A list of organizations severing their relationships with Donald Trump that Fox Business put together at midweek is already badly out of date. After saying that conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, a paraplegic, is “a guy that can’t buy a pair of pants,” we can expect advocates for the disabled to join the shunning choir.
Trump is too racist for NASCAR, too classless to sponsor a beauty pageant, too much of a prick to host Walt Disney Corp. golfers. But he’s now in a dead-heat with Jeb Bush in the contest to be the next presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Do you need any more proof than this to realize that, after years of being subjected to deliberate brain spoilage, the right-wing in this country is hungry for a white nationalist demagogue?
Don’t talk to me of Godwin’s Law. Just look and behold.
No doubt. Trump is a Patrick Buchanan fantasy come true. And Buchanan is a good reference point, as he go goes straight back to the Nixon era and the origins of the Southern Strategy.
Buchanan actually has more polish than Trump.
As big as Trump is in his own mind, (and we know he is BIG) there are people who now ascribe attributes that are bigger still. Think he’s rude? No, just honest! Is he a racist? Naw, he hires Mexicans to work for him! Isn’t he wrong on the economy? Nope, he’s a successful trillionaire who buys and sells whatever and whomever he wants! And what about immigration? Hey, he knows what he’s talking about! Arizona ranchers love him!
So what Trump is doing is collecting the members of the base who feel like the Republicans are wimps, and embracing The Donald, who is larger than life and tells it like it is. They’ve seen him on TV, they know he’s brash, but brash, backed by cash, is good to them.
He’s like Romney with more bucks, two ex-wives, and can bombast his way around his flip-flopping nonsense.
And not a Mormon.
Yes, a real “Christian” like Saint Reagan. Calvin/Knox — wealth accumulation is a sign from god that one is predestined to enter the holy gates.
Did you see a while back that the Texas scool book commission wants to remove Thomas Jefferson from history and replace him with John Calvin as having more influence on American culture?
Well, they do have a point. And if the students learn and remember as much about Calvin as they do Jefferson, they’ll continue to be ignorant of both.
Texas could save a lot of money on textbooks by replacing history books with the Bible, science books with the Bible, and English books with the Bible and adding Exxon/Koch power point presentations as supplements.
Isn’t that the current plan? Or am I thinking about Kansas?
Knox?
If I only said Calvin, that wouldn’t be sufficient to identify Trump’s religious affiliation. Most US protestant denominations, before the so-called great awakening new religions, have their roots in Calvinism.
tell me something I don’t know.
Knox isn’t necessary; there you’re talking Presbyterianism specifically; besides, Calvin was the genius behind the theology (yes, he was brilliant though human and what use ppl make of his theology in later generations, well, you know the caveats on that one)
Evidently he’s RCA not Presbyterian
Mother a Scottish immigrant and he claims to be Presbyterian. Others are probably giving more thought to and making more distinctions about his religion than he has. Similar to Reagan. And I was schooled in variations among Presbyterian congregations (and specifically Reagan’s) by — a Presbyterian minister (of the liberal/social justice wing). And observations of another Presbyterian minister who was well within the Reagan set. One lives very well (upper middle class) and the other often relies on the kindness of friends. I’ll live it to you to conclude which is which.
He attends an RCA [Reformed Church of America] church, Marble Collegiate, according to what I read. Both are Reformed tradition of course. But his thinking is garbled anyway, no point in trying to track it to anything precise.
i.e Calvin, no need to include Knox
Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog has a good one on that “them that has should get” theme today:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-conservative-ethic-punish-losers.html#links
A perfect description:
“…the members of the base who feel like the Republicans are wimps…”
For convenience, let us adopt the following crude approximations:
Total US Presidential electorate = 200M
Dem/Rep = 50% / 50%
Average actual turnout = 100M = 50%
Dem/Rep = 50% / 50%
What this means is that there are 50 million eligible voters who have not voted since (probably) 1980, if ever, because nothing sufficiently sadistic was on offer.
