Your Trump tidbit for today
Look, I almost did it. Almost stayed away from Trump posts today.
But those cookies…they were in the jar…and I just couldn’t help myself…I reached out…and…and..I found my hand going in…and then…
Thus, this post. But it will be mercifully short. Just a link.
There. Done now.
Regroup.
Start a 12 step support group.
“We admitted we were powerless over Donald Trump. That our political brains had become unmanageable. “
I stopped watching Luntz ages ago because the signal to noise ratio was pretty low. This link inside your link suggests some of the limitations of Luntz’s methodology. “Low class slob” is pretty mild on the Trump insultometer scale.
PatD:
I’m not a Luntz fan.
But “low-class” seems an odd insult for Trump to use. In a way you could say that Trump is a low-class slob with a lot of money (“slob” not in the sartorial or personal hygiene sense). And isn’t he trying to appeal to the common guy, the working stiff?
When I hear Trump, for some reason I often think of the old radio ads of my NY youth: “Money talks, nobody walks.” Those of a certain age from the NY area know what I’m talking about. I looked for a video or audio of the ads with the tagline, and there purports to be one on YouTube but it only has “money talks.”
Saw a story today that Luntz has a connection to Rubio. In fact, it is increasingly obvious that Fox News and all of their reporters, Megyn Kelly, etc. are in the tank for Rubio. The guy placed 3rd in Iowa. They act like he is the 2nd coming. He is 10+ points behind Trump in NH. They talk with barely contained excitement about Rubio’s ‘gains’ in NH.
K-E:
Did you actually, like read the link?
Geesh.
Well, I almost made it through the day without my anti-Trump fix. I think I need that 12 step program.
‘Conspiracies hiding everywhere.’
It’s that vast center conspiracy out to get him again.
Clinton/Trump would make a entertaining team, conspiracies non stop 24/7 up to and for weeks after November 8.
The only thing more amusing than Trump–when he is losing–is the Trump apologists rushing to his defense.
My sense, until lately, was that the media were in the tank for Trump because of his ratings draw. Wife kept telling me that all of the coverage was not favorable; but, my position is that when you give a candidate free air time to spout his message, you are helping that candidate. Trump got a ton of free air time. Sometimes he was challenged, often not.
Lately, I think the whole media crowd has become a little nervous that he might actually win, and that they might be thought complicit. Their tone has changed. I include Limbaugh, Levin and the FNC troupe in that crowd.
I am very skeptical of the Luntz presentation, just as I am of polling. How are his panels chosen for starters? How does the act of broadcasting their views shape what they say? What other external factors influence their opinions? I just don’t know the answers.
I do believe that the GOP friendly media are jumping on the Rubio bandwagon big time.
There is a lot of love for Rubio. Young, smooth, nice smile. What more could you ask for? Resume? Accomplishments? How 20th century.
Oldflyer:
I don’t know if I agree about the media and Rubio. Until now, they didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to him. They are jumping on the Rubio bandwagon only since Iowa, when he unexpectedly did very very well.
For them, it has little to do with qualifications or experience or even a nice smile. Rubio had the same qualifications or lack thereof, and the same smile, before Iowa, but there really wasn’t much hype about him in the MSM. Post-Iowa, he became the hot topic. It’ a story for them. Just as Trump was a big, big story earlier. Iowa took the bloom just a bit off the Trump rose, and the story got a bit old. If Trump does well in NH and Rubio doesn’t come in second, Trump will heat up again for them.
Cruz is one person, however, I don’t think they like to cover except in very negative terms, even if he does well. He won Iowa, but Rubio is the story (and rightly so, I might add, because he was the real surprise). I think they dislike Cruz more than that they like Rubio.
Oldflyer:
Do you actually listen to Limbaugh and Levin? I’m retired and so I listen to both most weekdays. Lumping them in with the RNC is totally disingenuous.
My take on Limbaugh is that he is committed to being non-committal about endorsing anyone during the primaries. He is relentlessly pro-Republican and anti-Marxist Party.
