One other thing about last night’s debate…
…is that I think Ted Cruz showed his substance in terms of content and presidential caliber. It’s not easy to keep one’s dignity up there, but he did. Strong, resolute, consistent.
Whether it will change any minds I haven’t a clue.
And I’d really really like to see a ticket with Cruz for president and Rubio for VP emerge ASAP. It won’t, however. But here’s a suggestion as to how that might work:
The plan is simple: Each candidate publicly pledges to support for president whichever of them has the most delegates to the Republican convention. In return, the winner will make the other one his running mate.
Hmmm, I guess that’s two things.
Hey, I may as well add a third. Trump doesn’t seem to understand much about the federal budget. So, what’s left of Trump’s appeal? His immigration plan is an ever-changing and shifting target, and his knowledge of the budget is hazy. Oh, I guess his schlong is big*. But I’m afraid the American people will be the ones who get schlonged.
[*NOTE: By the way, there is no correlation between schlong size and hand size—or foot size, for that matter. I’m glad we’ve now cleared that up. Oops, I guess that’s four things.]
Neo you are such a font of information, particularly the last “jewel”. I do like the strategy suggested by Professor Randy Barnett which I believe you referenced.
I’m hoping the upcoming closed primaries will turn this thing around. Because like so many have said, “Where are these Trump supporters?” In a large circle of people, I know one. A nice, but anti-social 70 year old carpenter. He holds far-flung religious ideas as well.
Neo:
“So, what’s left of Trump’s appeal?”
The primary core of it – anti-GOP negative appeal cultivated with ressentiment, alienation, and anomie. Affirmative Trump-based appeal has worked off the anti-GOP negative appeal.
Will the strategy blunt Trump’s progress? Some, but not enough to stop it.
Burn away the skin of it, and you’ve got the T-800’s triple-armored hyper-alloy combat chassis.
Eric:
My question was somewhat rhetorical. Maybe entirely rhetorical, because believe me, I know what’s left.
What’s left is process. The content is irrelevant. What’s left is Trump as personality and (as the alt-right says) “tool” and/or “weapon.”
My point is that he may not do any of the things they want him to, except destroy the Party. Even that may not happen.
Interesting times.
None of the other candidates faced dramatic graphics. Trump did.
None of the other candidates faced video of past statements.* Trump did.
Trump was never asked to attack his rivals. On at least three occasions, Trump’s rivals were invited to attack him.
On a number of occasions, Wallace and Kelly tossed off their roles as moderators to actually debate Trump
Kelly also all but declared Trump a liar for his clam that Trump University received an “A” rating from the Better Business Bureau.
It looks like she did not do her homework.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/705611414128500736?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
BuzzFeed then demanded Trump prove he’s not a
communistliar.Imagine if everyone was treated fairly how high trumps numbers would be in the absense of such blatant favoritism and outright establishment hatred of the outsider who is really an outsider.
Want to know why no outsider has been able to get in and do a thing without the Mr Deeds kind of oversight? well, your witnessing it..
and we are all missing the best part:
IF this can happen at all, it means that the left has no real control yet, they only seem to in the absence of a forceful other without a electric fence around them
Some people live in an alternative universe. I guess that is what it takes to defend Trump.
It is hard to believe that a Presidential debate has sunk so low. And, despite Mr Ghost’s disclaimer, one man is responsible for stepping on the slippery slope. Rubio rather belatedly joined the mud fight, but he simply cannot compete with Trump for most gross.
One might observe as a corollary to neo-neocon’s own observation that “[i]t’s not easy to keep one’s dignity up there” that it helps mightily to possess dignity to start with. Or to say in the contraposition, to lack dignity from the jump makes keeping any well nigh impossible, save in the fraudulent presentation of the ersatz.
Trump doesn’t understand much about the federal budget? What are you talking about? He was very specific about what he would do. Fox News throwing up random numbers didn’t tell the whole story. Medicare is not the only gov’t purchaser of drugs…the entire military? the VA? Hello? These are also huge purchasers of medications. Give me those numbers please.
Also, Trump mentioned only 2 places where he would find savings. There are so many more. So the slides were disingenuous ‘gotchas.’ Two whole departments equal $500B? Well, then, let’s count up ALL the departments, shall we? Looks like you could save a lot more.
His tax plan will stimulate businesses (both large and small). U.S. companies have $2.1 trillion overseas. Imagine if that money came back here?
