Over at Politico, reporters Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim have assembled a sizable list of comments from Republican senators who are “concerned about the tone” of Donald Trump’s campaign. In particular, these senators are appalled at the way Trump has gone after Judge Gonzalo Curiel. To be sure, some of these senators are primarily worried about how this might impact their reelection efforts, and one of them, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is in charge of the overall efforts of the Republican National Senatorial Committee. Still, it’s encouraging to see that there still remains some kind of racial line that you cannot cross, even in Republican politics.
Of course, it presents a bit of an optical problem that the Senate Republicans are refusing to hold a hearing for President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, on the theory that the people should have the opportunity to decide whether or not Trump should fill the vacancy instead. Trump has said that Mexican Americans and Muslims cannot be impartial judges, which is classic definitional racism and religiously bigotry. It’s hard to defend legally or constitutionally, as this would ordinarily be considered a religious test and a violation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To be precise, if Trump refused to consider Mexican-Americans or Muslims for federal judgeships, that would be against the law. Of course, proving in court that Trump had discriminated would be difficult, but it’s now a safe assumption that he would.
OF COURSE, he would discriminate. this is obvious.
the key is for the Dems to hang this around every GOP Candidate not named Trump.
OT:
GOP unveils Dodd-Frank alternative
By Peter Schroeder – 06/07/16 12:02 AM EDT
A leading House Republican has unveiled the GOP plan to regulate Wall Street and replace the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
A new bill introduced by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) would fundamentally remake the financial regulation landscape, and eradicate major pieces of President Obama’s Wall Street reform law.
Congressional Republicans have considered dozens of smaller bills tweaking the sweeping 2010 law. But Hensarling’s latest proposal marks the broadest, most ambitious effort yet by the GOP to change how Wall Street and Washington interact. Hensarling will detail the bill in remarks delivered to the Economic Club of New York Tuesday morning.
“Simply put, Dodd-Frank has failed. It’s time for a new legislative paradigm in banking and capital markets,” he will say, according to prepared remarks.
Such a plan is a political longshot this Congress, as the White House has repeatedly threatened to veto any changes to Dodd-Frank, and congressional Democrats have shown little interest in revisiting it. But Hensarling’s plan could serve as a blueprint for Republicans after the presidential election, particularly if the party’s nominee, Donald Trump, wins the White House.
But in his speech, Hensarling laid the blame for a lackluster economic recovery squarely at the feet of the new financial rules, which he argued has hamstrung the economy.
“Ending and replacing the mistake of Dodd-Frank is the necessary start if we ever hope to restore real economic growth in America,” he will say.
A bidness Texan. LOL
Not terribly surprising. One of the key components of neoliberal ideas, along with privatization, is elimination of financial regulation. Good for business you know.
as Louie Gohmert!”
A favorite son!
Obama missed an opportunity here. This could have been anticipated, and the optics 100 times worse.
.
Hmm, this glass house cannot throw rocks as you know how I feel about any more Catholic men telling women what their reproductive agency should be.
Garland is Jewish.
Did you find that Rosetta Stone, yet?
Yeah, I should have said Whig, not Marxist. Then you might have connected it to discredited political thought.
Was making general statement. And, to be honest, I CHECKED Garland’s religious affiliation when he was nominated as we both know Dems have been shown to be squishes on the subject, too.
I personally do think judges are a lot more biased than we usually dare think and sometimes that the rules for showing bias should be relaxed but this kind of thing effects all judges (sentencing rates by race!) and for now anyway our judges are humans with human nature. Changing the rules on showing judicial bias might do more harm than good.
I must admit that the overall opposition to Trump is taking a toll.
Here’s my own recent favorite:
I particularly like the last sentence of this article. Trump knows who to fuck with and who to avoid. Bet on it.
A side note to HRC:
You’re looking for a VP?
I got one, right here!!!
It’ll never happen,. of course.
But what fun it would be if it did!!!
AG
Trump has coattails for DEMS! LOL Well, Mr. Vela got some free publicity with that. Maybe will start a trend?