While Levin won’t formally endorse anyone, I get the impression Cruz would be his man as the most conservative, and a fellow Constitutional expert. As I type this, he is tearing into Lindsey Graham for attacking both Cruz and Trump. Even though he says he will support the Republican nominee over whichever Commie the Democrats pick, he’s quite critical of the birther crap and other personal insults Trump beats up Cruz with.
And sorry, Neo, but Levin is still concerned about Rubio’s role in the Gang of 8, which he just now brought up again. The context is the duplicity of Rubio claiming Cruz was for amnesty too because of his proposed “poison pill” amendment, which Levin says would not even have been necessary except for the Gang’s bill, which Rubio was chief whip for with conservatives.
geokstr:
Oh, believe me, there’s plenty to criticize with Rubio. I just don’t find it as bad as a lot of other people do, and I think he has a lot of pluses, too.
My two leading candidates right now are Cruz and Rubio, for different reasons. Both, however, are imperfect, as is everyone. I like quite a few other candidates, too (Christie, Carson, Fiorina), but I just don’t think they’re going to get the nomination, so I have to look at Cruz and Rubio most closely at this point.
I’ve already looked at Trump, and there isn’t one good thing I see in him. Even this “well, he talks about things no one else talks about” doesn’t strike a chord with me, because 98% of the things people think only he is talking about are things the others actually have talked about, just more intelligently. He gets media attention, and that’s about it.
One other thing I can say for Trump is that he’s given me one of the very few political topics on which I can now agree with my liberal friends 🙂 .
geokstr; Did I miss something? When did I lump those two with the RNC?
By the way; maybe you should listen more carefully if you believe the Limbaugh is pro GOP. With friends like him, they would certainly need no enemies.
Limbaugh and Levin are pro-conservative, as they define conservatism. They bash the GOP constantly day for not meeting their standard for conservatism.
Neo, I don’t dispute your take. I just think that expectations are a manufactured metric. What a media gold mine, then, when the contrived conventional wisdom falls apart. Personally, I had no expectations before votes were cast in Iowa, because I did not put stock in the polls.
geokstr:
One thing really really disturbs me about Levin and Trump. I first wrote about it back in August, and then much more recently here.
The gist of it is that in 2011-2012, when Trump was running for a while, Levin excoriated him for a bunch of things he’d said and done. And rightly so; they were awful. Levin had audios and videos and went on and on about that awfulness of Trump. So I was astounded when in the summer of 2015 Levin didn’t mention any of this, and was singing Trump’s praises (not endorsing him, but coming close). And yet Levin knew who Trump was and what he had done; he had already done plenty of research on it and stated it very clearly.
But now? Down the memory hole as though it all hadn’t happened. Then, many months later, he suddenly went negative on Trump because of Trump’s attack on Cruz. But Levin already knew that was exactly the kind of thing Trump would do.
This behavior did not enhance Levin in my eyes.
Neo:
As I said in a prior post, I like Rubio, except that I believe with him as president 20-30 million uneducated invaders will get the right to vote in his first term or shortly thereafter and then it’s all over but the shouting. I agree with Limbaugh’s proposal from a couple years ago of citizenship without the right to vote for 15-25 years (I forget which).
Even that is dicey, because the instant the bill passed, the protests and agitation would begin to shorten that period.
Oldflyer:
I should have been clearer – at bottom, Limbaugh is first and foremost a conservative, but when it comes to the broader conflict between Republicans and Marxists, he has made it clear he’ll support anybody the Republicans nominate. However, as opposed to Levin, I don’t hear him tearing into the RINOs running, he just doesn’t talk about them unless he has to.
geokstr:
That is my worry with Rubio, too, but I am relatively sure it wouldn’t happen quickly, for several reasons. I have listened to him on the subject at length, and I do believe that first he would require securing the border and overhauling the entire legal immigration system to a merit-based rather than family-based one. Only when that was done (and how long would that take? Pretty long, I think) would the “debate” on legalization begin. He would not do it by executive action. As he has described the suggested process, it would involve Congress allowing a legalization process, and then after many years of that (at which point he might not even be president any more) there might be a path to citizenship for some.
