Ho-hum, more Trump—with a bit of Rand Paul thrown in

The New Neo Posted on by

The latest Trump story is based on Trump’s accusations towards the Cruz camp re Iowa. It’s a leaf out of the usual Trump playbook, and I have to confess I felt weary at the prospect of describing it here and then having a discussion that would be essentially similar to so many that have gone before. But fortunately, I don’t have to do it, I’ll just link to others that have traveled that way before me.

Here’s Leon H. Wolf at RedState:

As far as I can tell, Donald Trump’s grieving process works more or less completely in the reverse order from what you would expect from a rational human being. Immediately after the event, Trump was more or less in acceptance mode, saying he was proud of finishing second, he loved the people of Iowa, he was going to come back and buy a farm there.

Then he went into depression, secluding himself for an uncharacteristically long time from twitter and the media.

Working backwards, he skipped over bargaining and went straight to anger, blaming the media and their unfair treatment of him.

Then this morning, he went into denial mode, basically saying that the Iowa loss never even happened and there should be a do over…

Look at what Trump is doing here. He is complaining about a series of events that are, by any objective measure, ordinary politics, and he is treating them as evidence of “fraud” or that the results of Iowa were somehow completely illegitimate.

If you don’t know what that refers to, it was reports by some of Cruz’s staff at some point during the caucuses that Carson was dropping out of the race. But a story reporting what seemed to be an impending dropout by Carson had been on CNN, and that’s what the staff was picking up on; see this:

Cruz said on “The Mike Gallagher Show” that members of his campaign were “passing on news reports.”

“I don’t make a practice of scapegoating staff members when it’s politically convenient,” Cruz added.

The Texas senator reiterated that he has apologized to Carson for his campaign’s actions. In a Tuesday statement, Cruz said that while sharing news reports is “fair game,” he was sorry his campaign did not send out an update clarifying that Carson would remain in the race. The Cruz campaign circulated a CNN story about Carson’s plans to head to Florida following the Iowa caucus, and the campaign allegedly urged caucusgoers to vote for Cruz instead.

On Wednesday, Cruz told Gallagher that the media was reporting on Carson’s claims and the Cruz campaign’s actions in a “misleading way.”

Cruz added that “The reality hit the reality TV star in Iowa so nobody is talking about him now. So he’s trying to regain some attention on Twitter.”

I believe that in this quip Cruz is essentially correct in the psychological sense. I would go even further: one of the strongest motivations in Trump’s life has always been to be a celebrity and to thrust himself into the public eye. He thinks it’s good for the brand, and the bottom line, but it also seems to be internally driven. For whatever reason, he thrives on it; not all billionaires like the spotlight, but Trump adores it.

Trump has developed attention-getting to a fine art, which has helped him so far in his campaign. At this point—as with his boycott of the last debate, which he now admits may have cost him first place in Iowa—his carping and whining and blaming may (accent on the “may”; predicting that anything Trump does will make him lose any traction with his supporters is a high-risk move) cost him some support because, although it illustrates the fact that “he fights,” it underscores the fact that “he fights like a child.” Whether you believe Ted Cruz or not, there’s little question that such actions, even if done with malice rather than in error, would not invalidate an election and probably had no effect whatsoever on Trump’s figures. In fact, they should have made his number of votes go up, not down, if Carson supporters were indeed moving over to other candidates (no evidence that Carson’s voters did abandon him, by the way, because he did about as expected).

Let’s see, what else? Trump says this about his knowledge of the concept of the Iowa “ground game”:

Donald Trump on Wednesday morning acknowledged that his campaign may have needed a more robust operation in Iowa, noting that he only recently learned what the term “ground game” means.

“I think we could’ve used a better ground game, a term I wasn’t even familiar with. You know, when you hear ”˜ground game,’ you say, ”˜What the hell is that?’ Now I’m familiar with it,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked if his campaign needed better organization to win in Iowa.

“I think in retrospect we should’ve had a better ground game, I would’ve funded a better ground game,” he continued. “But people told me my ground game was fine. And I think by most standards it was.”

One of the big hypes about Donald Trump is that he’s sharp, a really quick learner, and “he hires the best people.” That some of this hype is spread by Trump himself is obvious. It’s also obvious from his remarks above that, in the case of Iowa and the “ground game,” he didn’t know squat, and he didn’t hire the “best people.” I’m not a politician, but even I am at least somewhat familiar with the term “ground game” and what it means, and I know that in a state like Iowa (or New Hampshire, for that matter) it’s important. One of Trump’s many many flaws is arrogance, and that’s not only annoying, it’s dangerous in a chief executive.