My concerns about Trump are evaporating along with his sangfroid. But it seems he is still on course to utterly destroy the Republican Party as we know it and salt the earth where it stood. It’s a start.
We can only hope.
Patience.
It’s a virtue.
HRC is gonna take a licking, too.
Watch.
The one that gets beaten upon the hardest in the media…most likely Trump…will lose.
Probably.
But not certainly.
1-The Trump voters take every mass media attack on him as a plot by the permanent Government to protect itself. This is not necessarily very far off…if he was a trustworthy servant of the controllers he would fare much better in the media. Attacks on him have so far tended to produce better poll numbers overall, not worse. Of course, now that he is pretty much nominated and he’s (also pretty much) running against a tried and true PermaGov ally, the volume of said attacks has skyrocketed. Prior to this time, the so-called “undecideds” have just been sitting there, taking everything in. Now? Now I believe that they are the ones most easily swayed by mass media (
dis)info. His poll numbers will…at least initially…begin to slump. If there’s some sort of brouhaha at the RatPub convention itself,…a good possibility…they will probably get even worse. But if instead most if not all of the action is on the streets outside of the convention…also a good possibility…then they might start to rise again. (The ever-popular “Those damned radicals” thing, don’tcha know. Compounded by race, of course.)2-Meanwhile, back at the DemRat convention…a lot has to do with:
a-How compliantly and
cooptionally…err, ahhh, I mean cooperatively…Sanders takes his defeat.and
b-What new hells await for HRC after a long and quite nefarious career as a political hustler.
We shall see how it all plays out.
Won’t we.
My own prediction?
The last horse to fall wins the race.
Watch.
AG
AG in this case the media are trying to keep up with the walking talking Schadenfreude that is trump. He is their mana from heaven candidate. His shtick worked well in the GOper primaries when he refused to dog whistle, relying in the open unabashed hate speech to gin up the base.
After the primary season even Mitt knew the etch a sketch was necessary, but trump has no other persona to pretend to be. So his etch a sketch reveals he is just who he seemed to be. Donald J Trump born on third base and angry cause he wasn’t awarded a home run for it.
In this one the media got the candidate they always wanted. One that provided “news worthy” sound bites, in the meme of a third grade playground fight.
His ripping the guts out of the republican party is part and parcel of his normal procedure. Move in take over a situation gain as much advantage as he can only for himself, and leave the disaster for others to clean up.
Like a car crash, the media knows that people cannot help themselves when they see the looming campaign fiasco that trump seems to be turning into. Thus they root for him to continue, for as long as the rest of the republican party cannot stop him. Stopping teh donald will be great for ratings also.
I don’t see how the right glues it all back together this year.
Hillary hatred isn’t enough, because trump keeps pushing so many away from him, she is the only viable alternative, and she has shown she knows how to get under his skin.
If somebody doesn’t break through the trump bubble he lives in, I cannot see him gaining much in the polls. Instead he loses as badly as Bush/Quayle in 1992 did. I also don’t see him stopping himself, it’s been part and parcel of how he conducts business for far too long.
He cannot seem to change himself, and refuses to listen to more knowledgeable people about running a presidential campaign.
If he doesn’t change I see him losing,
Like this;
Clinton 45-48% trump 35-38% Johnson/Weld 12-15%
The general election isn’t yet set; so, seems too early to project percentages for those three parties. Neither Trump nor HRC have officially been nominated, and while that has been a formality for many decades, it’s not cast in concrete. Then the nominees have to select his/her running mate.
Only one ticket is set: Johnson/Weld. Oddly more moderate Republican than libertarian. And uber-libertarian (and most disgusting tech-billionaire) Peter Thiel is all in with Trump. Trump could easily end up down at 15% (or 50% of the 30% that identify as Republicans).
I hope you are right.
But…as you write:
As extremely accurate as that statement is regarding his work style…what happens if he does manage to get elected? Does he take the whole country down?
Is a problem.
AG
AG, I don’t see him getting elected. He has alienated far too many people, both with in people whom the democratic party could be expected to reach, and centrist republicans. When Jeb! Lindsey Graham and Mark Kirk are publicly stating they won’t vote for you before the convention, you have a problem.