A big problem with a Cruz/Rubio agreement is that they cannot both run through the primaries until the convention without handing the nomination to Trump. Soon the winner-take-all primaries come up on schedule and if the two of them split the vote Trump will win the primaries and all the delegates.
One or the other has to drop out within a few weeks – sooner the better – and take the VP slot now.
Some people have to be nasty to scare others to their side… right oldflyer? you behave like trump then use that behavior? sorry, but i wont vote for a Goldman Sachs banking family who also is CFR… as they are the most liberal globalist organization… you dont get into there being conservative… and birds of a feather sleep together.
orchids wilt.
weeds grow.
bet on weeds not orchids..
Kudzu vs Shenzhen Nongke (220,000 per plant)
who do you think wins in the hothouse?
go ahead… vote for CFR people, and see what you get from a globalist, open borders, socialist, organization
“The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only the doctrinaire and academic thinkers.
Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so the that American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.” – Carrol Quigley Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
funny, arent they that way? what would really upset that apple cart? someone NOT in the game? if that were possible, that person could spend a field day just telling us whats in papers, making them available, etc..
Also, curious why no one is discussing Trump’s very detailed Obamacare replacement plan. I keep hearing he has no plans or details. Maybe the problem is you still think he is a Democrat lying to Republicans that he is conservative.
Anyway, might want to glance at it. Has all the right pieces in it and then some.
Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X
Originally published: 1966
funny how he surmises the left right fight before there was one. he spent two years going through the papers of such groups, and its a very interesting book.
whats funny is that that was the view in the 1960s
what has happened since then, what were these round tables? who was in them, who wasnt?
after all, anyone notice how the laws and actions are coordinated and copied all over the west? who does that? isnt that what you would need for world unification?
now before you say these things are not real, the organizations WERE created… we dont know what they did or do… heck… here is an interesting point from wiki
Lionel Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1920. A year later its sister organisation, the Council on Foreign Relations, was formed in America. One of the founders of the sister organisation was another member of the roundtable groups, Walter Lippmann
The Round Table still exists but its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during the First World War. Today it is largely a Commonwealth ginger group, designed to consider and influence Commonwealth policies. http://www.commonwealthroundtable.co.uk/
do you know your history oldflyer?
at some point the unseemly stinks
and those who dont want to hold their noses, want nothing to do with things they cant find out what they are, do, etc.
and before you say conspiracies are not real, tell me about watergate, tell me about the spies of the manhatten projedt, the birth of the soviet union, obama and his group with ayers, The Dreyfus Affair, MK-ULTRA (which did drug citizens).. and remember when the italian american organizations said there was no italian mob?
this doesnt mean that all of them are something, and it doesnt mean none of them are… it means that you cant just throw it aside and ignore the left machine, the biggest conspiracy to create world socialist government… the EU was made, and its plans were before WWI…
did i mention that quigly was a CFR archivist? for two years…
files of the HUAC which show Tom Lamont, his wife Flora, and his son Corliss as sponsors and financial angels to almost a score of extreme Left organizations, including the Communist Party itself. Among these we need mention only two. One of these was a Communist-front organization, the Trade Union Services, Incorporated, of New York City, which in 1947 published fifteen trade-union papers for various CIO unions. — Carroll Quigley
Tom Lamont had been brought into the Morgan firm, as Straight was several years later, by Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner from 1909. Lamont became a partner in 1910, as Straight did in 1913. Each had a wife who became a patroness of Leftish causes, and two sons, of which the elder was a conventional banker, and the younger was a Left-wing sympathizer and sponsor. In fact, all the evidence would indicate that Tom Lamont was simply Morgan’s apostle to the Left in succession to Straight, a change made necessary by the latter’s premature death in 1918. Both were financial supporters of liberal publications, in Lamont’s case The Saturday Review of Literature, which he supported throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, and the New York Post, which he owned from 1918 to 1924. – – Carroll Quigley
Cruz wife was with morgan stanely, then went to Goldman Sachs, and the CFR. now… i dont know if its the way quigley says or not, he was a lto closer than any of us would ever be… but we dont know (though we DO know how much Goldman Sachs and Obama administration cooperate and the left as well.. )
even quigley is honest about it:
Clearly there were some Communists, even party members, involved (such as Frederick Vanderbilt Field), but it is much less clear that there was any disloyalty to the United States. Furthermore, there was a great deal of intrigue both to help those who agreed with the IPR line and to influence United States government policy in this direction, but there is no evidence of which I am aware of any explicit plot or conspiracy to direct American policy in a direction favorable either to the Soviet Union or to international Communism. Efforts of the radical Right to support their convictions about these last points undoubtedly did great, lasting, and unfair damage to the reputations and interests of many people. – – Carroll Quigley
It must be confessed that the IPR had many of the marks of a fellow-traveler or Communist “captive” organization. But this does not, in any way, mean that the radical Right or the professional ex-Communist version of these events is accurate. For example, Elizabeth Bentley and, above all, Louis Budenz testified before the McCarran Committee on the IPR. The latter identified almost every person associated with the organization as a Communist or “under Communist discipline” by his personal knowledge. In the most famous case, that of Owen Lattimore, Budenz’s emphatic testimony that Lattimore was a Communist and that his orders were issued by small Communist Party conclaves of Earl Browder, Budenz, F. V. Field, and others was totally refuted, not only by the direct contradictory testimony of Browder and Field, but by subsequent evidence from more reliable witnesses and from Budenz himself.