Oh, and Rand Paul is out of the race. That decision shows good judgment. Would that some of the other candidates—do you hear me, Jeb?—would follow suit. But I doubt that Jeb will. It makes me sad to say it, but Fiorina (one of my early favorites) needs to go, too, because her campaign failed to take off after an initial surge. Kasich needs to say bye-bye as well. Santorum and Gilmore hardly matter, in or out. Christie and Carson are still doing well enough that I can understand why they might stay, but I don’t think there’s any way either actually has a chance to win, and as time goes on they will seem more and more like spoilers.

Speaking of spoilers—in that aforementioned RedState piece, Leon Wolf opines that, if Trump’s results continue downward, he will run third-party:

Trump is prepping his followers to bolt with him for a third party run if he loses the nomination. In fact, if he loses New Hampshire and South Carolina, he may just do it pre-emptively. I suspect this is a decision he has already made. Now, I know that he will probably not be able to get on the ballot at this late date in many states, but the point will not be to win, it will be to damage the Republican nominee, which has been Trump’s goal from the beginning of this process.

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I actually think Trump is enough of a patriot, and his anger at his fellow-candidates enough of a pose, that he doesn’t want to damage the eventual GOP nominee that badly. That’s unless he’s always been a Hillary stalking horse, which is also possible, but not my leading theory of Trump.

Also, Trump doesn’t like to lose. Campaigning third-party in a losing cause, and spending his own money to do it (even though Trump could afford to spend many many millions, he’s a tightwad), is not really Trump’s style. He doesn’t like to lose at anything, and that dislike runs very very deep.

However, I do think that Trump has gotten hooked on the adulation. He’s always pursued celebrity, and he’s actually been a celebrity for most of his adult life, but never on this scale and in this way. Never with hordes of very vocal and demonstrative acolytes who practically worship him. It must be a very powerful feeling, and he would be loath to lose it. Running third-party would keep it going.

Of course, if Trump wins big in New Hampshire and many other states, there’s nothing to say he couldn’t get the GOP nomination. But it feels less likely than it did before Iowa, and in his gut I think Iowa surprised him. Because one of the many dangerous things about Trump is that, like Obama, he believes his own hype.

[ADDENDUM: CNN reports that Santorum is about to leave the race. I hope we can state that without being accused of fraudulent dirty tricks by Trump, if in fact it turns out to be untrue. But I assume it’s true. It doesn’t matter much, as I said above, because Santorum had so very few voters to begin with.]

Illinois Board of Elections: of course Cruz is a natural-born citizen…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and don’t bother us anymore with this nonsense.

Well, that’s not a direct quote. But here:

The GOP senator has had his presidential bid challenged in recent months by Iowa GOP runner-up Donald Trump, who claimed Cruz’s Canadian birthplace disqualifies him from being president. Two Illinois objectors, Lawrence Joyce and Williams Graham, also agreed that Cruz’s citizenship did not meet guidelines in the Article II of the Constitution. But the board of elections disagreed and cleared Cruz’s name for the March 15 primary.

“The Candidate is a natural born citizen by virtue of being born in Canada to his mother who was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth,” the board said, explaining Cruz met the criteria because he “did not have to take any steps or go through a naturalization process at some point after birth.”…

A ballot commission in New Hampshire also ruled in favor of Cruz in January, but the language in Monday’s decision by the Illinois board took a stronger tone than the previous ruling, warning other skeptics, “Further discussion on this issue is unnecessary.”

Ah, but you will see further discussion—further ignorant and/or stupid and/or mendacious discussion—on various comment threads all over the blogosphere. What you will not see is that lawsuit by Trump to seek a declaratory judgment on it, because he doesn’t have standing and that’s not the proper procedure. The sort of method described here, a citizen of a state challenging a state’s Election Board from putting a candidate’s name on the ballot, is the proper procedure. And it’s not going to work, and Trump knows that. If he doesn’t know it, he’s ignorant and/or stupid (or his lawyers are, which I deeply doubt). If neither of those, that leaves mendacious. Take your pick, or you can have all three.

And no, “the Democrats” can’t do it, either. I already covered much of this in a previous post, but in case you didn’t see it, please take another look.

More extremely unsurprising news on Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

This:

Aetna’s chairman and CEO said Monday that the country’s third-largest health insurer had “serious concerns” about the sustainability of ObamaCare’s marketplaces.

“We continue to have serious concerns about the sustainability of the public exchanges,” Mark Bertolini said on an earnings call Monday, according to prepared remarks.

He said the company remained concerned about “the overall stability of the risk pool.”

Many insurers, including Aetna, have been losing money on the ObamaCare marketplaces, also known as exchanges, in part because of a sicker and more costly mix of enrollees, known as the “risk pool.”