(…alongside, symmetrically, 50 other million who have not voted since (probably) 1980, if ever, because nothing sufficiently ethical was on offer; but these were not the subject of the quote cherry-picked above.)
Glad you added the parenthetical remark. Too often non-voters are cited as the cause of bad politicians rather than the result.
The other thing that is seldom grasped is that the semantic of non-voting is acquiescence in any outcome.
The corollary is that everyone who did not vote voted for the winner.
You remind me of General Motors management. They blame the customers for not buying their cars and design esoteric ad campaigns. Instead of building cars the customers want to buy. So if they buy some Yugo piece of crap or don’t buy anything, it’s because GM hasn’t built anything they want. GM says the buyers are apathetic. GM says “We built it, so you should want to come.” GM is no longer the biggest car manufacturer. The Democratic Party is no longer the dominant party. You believe in the inevitability of demographics. Remember, in the 1920’s +- ten years, millions of Eastern and Southern Europeans came here and became Democrats. Their grandchildren are mostly Republican. You (plural) think that the tide of immigrants will sweep the Democratic Party into power, but what if their grandchildren become Republicans?
Voters are customers and customers are always right. Even when they refuse to buy anything.
Not just cars that people wanted but could also afford. Plenty of people do want Corvettes and Suburbans.
Yes, I thought that was implied. However people who can afford a Lexus or Mercedes can certainly afford a Cadillac. An Impala costs a little more than a Camry, but not prohibitively so.
Going a little afield, but thought you might be interested in this news item from yahoo finace:
Meh, that’s the eternal curse of the leftist. The groups we uplifted stab us in the back and join the oppressor. Whence comes the gratitude from Catholics, Irish, Italians, Cubans, middle and upper-class white women, etc. from giving them a helping hand up from the bottom of society’s ladder? What makes you think it’ll be any different with gays and Latinos?
There’s no point in getting upset about it. Most people don’t really internalize leftism; they only pretend to internalize our values so long as the people higher up on society’s ladder refuse them membership — see dataguy here about his insane jags about immigration and multiculturalism.
The eternal problem of efforts by the left to give people a hand up and once they get theirs, they hear the siren call of the right, we’ll help you keep it and Democrats want to take it all back from you and give it to lazy slobs and new immigrants.
It should be evident from the last few years that leftist politics require that economic inequality be relatively limited. The Democratic heyday of the mid-20th century coincided with very high marginal tax rates, real inheritance taxes, low cost public education through college, and a plethora of well-paying middle class jobs for semi-skilled people.
The robber barons can make inroads in getting the working class to vote for the rich using appeals (veiled and otherwise) to racism, but generally are successful only during poor economic periods (see: 1980). But once they get some power they will of course do everything they can to make themselves richer and the middle class poorer, and – ironically – increase the number of working class people who vote for the rich. We saw it in Wisconsin, where shat upon Walmart workers vote GOP because they have accepted their lot in life and feel the teachers have it too good.
If ever this second gilded age ends – and it will probably take an event even worse than the Great Depression and WW2 to do so – THE key lesson for the leaders of that following age will be to maintain the reasonable social contract for middle class and the wealthy. When JFK cut the top tax rate from 91% to 70% it was the first leak in the dam. Never again.
Those lost business relationships are medals of honor, indications of the extent to which he is being “wrongfully” shunned.
A POTUS candidate for the Sheriff Arpaio set. Old, angry, and white.
Good thing for those angry white bigots packed like sardines in that room that nobody yelled, “Fire.”
He drew 4000-max 5000 people (including protesters who made it inside and presumably a small army of press) and is trying to claim 3 or 4 times as many, so he can say he’s as popular as Sanders.
Then he should rent larger facilities instead of pulling crap out of his ass.
Expect the Convention Center officials to make Trump retract his statement. Otherwise, they’ll have the fire marshall and the P&C insurers on their asses.