note that it was from these organizations that the LID came, then the SID, and then the SDS, and weathermen… so it does have bearing since the offspring of the weathermen and their race war ideas is in the white house now.
history is interesting… but not Zinns.
So staunch a conservative is Donald Trump, so full of good conservative ideas and love for the American conservative’s view of human governance established in our gloried Revolution and corrective Constitution, and as earnestly motivated to share this love of the preservation of those ideas and ideals, as well as regaling an audience with the future possibilities and manifold benefits that returning to those ideas will yield our fellow citizens, who all along with his fellow conservatives will benefit at unleashing the incalculable creative energies which liberty brings, Trump necessarily blows off the yearly sham-conservative gathering CPAC, as unworthy of his pearls of governing wisdom. That’s the way to show his bona fides best, no doubt: with a hearty “take a hike, ya CPAC fraudsters! Ya’ll get none of my Lincoln love, ya creeps ya, with yer nasty probing questions an’ yer howling Cruz and Rubio supporters! I”m for greener pastures! Great pastures!”
K-E:
Probably because Trump has said such egregiously awful things lately, and with his own mouth, that it supersedes anything on his website about a supposed plan—written usually by someone else, and apparently subject to dramatic change by Donald Trump himself.
K-E – As near as I can tell, total pharmaceutical sales in the US in 2015 were $374 billion. If 80% of those sales are to the federal government, and we can negotiate the price down to $0, then we could save $300 billion each year. Is that your position?
If you haven’t read Ace’s 7:15am review of the debate, treat yourself. I was laughing out loud at his description of Trump.
I would be curious. Is anyone here a veteran of the Democrat race of 2008? Did this same sort of thing happen inside the Democrat party? As a Republican/right-leaning Independent, I figured Hillary was pretty much inevitable and was perplexed by the rise of Obama. He was clearly completely unqualified for the job and had a shady past that not only was never adequately questioned (like it would have been had he been, literally, anyone else), it quickly became the case that you were mocked and ridiculed for daring to question it. Yet, he became some kind of magical blank slate onto which his mesmerized backers projected fantastical ideas of what he was and what he would do.
I was totally puzzled at the time. All I could assume was that millions of people had just elected a completely unqualified person for President because of his skin color, and so they could all brag to each other about how cool they were for electing someone for President because of his skin color. Now I wonder what else was going on behind the Democrat lines.
In Trump’s case, the shady past/present is not a matter of mystery, but rather a case a total denial of easily demonstrable fact by his backers. Otherwise, the only difference deeper than skin color is Trump’s offensive, boorish behavior compared to Obama’s cold attempt at being cool and suave.
Ghost, what a hurtful insult you threw by comparing my behavior to Trump’s. I guess, like your hero, you have a hard time when someone disagrees with you directly. On the other hand, if you really believe that my innocuous offerings sink to the level of Trump’s public behavior, then you should seek a perspective tutor.
Now, why don’t you bestow another 15 or 20 paragraphs of your wisdom upon us?
Trumpsters have their story Oldflyer, and they are sticking to it despite a very long list of the donald’s character flaws and ignorance of Constitutional governance. I suspect they voted for bho twice, because cult identity, the desire to be secure within the mob, makes them feel special, a card carrying member of the ‘avant garde’. I would pity fools, but I will soon have 6 grandchildren, so my ability to give a damn about their folly is busted.