Aetna added that it’s not threatening the company as a whole, since Obamacare is “a small fraction of the company’s business.”

Great ravioli

The New Neo Posted on by

I had some of this ravioli for dinner last night, and some again for breakfast this morning:

ravioli-mushroom

I got it at the supermarket, and it’s by far the best grocery-store ravioli I’ve ever had, tasting like something you’d get it an excellent restaurant.

And that makes me happy. So I wanted to share the love with all of you.

By the way, it’s delicious absolutely plain, although I’m sure sauce would be good, too. Just all-around good.

Post-Iowa musings

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Late last night I heard some pundit on TV saying that Trump voters must have changed their minds after speaking to pollsters, and that Trump needed to find out why.

I disagree.

For one thing, state primary polls in Iowa have a history of inaccuracy. For another, the drop in Trump votes may have had nothing to do with any of his supporters changing their minds; it could just as easily been undecideds, or relatively undecideds, breaking for other candidates.

(2) Rubio won big, although he came in third place. As several commenters here have indicated, he is now the “establishment” candidate. Jeb did not come through for them, and (IMHO) this reflects a real disconnect and lack of judgment for the bigwigs who backed him, because it was always obvious that Jeb would not be a good candidate (for example, I wrote a post on it nearly two years ago).

Today commenter “Steve D” wrote: “Trump is the insider of all insiders from the other side; he’s been bribing politicians all his life. And if Rubio is a insider the establishment is scrapping the bottle of the barrel these days.”

Yes, they are, because they are desperate. Trump may be an insider in terms of buying political influence for himself, but in terms of what his goals would be as president he is a loose cannon to the establishment. They have recently begun to embrace him, however, because they remember that he’s always played ball before, and he keeps talking about the deals he’ll make with the opposition, and so that soothes them. Compared to Cruz—who is a member of the Senate but not really of it—Trump is a team player.

That brings us to Rubio. I’m not sure whether Steve D. meant to put Rubio down when he wrote “bottom of the barrel,” but I don’t think so. I think what he meant (and what I would mean if I said it, anyway), is that Rubio can only be seen as an establishment guy by default, and on immigration (and in comparison to the ultra-non-insider Cruz). Otherwise Rubio was and still is a Tea Party conservative.

As more people drop out of the race, will more endorsements come Rubio’s way? I think so, but only by default. And by the way—although I’m not going to take this up at the moment, because it’s worth a huge post or several posts in and of itself—a lot of commenters have thrown the word “amnesty” around on the previous thread, in relation to Rubio. The word is being used too loosely, and in its loosest definition all the candidates (including Trump) are in favor of it. I’d like to try to define and use it more precisely.

But not today.

(3) The Iowa caucus system is kind of crazy, particularly the way the Democrats do it. Hillary won 6 coin tosses. Hmmm. Sanders can’t ask for a coin toss recount, though. Actually, the odds against winning 6 coin tosses in a row fair and square are not that high.

(4) Big loser: Quinnipiac. They were off—by the biggest margin of all the pollsters in Iowa recently, although the others were also way off—in a poll published just before the caucuses. Quinnipiac had Trump leading Cruz 31 to 24, with Rubio at 17. They found only 3% of voters undecided, but 48% of voters said they might change their minds. I think that high number was the key to the election surprises, and often is with primaries/caucuses.

Quinnipiac also said that if turnout was high it would favor Trump. Well, turnout was mega-high, and it favored Cruz and particularly Rubio.

I never understood the common wisdom that high turnout would favor Trump, which seemed to be based on nothing whatsoever. High turnout could mean a lot of eager Trump voters, or it could be that Rubio and Cruz voters were alarmed by Trump and eager to get out and stop him.

What’s more, the Quinnipiac poll had an unusually large sample for a state poll: 890 likely GOP primary voters. That’s about twice as high as in most state polls. And yet it was way off.

(5) And then there’s—New Hampshire.

Compare to a recent New Hampshire poll by UMass Lowell/7News with 461 likely GOP primary voters, and a margin of error of plus or minus 5 (that’s high; it means up to a 10% error between any two candidates). Trump gets 38%, Cruz 12%, and Rubio 8% (Kasich and Bush are 8% and 9% respectively, with Christie at 6%). But there’s a week till the NH primary, and in question 9 of the poll—whether respondents might change their minds—the answers are quite high: 28% for Trump, 35% for Cruz, 57% for Rubio, 35% for Kasich, 59% for Bush, 66% for Christie. That’s a very fluid situation in New Hampshire.

You may remember that in 2008, an 8% Obama victory was predicted in NH and yet Hillary won it by 3%. That’s an 11% swing. The amount by which Trump is ahead in New Hampshire polls would require an even greater swing, but with those huge “could change mind” numbers, anything is possible.