It does worry me, though. All else being equal, I prefer Cruz, but all else isn’t equal, and that’s the dilemma. But I don’t think your scenario is what would happen, certainly not in terms of the time frame. But, as I said, it worries me. Not only am I not certain Rubio can be trusted, but there’s Congress, too, somewhat of an unknown at this point.
But I’ll tell you one thing—if a Democrat is elected, it will happen, and soon.
Bobby Jindal has just endorsed Rubio.
There is another important relationship, now very much soured, which Sen. Rubio (I think) would do as much as would Sen. Cruz to correct, should either become chief executive, and that is as to ending the existing hostility of the Obama administration toward the States, then accepting the help and innovation within the States to controlling illegals found here.
Neo:
If I could trust him, then Rubio/Fiorina-Jindal-Walker-Perry would be an electable combination. Ideally, someone with Cruz’ intellect and discipline would be needed to clean the swamp Holder made of the DOJ, at least until they discovered that Ginsberg had really died some months before and he could be nominated to be the new Chief Justice, demoting Roberts. That nomination battle would be a spectacle, resulting in an exponential updating of the verb Borked – Cruzed. His tenure and influence there could last 30 years, far more than two 4 year terms.
Levin could then finish the job at DOJ. Can’t you just hear him at his first address to the Department – “Listen up, you dummies! I’m educating you!
Right wing extremist; left wing extremist.
Trump is a both wing extremist. Ha, not really but I just wanted to say that. It’s true in some ways…
But Cruz stole his binkie in Iowa (Bad!) and without it, Trump is not a pleasant sight.
I don’t think the elites are going to let Cruz win. They’ve come too far and if he becomes president, he might actually delay their endgame and give us time to reverse it.
I prefer Cruz to Rubio, but would vote for either. What bothers me about Cruz is all the email and my friend nonsense. I’m not his friend, I hardly know the guy. But in this he has learned the lessons taught by the Democrats in the last election. Like Romney, he is also given to calculation, but I think he is better at it. On the plus side, I think he would wield a heavier axe against the entrenched bureaucracy than Rubio.
I think Rubio is a better politician — photogenic and slick — but I don’t think he is as smart as Cruz and I fear he is inclined to go along to get along. I also worry about his involvement in the gang of eight, not so much for the plan itself, but that he got suckered by such as Schumer.
Levin supported Cruz from the very beginning. The very beginning.
I donated to Cruz’ Senate campaign based solely on the word of Mark Levin, and I’ve never been disappointed. Best $50 I ever spent.
Levin sees the general corruption in the GOP, and that’s why he supported the outsiders. But he’s not a bomb-throwing anarchist, so his recent anti-Trump stance was based on that and also on the personal attacks against Cruz (which were also untrue, lowbrow and paranoid).
I don’t listen enough to Limbaugh to know what he thinks about this.
Of course Fox is in the tank for Rubio. Their “mysterious” silence about him was out of obeisance for the Bush dynasty. After it became clear that Jeb would lose, they went all in for the fresh, new face.
Fox has been drifting establishment for several years now. The only reliably conservative host I see anymore is Neil Cavuto. Is Hannity even on the air anymore?
Anyway, it was a given they would move to Rubio: a creature of establishment Florida machine politics, and champion of immigration.
@geokstr,
“I agree with Limbaugh’s proposal from a couple years ago of citizenship without the right to vote for 15-25 years (I forget which).”
That would be disastrous, because the challenges wouldn’t come from the legislatures, they would come from the courts. You can easily see the line of attack: there are no “second-class” citizens in America. You either have full rights (if you aren’t a criminal), or you don’t have any.
The left would use that argument, and they would win. BAM! 30 million new, voting Americans.
Matt_SE:
I see no evidence whatsoever for your claim about Bush then Rubio.
Before the campaign season started, I kept hearing “they’re going to push Bush on us, they’ll make it so he’ll win, they always do this” etc. etc. etc.. I never thought it could be successful because it was obvious Bush would be a bad candidate.