Parker, i never voted for Obama, and was against him way way back as he had the same kind of questionable connections that go back to similar old organizations that some still are connected to…
of course, we dont know those organizations, so the majority saw nothing wrong with anything much. they may have thought it was bad, but now HOW bad. they did not know the pedegree of the name changes over time, and the people who put it goether and why.
the Intercollegiate Socialist Society changed its name to
The League for Industrial Democracy (LID) [with league signaling its socialist/communist]
its youth branch became the SLID…
On January 1, 1960 the SLID changed its name to the Students for a Democratic Society (the SDS)
wiki says:
SDS developed from the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). LID descended from the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, started in 1905. Early in 1960, the SLID changed its name into SDS at the behest of its then acting Director, Aryeh Neier
New Left Notes, which contained a manifesto, “You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows”, a line taken from Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues.
This manifesto had been first presented at the Spring, 1969, SDS National Council Meeting in Austin, Texas. The document had been written by an 11-member committee that included Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn and John Jacobs, and represented the position of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) wing of SDS, most of which later turned into the Weather Underground Organization.
the Weather Underground Organization became the Weathermen, and they started blowing things up…
Ayers was big with this, and got off despite being guilty, and he put up a young obama for president.
so yeah… you can belittle people who know this stuff and think to yourself it doesnt matter. but remember this pedegree when you see obama serving two terms and how it got from A to Z
there is similar lineages going on in the other areas this election as well. though Trump is not part of any of them… but Cruz wife IS…
Sure oldflyer…
LBJ loved to show off his penis. he called it JUMBO and would whip it out and say things.
Vanity Fair today points out an excerpt from a forthcoming history of the White House called The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House by Kate Anderson Brower.
He early became fabled for a Rabelaisian earthiness, urinating in the parking lot of the House Office Building as the urge took him; if a colleague came into a Capitol bathroom as he was finishing at the urinal there, he would sometimes swing around still holding his member, which he liked to call “Jumbo,” hooting once, “Have you ever seen anything as big as this?,” and shaking it in almost a brandishing manner as he began discoursing about some pending legislation.
and from the history
When told that it would be inconvenient to have a jet installed into the shower simply so that water could constantly shoot directly onto his cock, Johnson reportedly invoked the Vietnam War:
The 36th president of the United States reportedly refused to accept staff arguments that outfitting the shower with the demanded features–including one nozzle aimed “directly at the president’s penis”–would require a great deal of plumbing work. “If I can move 10,000 troops in a day, you can certainly fix the bathroom any way I want it,” Johnson told the staff, according to the book.
care to know more about stuff you forgot or never knew? after all, the Cheka—GPU—OGPU, became OGPU and then NKVD and then NKGB and back to NKVD and then to NKGB—MGB which then became MGB, which then became KGB, and now is the FSB
did the name changes and passage of time change it?
cathedrals can take over 200 years to build..
think political movements in time are any less able to do this over time? how old are the free masons? (not claiming anything about them, just that they are old)
how old is the skull and bones and how many presidents came from those ranks?
did you know that when Antonin Scalia he was part of an old hunting club… to quote the news:
According to the Washington Post, the other 35 guests were “high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.”
the 1600s… goes back that far…
so give me a break that your fighting from a position of historical ignorance… and my point is why have someone with ANY of those connections in any form given the past 8 years?
by the way… you guys been calling me name (not all of course) for YEARS… like trump gets name calling… you think that calling me some more names after doing that to me for almost a decade is going to get me to comply with the underhanded shaming game and change my opinion to suit someone who has shown they dont care about me much at all?
maybe that too informs me about people like trump..
and why trump dont care…
and why people side with them, after all the common man has been called nazi, racist, and lots of things they are calling trump… no?
there comes a time when the name calling doesnt work any more.. even less when the reward for compliance is not real… i am not stupid enough to think that if i vote for cruz, or didnt stand up for my own ideas and the people i have personally met, you would like me…
in fact, you dont like me, and you never will
and my changing what i write and think to please you would be a great loss for me, and not even a win for you.
in case you havent noticed, i am the guy who usually points to historical stuff NONE of you bring up or even show your aware of… and when that shows your ignorant of the past, and such, you resort to name calling, talking to others as if i am not there and cant read what you wrote, and so on.
really? you act like a 12 year old girl..
where are the men?