I keep hearing that New Hampshire is natural Trump country. I see no reason why that should be. It’s the case, however, that it’s not natural Cruz country, unlike Iowa. He’s too openly evangelical and too strictly conservative. But Rubio is a different story, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t appeal to New Hampshirites. He’s got quite a gap to close, however, and Kasich (yes, Kasich), for example, has been concentrating on that state for a long, long time.

Are you ready for Iowa?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a thread for tonight’s festivities.

The results won’t be out till very late, I assume. I’m not going to pay attention till then.

This explains how the caucuses work. It’s pretty interesting, especially the difference between how the Democrats and Republicans run them:

10:24 PM: ABC projects a Donald Trump loss. I, for one, am glad. Rubio is doing rather well, and Cruz is ahead, while Clinton and Sanders are neck and neck.

If you had met a time-traveler, and a year or two ago he had told you that these would be the 2016 results in the Iowa primary, what would you have said?

11:09 PM: O’Malley and Huckabee both have dropped out.

12:20 PM: So, here’s my next question: when will Jeb Bush drop out? Yeah, I know the answer is that it almost certainly won’t happen any time soon. Another question: did Trump hurt himself in Iowa by not debating? It does seem that his absence allowed Rubio to come forward, and Rubio took full advantage of the opportunity.

[Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.]

The woes of the primary system

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve long been troubled by the primary system, which has a number of flaws. Of course, the “smoke-filled room” system that preceded it had a number of other flaws. If it were still in place, people would be railing against the “elites” even more than they are now, and that’s saying something.

The primaries are problematic, however, because:

(a) they lock votes in very early, before people have time to really get to know the candidates, and without the knowledge of how candidates will react to subsequent events that may be very revealing

(b) they allow certain states to disproportionately (and probably prematurely) affect the election by setting up a momentum effect in favor of the candidate of the early states’ choices

(c) they allow opponents of each party to crossover and malignantly attempt to game the other party’s primary choices. It’s hard to see how to correct for that, since we want to be able to vote for either party, and there are bona fide reasons for changing affiliation. But (for example) I’m convinced that a lot of registered Independents in states where Independents can vote either party in the primaries are not really Independents at all.

(d) a candidate supported by a minority can win if there are so many other candidates from another bloc that they split the votes of that bloc. If primaries are meant to reflect the will of the majority of the people, that’s a flaw. In the past, this was a major complaint of conservatives—that it led to the nominations of RINOs over and over, because the conservative vote was split. This seems to have been the case in certain years (for example, I believe it led to McCain’s nomination). This year it looks to be the mechanism by which Trump could win it, unless a significant number of other candidates drop out.

This year, there is actually the possibility of a brokered GOP convention. That’s always a possibility when there are a lot of candidates. But this year it may be a bit more possible (there certainly are a lot more candidates to begin with—at least, a lot more candidates who aren’t obscure):

Because of the nature of the current Republican nomination battle, however, the possibility of an open convention has become less far-fetched than usual. It could happen this time, especially if Donald Trump wins more delegates than any other candidate, but falls short of the required majority. Rival forces would then try to take him down in the full glare of a convention brawl.

The last open GOP convention was held 68 years ago, when New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey won the 1948 nomination on the third ballot. More recently, party elites have united around likely victors ”” based on key primary wins and national poll numbers ”” well before the eventual nominees accumulated delegate majorities. That happened with Mitt Romney in 2012, John McCain in 2008, George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996. Of course, these were all conventional politicians…

Should Trump go to Cleveland with a near majority of delegates ”” let’s say 50 or 60 votes shy of the 1,236 needed to win ”” it’s probable he could wheel-and-deal his way to a majority. But if he’s short by a couple of hundred delegates, all bets are off.

To beat Trump, his adversaries would need to unite around a single alternative…

Please read the whole article.

One thing I’ve felt more and more strongly during the last couple of weeks is that, any way you slice it, we’re if for a very very bumpy ride. The mood of the voters I’ve talked to (granted, not a huge sample, but nevertheless quite a few) on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, is fear.

More on Hillary’s emails

The New Neo Posted on by

The details get worse and worse:

Highly classified Hillary Clinton emails that the intelligence community and State Department recently deemed too damaging to national security to release contain “operational intelligence” ”“ and their presence on the unsecure, personal email system jeopardized “sources, methods and lives,” a U.S. government official who has reviewed the documents told Fox News.