Then, when things got going and the slate of candidates solidified, Bush was doing pretty poorly right from the start, and I actually didn’t perceive any pushing of him. He was just one of the group, and almost a figure of ridicule. Everything was Trump Trump Trump, and then the secondary focus was Cruz (neither focus was particularly positive, but by no means all negative, either) For a while, Fiorina had her day in the sun, as did Carson, when each had suddenly risen in the polls.
You yourself write “after it became clear that Jeb would lose, they went all in for the fresh, new face.” That did NOT happen. You’ve got the timing all wrong. It has been clear for many many months (really since the summer, and I think even before) that Bush would lose. And yet they were still quite silent on Rubio. It has only been since the last (non-Trump) debate and the Iowa caucus just a couple of days later that they got interested in Rubio, and that was based on his actual performance in the debate (he did well, without Trump there) and his actual showing in Iowa. The media didn’t make that up; both things were objective occurrences. It was at that point and that point only that Rubio became the story. If they were only pushing him because Bush had fallen behind they should have begun three or four months ago.
Sure, I would imagine the media likes Rubio because they see him as more moderate and more “electable.” Big deal. They’re not all-powerful, and not everything they do is to manipulate an election. Most of what they do is for publicity and ratings.
As for this statement of yours:
Yes, Hannity is still on the air, pretty much as always.
And what conservative host used to be on Fox that you think has left? It’s the same lineup it’s been for ages and ages.
Matt_SE:
Levin supported Cruz, yes, and he also supported Trump and it was that latter that puzzled and disturbed me, because he already knew full well about Trump. Did you read the post of mine from August that I linked to, with the links to the 2011-2012 stuff that Levin had put out there about Trump back then? It was devastating to Trump, and yet Levin didn’t show any of it this time. Why? It seems completely hypocritical to me.
Illegal aliens are criminals. Rewarding criminals with a path towards citizenship goes against the very concept of a society based upon the rule of law. We do not need to reform our immigration laws, we need to enforce them. Anyone claiming to be conservative but favoring a path to citizenship is not a conservative. Any member of the gope that fails to realize a path to citizenship will be the end of gope is not very bright. In Trumpian terms it translates as YUGE stupid losers.
Preach it Parker.
!
Neo:
“I never thought it could be successful because it was obvious Bush would be a bad candidate.”
Regarding the concern over Senator Rubio’s record and how it might be extrapolated to predict his presidential agenda, I reiterate my comment from the post that Neo linked in the quote:
http://neoneocon.com/2014/04/08/jeb-bush-the-candidate-without-a-constiuency/#comment-756678
All I’m saying is go easy on slobs. My mother raised three sons, two slobs and a neat freak. And I’m not the neat freak.
Neo:
Maybe Levin was just reveling in what Trump was saying and how he was saying it in the beginning of this campaign. Positions on immigration Levin himself was down with for a long time, anti-radical Islam, pro-cop and pro-veteran, utter contempt for the media, and a total disregard for PC.
What was not to like? Hell, he was even saying nothing but nice things about Cruz. Could it be the leopard rearranging his spots?
Not really, it turned out, but it took a while to become apparent. The big hints for me were the lack of direct criticism of Hillary, Sanders, Obama or the Democrats in general, and the lack of any defining principles.
And the claws really came out when Carson, then Cruz started to make up ground on him and he reverted back to the real Donald Trump, the liberal, take-no-prisoners opportunist.
geokstr:
Levin was a hypocrite, covering up what he knew about Trump and what he should have known Trump would inevitably do. It wasn’t rocket science. In 2011 Levin made it clear that Trump was completely unqualified and lacked the temperament AND the political positions to be a valid conservative or even GOP candidate. Nothing had changed in 2015 except some blah-blah-blah about immigrants. And yet not a single word from Levin about all the things that had so incensed him in 2011-2012.
Follow those links of mine to what Levin said four years ago.
No, Levin was just wanting to have some Trump action, and a lot of his listeners liked Trump and he was pandering to them. Only when Trump attacked Levin’s real candidate, Cruz, did Levin turn on Trump. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said a word.
And even after Trump attacked Cruz and Levin turned on Trump, I don’t think Levin ever brought up that older stuff Trump has done, things Levin knows full well he did, because Levin discussed it all (and played the tapes) four years ago.