A very good tell will be who trump convinces to stand on stage for him and with him. I see the party apparatus moving away from him and using what ever they can to try to save the house, senate and state races. Reince Priebus will still be the face, but the actual operation won’t be doing very much at all if they can.
Hell it took the RNC and major political figures days to get the idiot to STFU about the judge. He over-rules his staff, and fires those who disagree with him, on how his campaign is to be run, except his hasn’t run any campaigns before and they have.
At a time the press should be ginning up the conflict between Hillary and Bernie on this Super Tuesday, it’s spending lots of air-time rehashing the stupidest move trump has made yet.
Going forward unless they can find a way to handle trump like they used to handle the shrub, he loses. I don’t see trump allowing that happening, his ego just seems too large to admit people know things he doesn’t.
A week nor so ago, people were looking at the disunity in the democratic primary, well that one is going to be resolved today. Hillary will have the delegates she needs to make history. Bernie will take a little time, and come around. probably after DC votes, and he has already said, he’ll fight to defeat trump.
With Obama and Bernie fighting for Hillary and against trump, he’ll have a much harder time ahead, and she does know how to get under his skin.
Just like president Obama did during the 2011 White House Correspondence Dinner.
trump HATES Obama, and that works to Obama’s advantage, because of his ability to do both direct comedy and dead pan.
Taking shots from the three of them could very well unhinge trump more than once, which will feed into the already present idea he is unfit for the office.
In this race trump might be his worst enemy, given how he wants to operate.
Clinton is extremely lucky in her opponents.
.
Except for in 2008. ;o)
Heh.
It got her SoS, which ain’t a bad gig if you can hack it.
.
Betcha….tonight HRC lays the whole only white men can be judges at the feet of the GOP. Thing is they know it. Proof. Corker was on Morning Joe practically begging the Donald to stop talking and call him or someone ASAP.
I’m at a point – again – wondering if this is all just some kind of weird show that Trump is engaging in. He has said things about revealing how compromised and messed up govt is, and he seems to have a vendetta against the GOP (and also the Democratic party, too).
Trump is so extremist and seems to be getting more so by the second. I just keep wondering: is it really REAL? I simply cannot imagine someone really being genuine in the views that Trump presents. Given his showmanship and reality show persona, it strikes me a Carney Barker fake. Like he’s totally pushing the envelop just to see how far someone can go.
He’s even spoken about it numerous times, like the time when he said: I could go shoot someone on 5th Ave and my fans would still vote for me. And frankly his batsh*t base would. They’d clap and cheer and beg for more.
He’s also lied consistently about how many people attend his rallies, often by huge huge magnitudes (ie, last week in Sacramento, he said over 15,000 attended, when it was estimated that no more than 2500 were there). It’s clear that while his fan base is very loud and will show up, they are simply not that huge of a segment of the voting populace. Of course, the question is how many GOP voters, who don’t like Trump, would vote for him out of tribal affiliation.
Anyway, just thinking out loud. It’s hard to imagine that even someone with a narcissistic personality disorder that Trump has actually really believes some of this stuff he’s bellowing out. I could be wrong. Venality & bigotry seem to know no bounds.
Interesting point. Could be a show to maximize the confidence among team HRC to insure that she’s nominated.
Doubt the GOP has any tricks up its sleeve. It’s Trump’s show and their choices are limited to supporting him or electing HRC (which IMHO the GOP elites have been fine with for well over a year when they recognized that they didn’t have a viable candidate).
I’m sorry, but there’s no way Trump is playing 11-dimensional chess with this racist nonsense.
He’s just spewing.
Have you noticed, The Donald has not tweeted for the last 16 hours. Nor is he giving a stump speech in one of the primary states today.
You think they knew Jeb? was gonna be a wash that early?
A wash, yes. That early, no. Like partisan Democrats, they were going for another Clinton-Bush final with the full expectation that Jeb would lose. But it would have been a good enough show that the party wouldn’t have splintered into a thousand little pieces.