The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record and was limited in discussing the contents because of their highly classified nature, was referring to the 22 “TOP SECRET” emails that the State Department announced Friday it could not release in any form, even with entire sections redacted…

The official emphasized that the “TOP SECRET” documents were sent over an extended period of time — from shortly after the server’s 2009 installation until early 2013 when Clinton stepped down as secretary of state…

On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, one day before the Iowa caucuses, Clinton claimed ignorance on the sensitivity of the materials and stressed that they weren’t marked.

It is hard to recall exactly when we entered looking-glass world, but I think it was sometime early in the Obama administration. But actually, I think it’s just been a long, slow slide that probably began long before that. That’s just when it reached critical mass.

I keep wondering why Clinton did this. Some of you may think the answer is purely, “Because she’s Hillary Clinton and she thought she could.” But that doesn’t really answer the question of “why.” Carelessness coupled with stupidity coupled with arrogance? Her desire to keep her emails away from investigation by Congress? I don’t think Clinton was a mole deliberately setting out to reveal our assets; there would be lots of other ways to do that, should she have wanted to do so, and I don’t see her as a traitor in that active sense.

At any rate, whatever the reason, the results are potentially catastrophic:

CIA and the entire Intelligence Community are in panic mode right now, trying to determine which of our intelligence officers and agents have been compromised by EmailGate. At a minimum, valuable covers have been blown, careers have been ruined, and lives have been put at serious risk. Our spies’ greatest concern now is what’s still in Hillary’s emails that investigators have yet to find.

And what about those 30,000 emails that Ms. Clinton had deleted? “I’ll spend the rest of my career trying to figure out what classified information was in those,” stated an exasperated Pentagon counterintelligence official, “everybody is mad as hell right now.” “The worst part,” the counterspy added,” is that Moscow and Beijing have that information but the Intelligence Community maybe never will.”

One of the most interesting things about the last decade or so is that actions by high public officials that one would have thought (at least, when I was growing up) would have engendered enormous and almost unanimous bipartisan outrage (such as what the IRS did, or this by Hillary) no longer do. It’s become Party Uber Alles, not just for politicians, but for way too many of the American people.

Donald Trump loves the regular folks—unless their homes happen to stand in Trump’s way

The New Neo Posted on by

As a large-scale real estate developer, Trump has sometimes sued in his efforts to use government to condemn houses belonging to people of modest means whose homes—which Trump considers insufficiently attractive—have stood near his big developments and have chosen to exercise their liberty by refusing to sell to him. That’s one of the reasons Trump agrees 100% with the SCOTUS decision in Kelo (decided in 2005): he sees it making it easier for him to use government to compel the sale of a person’s house even against that person’s will.

It’s Trump’s prerogative to approve of Kelo, and it’s certainly understandable that someone in his line of work might have that point of view. He has every right to build his projects, and to try to buy the land of those with adjacent property. But if more people knew about the tactics he has used in trying to get government to force people out of their homes against their will, and his own condescending and often insulting comments about those same people and their modest homes, he might not be seen in such a positive light. With Trump, the legal often seems to segue into the personal.

There are several examples. One occurred in the 1990s, when Trump was trying to buy the home of a 70-ish Atlantic City widow named Vera Coking. He wanted her property not for building his casino, but in order to use the land as a waiting area for limos. She had lived in the same place for three decades, and said no to Trump’s offer to buy. After that, Trump tried to get the city to condemn her property and buy it for a reduced sum, and the court battle took five years:

The decision ended a five-year condemnation dispute that had raised the fundamental question of whether the government could condemn land on behalf of someone else.

In this case, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, a state agency, had sought to seize three properties — an elderly widow’s home, a family-run Italian restaurant and a pawnshop — by invoking the Federal and state constitutions, which allow property to be condemned for “public use.” The authority then planned to turn the properties over to the Trump Organization for additional landscaping and parking, including a waiting area for guest limousines…

Judge Williams also said in his decision that he would have granted the authority’s condemnation applications had there been a firm contract between the authority and Trump Plaza as a guarantee that the seized properties would be used solely for additional parking and new trees.

Lawyers for the property owners suggested that the Trump Organization’s true interest in the properties was to expand its casino and hotel space and that the company would not be interested in acquiring the land with restrictions.

Vera Coking (and several other plaintiffs) won:

Mrs. Coking’s daughter, Branwen Torpey, said…”It feels like a big weight’s been lifted off us. We have had a lot of help from the American people, little people just like us who work and earn what they have.”

Ms. Coking had said earlier that “This is my home. This is my castle.” Trump had disagreed; he had built a different kind of castle with a different kind of aesthetic, and he made it clear that her home didn’t fit into his picture:

Everybody coming into Atlantic City sees that [Coking] property,” Trump continued…”They’re staring at this terrible house instead of staring at beautiful fountains and beautiful other things that would be good.”