Did LBJ run on his penis? Was his conduct commonly known and approved of by the voters?
Cruz is beefing up his Florida presence — Cruz campaign opens 10 Florida offices.
Works against Romney’s advice for voters to vote for the candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump in a state where there’s a chance of beating him in an overall effort to stop him.
‘Works against Romney’s advice for voters to vote for the candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump in a state where there’s a chance of beating him in an overall effort to stop him.’
Why would Cruz follow that advice? If he doesn’t get enough delegates to win outright, he doesn’t win. He has zero chance in a brokered convention.
The establishment will make a deal with Trump or Rubio or Biden or Putin or some generic Muslim cleric…, whoever; but not Cruz.
However, Cruz might be hoping to make a deal with Rubio…(cue suspense music here)
Ann,
Cruz, like Rubio, is trying to stay within striking distance of Trump (delegate wise). Its called politics. If Trump does not have 1237, it will be a wheel and deal convention. Both Rubio and Cruz are hoping to convince others to release delegates to their side. Its called politics. Cruz knows the GOPe, in a brokered convention, will side with Rubio and all others, except Cruz, have delegates that would submit to the GOPe’s choice of Rubio. The GOPe does not want a Cruz as POTUS. They would perfer, any one but Cruz, and that includes Trump and hrc.
Cruz has a slim chance to go to the convention with 1237. Rubio has no chance at all. Cruz has floated the idea that he is willing to make a pact with Rubio, but has not publically discussed what that would entail. I am skeptical that Rubio would agree to the VP slot. I do not chastise him for seeking the ring. Its called politics.
To win the nomination outright the candidates would need the following percentage of remaining delegates:
Trump: 53.5%
Cruz: 59.1%
Rubio: 66.0%
Kasich: 70.8%
Coupled with the chance of winning any state based on polls and the winner-take-all nature of many remaining races, and Rubio and Kasich have almost 0% chance.
It’s just Cruz now.
Kasich definitely needs to drop out, but Rubio can serve a little purpose as attack dog still.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/ben-carson-announces-campaign-is-suspended-220281
Carson has suspended his campaign.
I would think that ALL of his supporters will flock to Cruz.
Hence, the opening of ten offices in Florida.
If Kasich has ANY shot, it’s to quit NOW before he’s humiliated in Ohio.
Perhaps Trump would put him on the ticket — Ohio being very important — and Kasich being a sop to rationality.
The odds are not great — but they’re the best he has.
Kyndyll – That’s a really interesting comment. All of the tension this year has been because one-half of one party still believes in the Founders’ principles. The other one and a half parties, plus a lot of independents, believe one of two things:
A) Power should be given to the strongest person who will take things from other people and give them to me.
or
B) So many people believe A that I have no choice but to give power to the strongest person who will take the least from me and give it to others.
It’s only the one-half of the Republican Party that’s sticking to the original vision of this country, or to put it another way, they’re the only ones being patriotic. I suspect that more Republicans believe B than A. I suspect that more Democrats believe A, but to be fair, they’ve heard so many stories about the evil Republicans making the rich richer and the poor poorer that they may believe B.
Either way, once you believe A or B, the choice of a candidate is worked out on a balance sheet, gains and losses.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-the-rise-of-the-unprotected-1456448550
Noonan on the protected class and the unprotected class.
Artfldger,
I know you did not vote twice for bho, but thanks for taking the bait. 🙂 You have a YUGE! base of knowledge/facts crammed in your noggin, but IMO you lack filters and the ability to discriminate. Cult leaders (Trump) ain’t the way to a more sane, stable, rule of law society. He is the exact opposite. But the romance is irresistible for some. Ah, to be in Moscow in the heady days of October, 1917.
There’s a joke that Donald Trump acts like a poor person thinks a rich person would act. I once made the comment here that he also acts like what a liberal thinks a conservative would act. Let me also add that he acts like what a smaller man thinks a larger man would act like.
So Trump has repudiated a main plank in his platform (on his own website) before he’s even secured his own party’s nomination?
I wonder what he’ll do if he gains the nomination or the or the presidency.
Does anyone else get the feeling he doesn’t really want to be president but can’t figure out how to get out of it?