What other choice did they have? They’ll go with a prior general election loser and they’ll go with a prior #2 loser for the nomination, but not both. So, that eliminates Romney (plus a GOP base hates Mitt). Santorum was a fake #2 in ’12; so, if the GOP elites had rallied around Ricky, even the rubes would have smell a con. McCain is not only too old but running for reelection.
The party hates Cruz, Perry is dumb, Walker not much brighter and looks dumb, Rubio not smart enough considering his inexperience, Christie is crooked, …
Republicans don’t win when they nominate a Senator or a governor with only one term in office. Maybe they should have gone with Huck as the sacrificial lamb. OTOH, not standing in Trump’s way will let the rubes see how much a newbie sucks.
Funny how it all turned out. My picks in order: Kasich, Cruz and then Jeb!. None of them are worth a tinker’s damn. So I thought in the end they would move over to Mittens. Trump is a child, at best.
Hillary was star struck from the beginning. Guess the old guy really wanted to say something and gave her a fright.
Reminds me of JR by William Gaddis. Which is totally unreadable until one gets the rhythm and cadence down and then it’s ludicrous, funny, and all too real. A kid taking down Wall St. and the US military.
Until I saw Jeb speak at the beginning of his campaign, I thought they could muscle him to the nomination. Doubted that before the first debate which is when it seemed undeniable to me that against Trump, all of them were in trouble. Quickly whittling down the field to three or four would have been the best strategy (if the GOP wanted to win), but it had to be the right two or three if they has a chance of stopping Trump. With Cruz and Paul not willing to drop out, there wasn’t a chance that they could get the right two or three standing by early September.
How bad must Democratic gubernatorial candidates be if they lose to such lame, non-entities like Jeb, Kasich, Walker, Perry, Jindal, etc.
HRC had the entire apparatus of the Dem party and oodles of money behind her. The closest we’ve seen to something like that in the past sixty odd years is 2000 for GWB. And even there, the media preferred McCain. But GWB quickly won the nomination over McCain. Both parties are split and quite possibly irrevocably. Has there ever been a time when both presumptive nominees were viewed as unfavorably as HRC and Trump? Bernie may be the oldest of the candidates, but he’s exhibited far more energy than the other senior citizens on offer. They’re all old and at least two of them are living in the twentieth century.
Walker is because Wisconsin is playing catch up to the last 40 years. You have massive-right wing fomentation of hatred against non-blue collar whites in the cities which caught the Wisconsin Dems by surprise. That’s a big part of the reason Walker got smoked, he couldn’t just hide out with friendly media and is incapable of handling it.
The destruction of living wage “blue collar” jobs did come late in the WI. (There’s that PBS documentary that followed two WI families from the ’80s (iirc) through a year or two ago. What struck me is that by the mid-80s WI had yet to experience what settling in CA by the mid-60s. Yet, when it comes to statewide elections, WI has long been a bit schizoid. One Senate seat: LaFollette to McCarthy to Proxmire.
Appreciate that Walker may have ridden a wave in WI, but his Dem opponents were quite lousy.
If by “Walker got smoked,” you’re referring to his brief 2016 GOP primary campaign, not sure I’d describe it that way. Although it was interesting to see that he couldn’t fire up even one cylinder. Plenty of Democrats (the insightful Charles Pierce for one) viewed Walker as a huge threat in the 2016 race; I viewed him as about as threatening as Brownback in ’08 and Pawlenty in ’12.
GOP “elites” have their thinking caps on:
Sort of explains why Trump has the delegates to get the nomination.
LOL. Is that nonsense real or did you just made that up?
it’s like the worst moments of sports talk, when Joe from Hayward is talking about “what if” a trade that some team should make, which no sane general manager would think about for a second.
a couple days ago BooMan expressed the opinion that if @SenJohnMcCain ditched @realDonaldTrump, @SenJohnMcCain would likely lose re-election, and nothing matters to him more than that. So he won’t.
>>Romney-Lieberman
oh please.
Appears to be real.
