Rand acknowledged the non-ideological nature of most businessmen. In Atlas Shrugged the idea that businessmen were not defenders of capitalism was the whole reason why Galt went around picking off one after another by making them aware of their inconsistencies. Also, crony capitalists were well represented in the book. She said that one of her goals in writing it was to defend capitalism, intellectually, because up the that point businessmen were not.

Your reference to Ann Coulter and how her book influenced Trump may be true. But illegal immigration is not the reason why this country is going down. It is but one symptom. Neo has very adequately investigated those reasons on this blog, in great detail. One of the things that bothers me the most about Donald Trump is the fact that he is using immigration as a scapegoat. One of the worst things we can do is to make 20 million people living here a target and excuse for our problems. It’s the type of thing a Hugo Chavez would do.

The long set of exchanges between George and Neo on sizing up Trump appears to neglect a few things, and one fact totally: Trump’s conversion about immigration basically came after reading Ann Coulter’s book “Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hell Hole,” newly published this past summer.

In the book, Coulter researches the Hell out of the issue of immigration. And the biggest song she sang during her book tour was that the government is deliberately ignoring even compiling data about the matter. The state has silently decreed that the people shall not even be informed about the effect of the largest surge of immigration into America in history!

Coulter is a researching writer, par excellence. Time and again, she found that even well regarded scholarship is predicated on data that’s sketchy or merely assumed.

Prog activist groups favoring transnational progressivism and the deletion of all borders, basically took over the federal government and blocked the monitoring of immigration. Thus, presumption, ideology, and conclusory declamations could become our unvetted national “policy.”

But Coulter knew Trump personally, and sent him her book before he had decided to run for President. Trump’s wife said to him (correctly), that he’s “written” more books than he’s read. And that he needs to read more of them. He gets it.

And therefore, the spectacle of an action-oriented businessman, with a showman’s side-life in television, decided to get more informed.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s stances on issues are uneven, shockingly unsystematic, and possibly offensive to the intellect. He is no ideologue in search of consistency (and few businessmen are, contrary to Ayn Rand). Not even George Soros is, if you read his many books, few touch on politics. (Personally, I suspect Soros’ flunkies push the octogenarian in directions he might otherwise think about more independently than career altruists do).

If one does not see Trump as a “work in progress” – or even more typically American, as a man re-making himself (however late in life) – trying to leave his mark through charismatic leadership, then you do not understand this odd man.

I still think Neo is close to the edge of making this mistake.

Another matter raised in Neo’s post, here, is the issue of H1-B Visas: is there a genuine need? An unmet labor shortage that only immigrants can fill?

Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds has chased stories trying to find genuine need because of undersupplies of domestic STEM workers, always finding either a lack of documentation or a lack of evidence supporting the claim. It’s shocking.

Last Spring, Heritage Foundation’s libertarian economist, Stephen Moore, spoke at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At the end of his talk, Moore also vouched for the US Chamber of Commerce HB-1 visa policy line, MORE PLEASE! He asked what business’s number one complaint was? Using the examples of the fracking industry in Pennsylvania and Ohio, he said the lack of qualified applicants to do the work: for 500 jobs, out of 3,000 applicants, 2,000 were unqualified to even apply.

Moore didn’t seem to grasp that these applicant pool numbers are hugely contaminated by the jobless growth problem of the Obama ‘recovery.’ Thus, frustrated workers apply inappropriately, our of need and desperation to improve their incomes and to have full-time jobs again.

Finally, while I don’t support Trumps economic nationalism, I concede the large place in people’s experience of so much neglect of our national weal. And so, while I’m intellectually predisposed to oppose him about this, the extraordinary circumstances of our unachieved recovery require exceptional discretion.

I think George’s embrace of Trump amounts to something Emersonian: I contradict myself? So I contradict myself. And so does Trump, a candidate who is learning as he goes on about the long and arduous, year-long presidential campaign.