Isn’t Florida’s primary winner-take-all? Does Cruz have a chance of winning it? Doesn’t look like it — the latest poll average for him there is only 12% of the votes.
Ann
Florida’s GOP changed the rules to Winner-Takes-All last year.
IIRC, 99 delegates are up for grabs.
Trump has a hefty lead over Rubio in the polls… 45% or some such.
Florida is a closed primary — but folks are easily able to change their party registration late in the game.
Making it a pretty open primary.
Steve D Says:
March 4th, 2016 at 9:08 pm
So Trump has repudiated a main plank in his platform (on his own website) before he’s even secured his own party’s nomination?
&&&&&&
Not so much repudiated — as being both for and against the proposition. Heh.
%%%%%
He’s going to parse his position:
H1b for Silicon Valley — all good. ( MSFT, APPL )
H1b for not so high tech — all bad. ( Disney )
&&&&
I thought that Disney was using Trump’s indenture program — H2 some such.
Does anyone know what those facts are ?
Florida is a closed primary – but folks are easily able to change their party registration late in the game.
Registration change no later than 29 days before the primary itself (which final date has already passed). After which, tough luck: no vote.
So Cruz is doing his best to deliver Florida to Trump.
Oh, well, Trump did say a few months ago that Cruz would be his pick for VP.
That’s rich. I’ve seen it noted that Sen. Marco’s friendly PAC dropped $600k in Texas, with Sen. Marco garnering enough votes there to prevent Cruz from taking the whole of his home state’s delegates, but now Cruz must not contest Sen. Marco’s state? It ain’t funny, but it’s funny.
Let’s instead hope enough Floridians have awoken to the Trump scam to shift their votes to Sen. Cruz in lieu of Sen. Marco, who they don’t like so much, eh?
So all Cruz has to do is add 33 percentage points from his present poll average of 12% to get to Trump’s present average of 45%. Piece of cake.
Goddamn right.
The professional politicos would say it was daft to have Cruz and Rubio on the same ticket: two hispanics, both of whom are southerners, both of the same sex. The professionals strive for a balancing act, keeping in mind that Florida and Ohio are must-win states for a Republican candidate. So Rubio and Cruz could gang up on Trump (and should), but not as President and V-P. Maybe as President and Attorney General or President and Supreme Court Justice. But probably not as President and Vice-president.
Rubio has to beat Trump to get a victory out of Florida. All Cruz has to do is beat Rubio in order to force an endorsement out of him.
F – The usual rules don’t apply to young people. Remember Clinton and Gore. It was part of Clinton’s youthful confidence that he picked a fellow young southern reformer. A balanced ticket would have looked weaker. Similarly, Cruz or Rubio could pick the other and it’d signify energy. (It’d also balance out the ticket nicely, with the confrontational conservative in an easy-win state and an experienced legislator in a purple state.)
Re: Florida, et. al.
Remember that the early primary states had fairly good polling. Many of these later states don’t. The most recent FL polls are over a week old, and don’t include most of the effect from recent Trump beatdowns.
‘Remember that the early primary states had fairly good polling’
“Polls are for dogs.” (a famous quote)
While it’s all too easy to judge Trump supporters by the candidate they follow, Trumpmania’s real appeal goes much deeper than political theater – and it’s worth understanding.
As much as we despise politics via class stratification, that’s where we must begin. For it’s working-class Americans – blue-collar, lacking political power and without friends in high places – who believe they have at last found an ally, an advocate, a voice in the man who proudly claimed to “love the poorly educated.”
In an astute explanation of “Trump’s America,” Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute writes of “the emergence of a new upper class and a new lower class and … the plight of the working class caught in between.” Populating the new upper class are the elites – politicians, professors, cultural icons, business moguls. They shape policy, wield power, and are heard simply by nature of their status.
The new lower class includes those “who have dropped out of some of the most basic institutions of American civic culture, especially work and marriage.” Meanwhile, the working class is left in the middle. “Trumpism,” Murray writes, “is the voice of a beleaguered working class.” And “the central truth of Trumpism as a phenomenon is that the entire American working class has legitimate reasons to be angry at the ruling class.”
We’ve noted that he is the ace of anger affirmation before.
And indeed, it’s the so-called working class – not the ruling class – that has borne the impact of the exportation of millions of manufacturing jobs and the influx of illegal aliens who now hold many working class jobs.