Here we go:
Guess he could say, “What does a woman not married to The Donald know?”
Trump’s mouth is accomplishing two things. It spits out the underbelly of the GOP platform in loud, black and white terms. He slams shut all escape hatches. Second, even the deaf ears of Rep base have to acknowledge that Progressives have been right all along, they are Trump.
Why does Trump sound more like a VP candidate? Palinesque with that Cristie flavor.
Who will be the chosen Hindenburg? Since this seems an appropriate application of Godwin’s law to analysis.
i can’t see that at all. The Donald is no one’s second banana.
But if offered, he would damn well say yes. And try to manage the Presidential candidate and the staff.
Some campaigns might be intimidated enough and snowed by the “winner” image to allow that.
They would want him for his slash-and-burn campaigning.
I went to Ipsos to look at the numbers and error margins (they don’t have error margins but “credibility intervals”) and found distinctly different (though not dissimilar) numbers. What’s up with that?
The credibility intervals are pretty huge: 5.2% for Republicans, 8.4% for “independents”, so you have to take the numbers with a pound of salt. But it looks to me as if the story is much more about how GOP mostly can’t stand JEB than how they love Trump.
Trump flew past the Luntz approved language that the MSM can hide behind….it’s not that what he’s saying is WRONG…it is that he does not use language to hide what the GOP is.
Trump is saying out loud what the base have been saying among themselves all along. They no longer have to settle for dogwhistles.
Or they’ve lost the ability to hear the dog whistles.
I don’t know if that’s the case. I think it’s more like the base finally has a choice between candidates who dogwhistle and a candidate who says what they really want to hear, and they’re showing their preference.
Ironically, that’s because the economic pain has become so intense that they must scream. I say ironically, because they still refuse to accept that the pain is from right wing policies (aided and abetted by Clinton and Obama) that they voted for. So they scream about “takers”, “loafers”, and “the Socialist Muslim” and vote again to cut their own throats, and most ironically because “(fill in the blank) is the lesser evil”. Sound familiar?
I could only wish that Trump would become the Republican candidate for President in 2016.
I think he’ll be gone by Labor Day, I really do.
Financial disclosure requirements are going to do him in. Why did Jeb release 30+ years of tax returns? This.
But boy, oh boy, can we look forward to one hell of memorable speech at the Republican Nstional Convention!
Will make us all ask the question, “Speech in 2012 by Clint WHO? Don’t remember that guy at all.”
IMO you have this one right. I don’t think Trump is serious at all, and that’s my primary reason for thinking so.
Unless there’s something really juicy in there like a huge donation to NAMBLA, it’s not going to make a difference.
We saw this with Mitt ‘pay less taxes than a single underemployed mother’ Romney. Hell, Romney got away with getting his money from friggin’ Bain and some fetus disposal company. Not even Romney’s conservative rivals really cared.
Be careful what you wish for. I have been saying for years that the first presidential candidate to say what he or she really means in language to which the average person on the street can relate will win the presidency, barring serious scandal. That’s Trump to a “T.”
However…he is in the casino business, and the casino business is still rotten to the core. That will be his undoing if we’re lucky. Yes, the media are frying him right now, but to his constituency…the frightened, angry white working class and middle class population…that is suddenly a recommendation.
He’s Palin with balls. He won’t wink; he’ll bully.
Watch out.
AG
Maybe, but I doubt that Trump could win the general. I’m fairly certain that Trump is only winning with the 27% of dead-enders. There are enough Republicans who aren’t 120% batshit insane who won’t vote for a Trump, and I think HRC, if the Democratic nominee, wins regardless of who she runs against barring Jesus or Reagan rising from the grave.
Trump as the nominee moves the Republican party to the bring of imploding just as the Whig party did back in the 1850s. I believe it is absolutely necessary for the Republican party to stop existing as a national party before this country can even begin to move in a sane direction.