Is that so wrong? It is extraordinary that a successful man at business, later in life, puts himself into the prolonged fray to compete in a presidential election. It once wasn’t uncommon, but that was before Big Government became the norm, and politics reigned as a year round profession.

I am energized by Trump’s lighting-rod like efflorescence against the hated, disturbingly biased, and destructive MSM. I am heartened that he has made our unchecked border an important issue – perhaps THE issue – of 2016.

And unlike Neo, I’m convinced that Trump is still the most consequential candidate this cycle – come what may. Polarizing? Certainly. Confounding? Not too much, to me.

And with the last debate, the fact that the establishment ruling class Left hasn’t a clue about flyover country and what the people in 50%(+) America thinks and values is somewhat exposed for them, or some of them.

Their ignorance and neglect of contrary opinion is stunning. Let the Right-takeover of the debates proceed, and maybe, just maybe, they will learn more.

“Just as one example of how a person’s own money can corrupt him, however, look at Trump’s enthusiastic support for Kelo.”

Absolutely, all the anti-Trump points you and others (Ann) have brought up are valid – to a degree. To the degree a businessman takes no oath, swears to uphold nothing but himself, will act always and primarily to his own interests. Trump, however, has foresworn that in his current persona — candidate for the highest public office. Should he lose, should he then take up the role again — businessman – he might well revert to being the self-regarding, freebooting tycoon. I have my doubts but then I have doubts about pretty much everything.

As for Mr Singer, right again — to a degree. There are lines one does not cross however. Personally, if I were pro-Life, I would not accept money from a contributor to NARAL. If I were conservative, I would not accept money from someone contributing to gay marriage advocacy. On existential questions one’s financial backer ought be as much above reproach as Caesar’s wife. Otherwise it just looks bad, not to say desperate.

They are surely being spooled up by HRC’s opposition research platoon.

In the final sprint, his own words will ‘Vegomatic’ his campaign.

You must note that the MSM is quite happy to see Trump in the pole position… Now that they have the oppo research on him.

As for Cruz, they are doing their utmost to white him out of the race.

This goes back to the old argument that somehow Trump is above it all because he’s a multi-billionaire. That discussion has gone on in this blog before several times (here’s an example of such a previous discussion).

Just as one example of how a person’s own money can corrupt him, however, look at Trump’s enthusiastic support for Kelo. That’s something no conservative would ordinarily ever consider condoning, and yet when Trump does it? Crickets from his supposedly conservative supporters.

As for Paul Singer, when has it been the case that every single donor to a campaign is scrutinized as though it’s he/she who’s running? If candidates were held to that standard, only multi-billionaires could run. Seriously. So if that’s your standard, Trump’s definitely your man. No wonder you don’t ordinarily vote; perhaps you’ve been waiting for the right multi-billionaire to come along. To you, every politician except Trump is a whore, because they all must take money from people like Singer if they want to win. So of course you will support Trump no matter what he does or says.

By the way, Singer doesn’t only give to people who endorse his entire agenda, nor does everyone he’s given money to start endorsing all of it, either. For example, he’s very into gay rights and especially gay marriage. And yet he’s a Republican who has given to many Republicans who did not favor that policy. Singer’s two biggest causes are Israel and less government interference in business.

I just ordered 4,000 television sets.

You know where they come from?

South Korea. And yet we defend South Korea for practically nothing. We have 28,000 soldiers. They’re making a fortune. I don’t want to order them from South Korea. I don’t think anybody makes television sets in the United States anymore. I don’t want to order from South Korea. I want to order from here. I talk about it all the time. We don’t make anything anymore.

Gee, if he’d looked a little harder, he’d have found that there is a South Carolina—based company named Element that sells TVs “assembled in America,” at least. Maybe he could have given them his order for those 4,000 sets.

It’s not so much Rubio is a whore; it’s whose whore. Villainous company begets villainous behavior. That’s got to be in the bible somewhere.