Peggy Noonan describes it as the rift between the “protected” and “unprotected.” She writes, “The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back.”
And if today’s “protected” make up the “ruling class” – those who create the world in which the rest of us live – is it any wonder the “unprotected” have grown disillusioned?
As Claremont Institute Fellow Angelo Codevilla writes, “Ordinary Americans have endured being insulted by the ruling class’s favorite epithets – racist, sexist, etc., and, above all, stupid…. No wonder, then, that millions of Americans lose respect for a ruling class that disrespects them, that they identify with whomever promises some kind of turnabout against that class, and that they care less and less for the integrity of institutions that fail to protect them.”
A look at who actually supported Trump on Super Tuesday bears this out. Residents of economically distressed communities were more likely to vote for Trump than voters in prosperous areas.
Need more convincing? Just listen to what a recent caller told Rush Limbaugh: “It’s kind of like a few callers ago said that us guys are low-informed voters. I mean, just ‘cause we didn’t march out of somewhere with a Harvard degree or whatever, I guess we’re not qualified to vote for the president of the United States. I feel like that’s the whole thing. It’s like we’re not important, yet here we’ve been carrying the country on our back with taxes for years and years and we get no appreciation whatsoever.”
We in our humble shop are hearing the same. A reader recently wrote, “The Patriot Post needs to quit bashing the best chance of defeating Hillary: Donald Trump. Support the guy who’s winning over the American People.”
Another says, “I am tired of the elite running my country into the ground. I served a career defending what used to be the USA, only to see the socialist and RINOs take and trash her.”
It’s for this reason Trump boasts, “I’ve brought in millions and millions of people into the Republican party.” That’s true, but with big caveats. As we’ve also argued, Trump’s supporters are right to be tired of the elite., and they’re asking the right questions.
No matter what we think though, the fact is Trump supporters aren’t necessarily voting for Trump because he’s someone important. Trump supporters are voting for Trump because he says they’re someone important. And they’ve been missing that for far too long.
http://patriotpost.us/articles/41068
Ann at 10:19 pm: So all Cruz has to do is add 33 percentage points from his present poll average of 12% to get to Trump’s present average of 45%. Piece of cake.
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See the responses to your point by SteveD and Parker, with which I agree. Cruz has no chance in a brokered convention so he is trying to deliver a knockout blow to Rubio now while he still has a chance. Cruz also said in response to a question during his speech at CPAC that he thinks if a brokered convention takes the nomination away from Trump after he has the plurality of delegates his supporters will not vote for the GOP candidate delivering the election to Clinton. If Trump gets the nomination constitutional conservatism is screwed anyway. Either way, our only hope is to knock Rubio out now, hence TeamCruz’s increased efforts in Florida.
Granted this is all sheer speculation but we all know Ted Cruz’s intelligence and that he is always thinking several moves ahead. Besides it’s fun to speculate 🙂
I need to add to my comment at Mar 5 1:15 pm, if you read Ted Cruz’s book, he is convinced that the GOP establishment is part of the Washington cartel that is screwing America. Rubio is definitely part of that establishment and they are Cruz’s main opponents at this time.
So the best scenario now seems that Rubio loses big in Florida forcing him to drop out but Kasich wins Ohio to keep their delegates away from Trump. A high stakes plan but that is where we are as of today.
p.s. It will be interesting to see whether Jeb! endorses Rubio. There was a report quoted on Powerline that he is refusing to do that.
Bob_CA:
Your math is wrong. There are currently 33 points separating Cruz and Trump. If, for example, 17% of Trump’s vote went to Cruz, Cruz would beat Trump. There are other ways it could happen, too, in a 3-way race, but most of them involve not only Cruz gaining votes but also Trump losing some. While much of Trump’s support will never leave him, some is more tenuous than that.
Nick,
I had a long answer to your question, but it didn’t go through. The numbers you provided didn’t come with a source. I had sources and numbers that helped put it in perspective.
If Trump is off by $100B, do you still say his idea of negotiating prices is ridiculous? Right now you are arguing numbers rather than the idea of negotiating drug prices saving the government LOADS of money. I’d rather focus on the idea of negotiating at this stage.
Remember the saying by older people of the Jewish persuasion, “Is it good for the Jews?” I have a similar tunnel vision when it comes to elections: “Is he (or she) good for liberty?” Sadly, as the republic speeds along down the road to serfdom, the question is usually: “Is he (or she) better or worse for liberty than the other creep?”