In case you were wondering, here’s a photo of Coking’s “terrible” house, with Trump’s casino (and accompanying advertisements) in the background. I’m not sure everyone would agree as to which of the two buildings is more aesthetically pleasing, although of course it’s Trump’s prerogative to design the building as he saw fit:

cokinghouse

Vera Coking wasn’t just playing a game, either; she did want to stay in her house, and lived there until 2010. Trump’s casino, of course, is now defunct, having gone bankrupt—and not because of Vera Coking’s “terrible” home.

Someone running against Trump should make a campaign advertisement out of parts of the following video. In it, Trump demonstrates a remarkable (and perhaps feigned) obtuseness about the difference between eminent domain for public use and for private business (Dana Berliner, seen in the video, was Coking’s lawyer):

The video tells us a quite a bit about Trump and his lack of respect for property rights (except his own). I can assure you that, if Trump ends up being the Republican nominee, the Democrats will not hesitate to use it. They will have a field day with this and other similar actions of Trump’s.

As an example of one of those “similar actions,” much more recently Trump tried to do virtually the same thing to people living near—not on but near—a luxury golf course and resort he was planning in Scotland. So this story had an international flavor. Again, Trump wanted to buy their property, despite their adamant refusal to sell, because they lived near his planned golf course and he felt that they homes would spoil the view for his wealthy clients.

In Scotland as in Atlantic City, Trump again tried to get an agency of local government to condemn their homes and evict them. This time, Trump also let loose with a fusillade of very personal insults toward some of the holdouts themselves, as well as their property, insults that were considerably worse than what he’d said about the home of Vera Coking. Among the insults he leveled against one man in particular in Scotland named Michael Forbes was to say he was “the village idiot” and that he “lives like a pig.”

There are many videos about the incident available on YouTube, nearly all of them taken from a documentary entitled “You’ve Been Trumped” that was made in 2011 (the entire film is available at YouTube, as well). Here is a trailer from the movie; Trump can be seen spouting a few of the insults from 0:18 to 0:23, right after Forbes has spoken. Afterwards I’ve posted a somewhat longer video with more background material (you might want to use the caption function when you watch; the Scottish accents can be hard to understand):

You can be certain that this is the sort of ammunition that Democrats are saving up to use against Trump in the general election if he becomes the nominee. There is a ton more where that came from, all of it with the potential to make him look very bad in the eyes of Independents and Democrats in particular—and, I would add, in the eyes of many conservatives and libertarians as well.

Who are Trump’s supporters, and what do they want?

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP: Even though it’s Sunday and I don’t often blog on Sunday, I have some new posts below for today. I’m bumping this one from yesterday up, though, because I want people to read it if they haven’t already.]

I keep trying to get away from writing about the Trump phenomenon, but it keeps drawing me back in, with a certain morbid fascination.

This was going to be a great year. It would be Obama’s last as president. There was an unusually good field of GOP candidates, with several I liked a fair amount, and an increasingly weak Democratic opponent. And then Trump entered the race.

Prior to that, I was somewhat of a Trump virgin—that is, hadn’t watched his shows, hadn’t read much about him, just really had very little interest in him. Of course, since I wasn’t living under a rock, I knew he’d had a series of wives, some European; and that he was a mega-rich real estate developer from the New York area who was a very colorful and flamboyant personality who liked to be in the limelight and had a successful reality show. He didn’t interest me nor did he particularly offend me, so I not only didn’t have a pre-existent hatred, I didn’t have much of an opinion at all.

If anything, Trump’s blunt style of talking resonated somewhat with me because it was the milieu in which I was raised—New York, that is, not mega-rich real estate developers, although my family even knew a couple of those, less mega than Trump—among people who did not pussyfoot around when they spoke. In fact, they were seldom what you’d call polite or tactful.

Then, as Trump gained more supporters, I started reading about him, listening to him, watching him, and I did so with growing alarm. This happened on two levels. The first was cognitive. What he said seemed poorly thought out, rabble-rousing, and mostly consisted of braggadocio, with very little content or detail other than the assurances that all would be great. It was entertaining, of course, but it just seemed like BS to me (now I’m sounding like a New Yorker). Whenever anyone threatened to gain on Trump in the polls, he attacked them, but in ways that were particularly vicious, childish, and often deceptive.

Video clips of Trump’s previous interviews and speeches and behavior were not the least bit reassuring, either. His immature attacks and his bragging in the past were consistent with his behavior now, although at times a bit more vulgar, but his political points of view were all over the place. In particular, his accusations towards President Bush were as over-the-top as those of any leftist, and he has never apologized for any of it. In fact, I don’t think he’s ever apologized for anything, nor will he.