His proposal last week did a bellyflop because he forgot that no-name, no-bucks third party candidates go nowhere.
I’d ask who spiked the punch bowl with acid again?
LOL He stole my suggestion of Leiberman!
He’s an opportunistic nincompoop with a genius for performance art; this is not only the end of the GOP but he’s probably delivering peak ‘reality TV’ as well. He’s turned the election into daily episodes of “Where’s Your Dignity?” starring every Villager with a media audience. It’s really quite amazing; Pat Paulson led the way, clearly, then Sarah broke the crass ceiling but Trump leaves them both for dead.
Yes, I agree with you. But to what actual END is Trump an opportunistic nincompoop? Is his performance art just to get attention? Just to show how pathetic & easily led the USA political system is? Just to try to make money for himself in this weird process?
There have been comments from others who claim to have “insider knowledge” of Trump (who knows?). They’ve said he entered the race as a lark to show how crappy the GOP was. Which I give him that: he definitely has accomplished that goal.
Then, allegedly, he got more “into” the race… well that’s his domineering, competitive, narcissitic streak taking hold.
But hard’s to imagine – now – that he actually believes that this is the way to be a President.
But who knows? Weird weird weirder weirdest.
Come on — individuals have and do believe in far more ludicrous things than this. And a majority of the population can be convinced of amazingly crazy things.
I think your diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder adequately explains his motivations; he just wants to be admired, but in a yuge way. He really seems quite infantile strategically.
I’ve gone back and forth of how serious Trump is about all the crazy shit he says. Part of me thinks it’s sincere in the moment, because Trump has a long history of demonstrating he has absolutely no impulse control (always a good trait in a president, of course). A part of me also knows he’s got his share of bullshitting/acting. He’s been cultivating this kind of Populist Playboy image for himself since the ’70s.
Yet there are things about him which clearly put him left-of-center (he’s obviously not at all religious, doesn’t give a shit about things like the transgender bathroom issue, supports entitlements, etc). And given that sort of thing, combined with the obviously outrageously racist, misogynistic and bigoted stuff he says explicitly (as opposed to the dog-whistling the GOPers normally engage in), there’s a part of me that thinks this is all Trump deliberately fucking up the GOP and getting an HBO series out of it.
My general view is politicians should be taken at their word, because for all the corruption and triangulation and stuff we all rightly hate and gripe about and organize against, politicians do actually generally move in the direction they say they will.
So I’ll take him at his word instead of projecting my own interpretations on him.
With that in mind, Trump’s a classic poser.
He grew up around construction sites with his scumbag father, learned the lingo without actually putting any calluses on his little party-sausage-sized fingers, and spends his days bloviating.
Those of us from the NYC area and South Florida and other areas full of New Yorkers have all known at least one Donald Trump — loud, kinda flabby rich kid putting on a wannabe-Italian or -Irish “tough guy” mobster bit. Usually about as tough as a bag of mulched grass — and about as smart as the same — and will generally turn into a sniveling little shit once he’s actually faced with someone calling bullshit and offering to give him the ass-beating his racist, buffoonish ass so richly deserves.
If any of you have ever read the blog KissingSuzyKolber, Trump is basically their bit on the stereotypical Giants fan, Mickey from Rockaway.
I thought that he read too many YouTube comments and decided this was how people liked to talk. Then based all his public comments in that format.
As I’ve said before I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump’s main purpose is to produce footage for a new reality show, “The Greatest President”. The entire country are unpaid extras.
It’s occurred to me that Trump might think attacking the judge so blatantly is a good legal strategy for the lawsuit defense: Keep hammering at the attack so egregiously that he (a) forces the judge to recuse himself as no longer able to remain impartial, or (b) can have any judgment against him set aside on appeal on grounds of bias.
It’s a boneheaded strategy, if so it be, but I can see Trump coming up with it and deciding it’s brilliant — besides being fun and satisfying. It’s no secret he thinks he knows better than everyone else, on any and every topic, and isn’t likely to pay attention to his (doubtless aghast) attorneys if they try to stop him.