I have my own private gauge, which I call the Bilwick Statist Scale. Imagine a horizontal line, with eleven has marks, from 0 at one far end to 10 at the other side. 0 represents a kind of undiluted libertarian anarchism of the Robert LeFevre variety. 10 represents total tyranny personified by Mao, Hitler, or whoever you want to name as a real-life counterpart to Orwell’s Big Brother. Let’s put blatant State-shtuppers such as Hillary, Bernie and Obama at about 7 or an 8. I’m wondering where Trump supporters would put The Donald on that scale. Would he be closer to 10 than Cruz or Rubio? If so, why should we support him?
K-E – As a conservative, I believe in getting government out of the industry altogether. If government has to be in the health care business, then it should be paying market prices rather than coercing the pharmaceutical industry. The industry is driven by R&D, which not only costs money, but also requires the incentive of future profits. Trump’s proposal isn’t only bad governance, it’s bad economics. It shows that he doesn’t understand either government or business (at least innovative business, which is the source of economic growth).
Also, it matters greatly to me whether the presidential candidate has any understanding of the statements he makes. When he says that we can save $300 billion in a $374 billion industry, I’m not only worried about the policy, I’m worried about his fact that he’s spouting nonsense. Likewise, when the candidate says he’d send soldiers to kill innnocents, then reiterates it the next day, then takes it back the day after that, I can’t relax at the fact that he’s no longer campaigning on war crimes; I can only note that he’s the kind of guy who’d order soldiers to kill innocents one day and recall the troops the next. When he changes his stance on visas mid-debate, I’m not worried about which position is better, I’m worried that he cares so little about the issue that he’d change positions randomly.
Bilwick:
I think if most of them were being honest (which they might not be) they’d say that they only are for liberty when the government is run by the other guy. When it’s run by their guy (or a person they think, rightly or wrongly, is their guy) they’re for strong-arm tactics.
Like their leader, their principles are very mutable and situational.
At least, I think that’s true of a large number. For the others, they’d probably say that Trump might be as bad or worse than the left on liberty but that he might better, and so they will roll the dice.
I think the evidence is that he’d be at least as bad on that score, and probably not much different in a lot of other ways, too.
I don’t think I realized it until right now, but between K-E’s and Bilwick’s comments, I think I understand what people mean when they say “Trump is a good negotiator”. They really do want a strong national leader who can dictate terms to industries. Not on a once-and-done emergency basis, but on a standing basis. A person who dictates. A dictator.
Nick:
Yes, they’re tired of the give-and-take of politics, the hope and disappointment, the compromise and losses. They’re tired of the republic, and they think (or say they think; I’m not sure how many actually believe it) the republic is lost anyway. They want a dictator. Their dictator.
I figure if they want a dictator they could choose better than Trump. He has his own failures and seems to be as much a man of the left as of the right, maybe even more.
A dictator can’t be a man of the “right”, at least within the American sense of the word. Such a person operates above the law, centralizing goods and allocating them out in exchange for favors. He can’t be conservative. You could have an anti-abortion dictator, or an pro-gun dictator (for a short while), but he wouldn’t be a conservative.
Nick:
I agree.
Trump, however, is someone they see as THEIR dictator. A lot of them are not “of the right” either, although the left and the MSM characterizes them that way.
Neo, I was quoting poster Ann at the beginning of my post. Her math is obviously wrong but the main point remains: how to understand Cruz spending campaign money and time in Florida where the odds seem strongly against him. There is my convoluted theory that he wants to lower Rubio’s percentage to force him out of the race. There may be simpler explanations like that he has better poll numbers than are publicly available perhaps due to Carson dropping out. Either way, I do hope that he is successful with either or both objectives, winning or getting Rubio to drop out.
Ann,
Your animus towards Cruz is, well, puzzling. It makes me think you would vote for hrc or Uncle Joe if Cruz ended up the nominee. As far as Cruz acceptiing the VP spot on a Trump ticket??? ROTFL! However, your darling Rubio would be eager for the chance.
Bob_CA
Ted Cruz has been beating expectations.
He wants to keep beating expectations.
He’s wise to fight so as to remain nipping at Trump’s heels.
I can’t see ANY of Kasich’s voters shifting over to Trump.
Kasich is a GOPe kind of fella — that didn’t even impress the GOPe.