Neo:
Jeff Sessions, who has had a closer look at Rubio on immigration than any of us outsiders, says:
“Sessions said that he does not think Rubio has had a change of heart on immigration since the Gang of 8 fight.”
Neo:
I’ll take your word about Levin back in 2011. I just started listening to him a couple years ago. Ratings is the name of the game in radio, so it’s possible he wanted to get a bump from Trump. (Look I made a poem.)
You are also correct that he hasn’t been rehashing Trump’s past.
@ Neo-neocon,
RE Jeb/Rubio: I think the establishment jumped in too quickly and deeply for Jeb. It’s been obvious that he’d been underperforming for months, though maybe the establishment was more reluctant to withdraw support than you or I would’ve been. After getting burned by their initial eagerness, I think they wanted to see who could plausibly win before shifitng. Rubio needed to have the good performance you mention, but the establishment had their eye on him before that.
Of course, I can’t prove any of that. They don’t circulate opinion polls from the GOP illuminati.
RE Fox News: it’s not that the anchors have changed (i.e. become different people), it’s that their stated opinions have changed. There’s a coloration or bias to what they say and don’t say.
E.g. Cruz wins Iowa, but isn’t given as much on-air discussion time as Trump or Rubio. It seems like the media is just going to ignore him. Including Fox.
This predates the presidential race, and I put the change around the time of Murdoch’s problems in Britain. Maybe before. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but Fox just hasn’t felt “right” for a while.
RE Levin: I’ll admit that I stopped listening religiously about 2 years ago, but at that time I believe Levin started undergoing a change.
I actually got thru to Levin’s program right after the 2012 election, when everyone was down. I told him that our defeat was due to the fecklessness of the GOPe leadership (I then went a bit too far, and Levin kinda brushed me off…mea culpa). I told him that Boehner and McConnell needed to go, at all costs.
I think in 2012 Levin wasn’t ready to go all antiestablishment, but since then he’s seen the betrayal of the base by the establishment and has slowly been shifting. I think he let his anger get the better of him (like so many other Trump supporters), and mentally dismissed his previous Trump criticisms because he thought Trump might bring the change needed.
I think Levin woke up when Trump started attacking Cruz, whom Levin had nearly absolute faith in.
Yes, this was hypocritical but all too human.
Matt_SE:
If the establishment were such kingmakers as people say (I’ve been reading for many many years that the establishment FORCED this or that candidate on the people, which I think is garbage, and I’ve written about that) they would have thrown their weight behind Rubio long ago. He was doing quite well in the polls for the last few months—although Cruz was doing a bit better, it’s been clear for quite some time that it would probably come down to a Trump, Cruz, and Rubio race. I’ve seen that said everywhere. The “establishment” certainly has known it.
No, they are reacting to Iowa and to Rubio’s recent surge, not creating it. They are happy to jump on board, though. And that’s even though Rubio is actually far more conservative than what they wanted.
Matt_SE:
If Levin really thought as you say, then he’s a very poor judge of character, and apparently forgetful as well.
I do not give him a pass on this at all. It’s one of the first things I noticed when Trump’s campaign took off—Levin’s complete hypocrisy. I think it’s because it was good for ratings—his listeners liked Trump, and Levin didn’t want to rile them. Until his principles finally took over when Trump went ballistic on Cruz.
Matt_SE:
I agree that all the media hasn’t been kind to Cruz. They just don’t like him (and I believe I said that in a comment recently, on this thread or some other). Nothing special about Fox in that regard.
Otherwise, nothing much has changed at Fox. And I don’t think the Cruz animus is actually a change. He isn’t just conservative, he’s considered both extreme and personally off-putting, by the entire MSM as far as I can see.
‘Nothing special about Fox in that regard.’
Fox is MSM. There is nothing special about them in any regard.
Cruz terrifies me, which is why I support him.
He is a true believer; the first powerful politician in my adult life (since about Carter’s time) to take me out of my comfort zone. Might he actually make some beneficial and lasting changes; reverse our trajectory even for a short time? Hopefully, we’ll find out.
Rubio at best would go to ground.