I could go on and on, but if you’ve read my blog for any length of time you get the idea. Suffice to say that, over time, my revulsion at many of his political positions (some in the past, and some in the present), and his lack of integrity and willingness not just to attack an opponent but to do so viciously and mendaciously, was joined by my growing sense that he was in this for power, and that power is what Trump is really about. And for him, it’s personal—personal power. That seems dangerous.

I’m agnostic on whether Trump really intends to do what he says he wants to do. I see no reason to trust him, but it’s certainly possible. But one thing of which I am fairly sure is that, because it’s power he likes and power he’s after (money and women were just a means to that, although they’re fun also), that he will have no hesitation to ride roughshod over the Constitution, or over your rights if you get in his way. And he’ll try to destroy the reputation of anyone who doesn’t support him or do what he wants.

Which brings me to Part II of this tome: Trump’s followers. I don’t like to use cutesy names for them—Trumpets, Trumpettes, Trumpbots, whatever—because I don’t find them cute or funny. But for want of a better term I’ll call them Trumpers for the sake of brevity in this post.

They are not a unitary group, however, not by any means. They constitute (apparently, if polls are to be believed, and I think they basically are) about a third of those identifying as Republican primary voters. I believe the Trumper cohert is made up of three main segments. The first and probably most numerous group are what I’ll call the sincere Trumpers. They’re afraid of illegal immigration and detest the way our government has enabled it so far, and they’re angry at the GOP, and they trust and like Trump. The second and smaller group are the activists of the right. They’re a lot angrier, and they’re a lot more instrumental and vocal around the internet, as bloggers and commenters. I think they are organized, and they tend to come in groups, although not always. Some might even be paid by Trump; I really have no way to know about that, and it may or may not be so. They use leftist techniques: intimidation, name-calling, lying about other candidates, mockery, and statements of Trump’s inevitable victory with the goal of creating a feeling of crushing defeat and hopelessness in followers of his opponents, and some in the first group follow their lead in this.

What does this second group actually want? What is their endgame? I think they would be pleased if Trump were elected, but that’s not really their ultimate aim. Their real goal is to destroy the Republican Party and remake it in a different image. It’s a win-win proposition for them if they can push Trump onto the GOP. If Trump wins the nomination without winning the presidency, they believe the GOP as we know it has almost certainly been destroyed, so that’s okay. And they believe that if Trump wins the presidency, the GOP as we know it is also destroyed. As I said, win-win.

What do they want to replace the GOP with? I think there are actually many subgroups within this group of Trumper activists on the right, and they don’t necessarily agree on the goals for replacement. One group might sincerely see this as a transition to small government conservatism (although they’d have to look to a post-Trump president for that, because Trump is definitely a big-government guy). One group might not care; they really do just want to let their inner nihilist rip and watch the world burn. Another group may be solely about power itself, and another group may be neo-Nazi.

Then there are the activists of the left, who make up group three of the Trump supporters. I have become more and more convinced that some activists on the left are deeply involved in pro-Trump battles. They want to destroy the GOP, too—in their case, in order to facilitate the triumph of the left—and in Trump they feel that they have found the perfect Trojan horse with which to do it. Whether Trump is in on these leftists’ game I really don’t know; I tend to doubt it. It’s possible Hillary and Bill are, but again, I have no idea and I don’t think so.

I think that members of this third group (which is quite organized) think they can use Trump for their purposes, and their general plan is to help him along to the GOP nomination and then to shaft him once he is nominated and the general election campaign begins. How will they do this? Oh, it’ll be a piece of cake. There are so many awful video clips of Trump, and so many old quotes and articles from his past, that they’ll have an embarrassment of riches from which to choose, and although Trumpers of the right are not dissuaded by his history, the general population is far more likely to be turned off.

Both of these activist groups, right and left, are the Trumpers who lead the way for the other Trumpers, that first group of sincere Trumpers who just want a Trump presidency because they believe in him and his promises to them. For the most part, the activists come up with the memes with which to fight, and then behave in a manner some of the sincere Trumpers emulate:

What are their methods? In other posts, I’ve already described some of the mockery and taunting, but there’s much much more:
(a) saying it’s inevitable that Trump will be nominated; you see again and again the assertion that “it’s already over,” which is designed to induce a feeling of resignation and ennui in supporters of Trump’s opponents
(b) saying that Trump is the only one who…(fights immigration, etc—fill in the blank—even though he’s not the only one)
(c) saying that Trump is the one who will get the most crossover voters: Democrats, black people, etc. (I’ve written about this several times and about how the polls have not supported these contentions so far)
(d) ignoring all the negative Trump lore (videos, articles, etc.) that’s out there as though it’s irrelevant, or justifying it
(e) ad hominem attacks on sources of negative information or opinions on Trump, including the people who post it or say it
(f) the sheer volume of their comments on blogs and discussion boards, and their indefatigability in hammering away on them

I doubt that’s an exhaustive list; that’s just what comes to mind at the moment.