And I have no specific love for HRC. She just isn’t batshit insane.
It’s politics, n1cholas. Anything can happen and usually does. All of the so-called “sane” RatPub candidates could cancel each other out in the primaries…there are so many of them and they are all almost indistiguishable except they look different…leaving only batshit crazy motherfuckers like Trump and Cruz. Trump could win by bringing the other batshit crazy Americans out of their lean-tos and into the polling places in a frenzy of hatred and rage at the dying of the light. He could win the nomination against Cruz simply on the hispanic-sounding “Cruz” name, and if he does and goes up against HRC…which is looking more and more doubtful to me; I think she’s lost the fire in her belly and she didn’t have that much of it the last time, truth be told…he could surprise everybody. He’s crazy like a fox in some respects.
Did you watch that vid of him talking to some little reporter girl about how bad the Iran deal is? Watch it. Scary good. He’s got physical business domination moves that won’t quit. It looked like he was almost hypnotizing her with his hands. Scary good on that level. He could do the same to a large segment of the American electorate. In a debate setting? The raw meat-eaters would gobble it up.
He is good at what he is doing.
Scary good.
Many Americans like bully fathers. That’s why John Wayne was such a big star. If you disobeyed him he’s put you over his knee and spank you.
Trump too.
Like dat.
Watch.
AG
P.S.Ted Cruz and Donald Trump to meet Wednesday in New York
Like i said…the “crazy” wing. It ain’t so crazy. More like foxes in sheepdip clothing.
Watch.
AG
P.P.S. From MSNBC…or as I call it, Xof News because it’s just Fox News turned upside down and inside out.
Like I said…watch.
AG
He has also said the more or less able-bodied Jonah Goldberg can’t buy a pair of pants. I think he may be his way of arguing that they are insignificant, non-rich people. It’s a pretty strange way of expressing oneself though.
Correct. The “can’t buy a pair of pants” comment was misreported as referring to Krauthammer, when it was really about Jonah Goldberg. I couldn’t make out whether the expression was the equivalent of “doesn’t have two nickels to his name” or was a dig at Goldberg’s fashion sense.
Oh, man, that’s gotta really ruffle Goldberg’s feathers. There’s nothing the Baldricks and Bledsoes and Bob Uwells of the world despite more than being told by the people they’re bootlicking that they’re no higher in status in their eyes than the unwashed masses they’re paid to brainwash.
Speaking of which, you gotta love that National Review link you posted. In the Trending Sidebar:
Magical Comrade Sanders Will Urge His Way To Socialist Glory!
Trump, The Unhappy Warrior, Woos Angry Voters By Telling Them What They Want To Hear.
This Day In Liberal Judicial Activation, July 12th.
Gee, and the Jonah contingent are just so gobsmacked as to why things are getting so out of hand with Trump.
When the bootlickers have the effrontery to criticize their betters, they must be put in their place.
When a current Republican has a choice between a grifter who pretends he won’t indulge their bigotry (Bush) and a grifter who says, in effect, of course I’ll indulge your bigotry, what else have we got left? (Trump)
they will choose the grifter who says what Rush Limbaugh endorses – right now that’s Trump.
Authenticity in bigotry is a key Republican value. That’s why all the grifters try to fake it, or fake hide it, or pretend to be hiding it while sending the dog whistle. But like Cheney, Scalia, and Limbaugh these folks have become so complacently entitled they think they don’t have to hide it anymore.
But they’re wrong.
Well if you look back at the campaigns of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century the bigotry was much more blatant. “Yellow Peril”, “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” and anti-black propaganda so vicious that i won’t repeat it here.
I guess it’s just a gamble then. Trump could win and give the base a massive piece of red meat, or he could get throat-stomped and take the Republican party down with him.
My prerogative is to kill the Republican party so that the right-wing of the Democratic party is the new conservative party, with Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warrens becoming the new left wing party here in the states.
Just a dream, but there it is.