christie will have to wait until there is a President Trump and he’s most definitely escaped an indictment before Trump would have to pay up.
I’m pretty okay with Trump as the nominee. If he should (shudder) win, he would not be as bad as Crubio: at least, he doesn’t have the scary dominionism, and (so far) is not in the pocket of the Kochs.
Electorally, democrats need to clobber the republicans in order to break the gridlock in Washington. It’s a long shot, but I only see it happening with Trump, who could motivate a lot of new voters to vote against him (specially latinos, maybe putting AZ, GA and TX in play). I would fear a Rubio/Kasich ticket more than I would fear a Trump candidacy.
Btw: Trump/Petraeus? Trump/Schwarznegger?
Petraeus would be a good get. Schwarzenegger isn’t eligible.
When smashing the GOP only leaves the “third way” (the kinder/gentler version of the GOP (and Hillary’s affiliation with “The Family” doesn’t move her far away from the dominionists)) that’s a weaker force in presidential elections than when people are inspired to vote for something/someone.