I’ve always been puzzled by Trump supporters who say that Trump’s vast wealth means he’s unlikely to be corrupted by the need to raise money from donors. That’s not the only way to be corrupt. It may be hard to buy Trump, but Trump is the one candidate with nearly unlimited resources to buy others—their support, their silence, their cooperation, their acquiescence for fear of being lied about and smeared. If you think he’s a good guy who means well, and that you can therefore trust him, then I just don’t think you know much about Donald Trump and the way he’s conducted his life (or his politics) and how he’s wielded his power so far, how he’s lied and betrayed the trust of people over and over again. I think you should be very very uncomfortable with facilitating his ascent to the most powerful office in the world.

[ADDENDUM: You might think “hey, this post was long enough, so why an addendum?”

Well, I found it fascinating that—almost as though conjured up—a new commenter and Trump supporter arrived in the comments section of this thread with some approaches I had left out in my non-exhaustive list. So I thought I’d highlight them.

“Ben Johnston” is a Trump supporter, and my guess is that he’s a member of group one: sincere. He’s polite rather than insulting, for example. He’s a nice guy, I think. But he suddenly arrives and in his first comment he says this:

I fear you may be missing the point. This is a rebellion. The powers that be are the money sources behind the governing elite. People see how politicians are corrupted by forces seeking to unify world governance. Look at the latest example of Paul Ryan, as his bank account rises his votes seem inexplicable. There is no difference between republican and democrat. Trump is a hail Mary for a frustrated population continuously disappointing by the results of their votes and fearful of being left to the dogs.

In answer to Ben Johnson and another commenter, I explained here that I know full well it’s a rebellion. I’ve also written about that phenomenon many times before on this blog, too, although as a newcomer I wouldn’t expect Ben Johnston to know that. But in addition, although I don’t actually use the word “rebellion” in this post, I certainly refered to this group’s anger and their desire to destroy the enabling GOP and replace it with a party in a new image. What is that if not rebellion?

But it’s actually another part of that comment of Ben Johnston’s that I find particularly odd:

The powers that be are the money sources behind the governing elite.

My response is: that’s an excellent description of one prominent aspect of Trump’s rather long resume: donating money to get political influence and favors. And Trump has donated a lot of money to extremely non-conservative politicians and causes (the list is long), and not just local people who would benefit his business interests, either.

Ben Johnston goes on to say, in another comment to the post:

Reminds me very much of the status quo reaction to Ronald Regan [sic].

When I saw that, it reminded me that that I’ve seen comments like that from Trumpers all around the blogosphere, over and over. It’s actually one of the standard memes, and I should have listed it in the post along with the rest, because it deserves some attention.

It is true that the “establishment” was against Reagan and it is against Trump. But other than being white males of approximately the same age, and that, I can’t think of much else they have in common. What’s more, there isn’t a single criticism of Trump in my post (or on this blog, as far as I can remember) that resembles the GOP’s criticism of Reagan way back when. The GOP thought Reagan radical because he was too conservative, and they also thought he couldn’t win because of his extreme conservatism. They did not think he was (and here I’m summarizing just a few of the things I have against Trump): an unscrupulous liar who would do anything for a buck, a childish narcissist who strikes out with personal insults (some of them of a vile and mendacious nature) at anyone who doesn’t do what he wants, a NON-conservative, a believer in big government, and a power-mad man who has no respect for the constitution. And that’s not even a complete list.

Plus, of course, another difference was that, by the time he ran for the presidency, Reagan had long been governor of California with a proven record in public office, and he was extremely good at articulating conservative principles and had for the most part walked the walk in addition to talking the talk.

So repeated attempts to link Trump to Reagan because the GOP is against them both—as though that means somehow they are alike in other ways—is nonsense. But the Trumpers must think it’s effective nonsense, because they do it very often.

The third comment of Ben Johnston’s I want to take up is this, which is another meme I’ve seen Trump supporters stating over and over again:

Cruz is religious right and therefore unelectable.

Now, that is actually the sort of thing the GOP used to say about Reagan—not the “too religious” part, but the idea that he was too far to the right to be elected. However, it turns out that in national polls against opponents Hillary, Sanders, or Biden, Cruz has very consistently polled better than Trump does. His unfavorables have been much lower, and there are a lot fewer people who say they would never vote for him. So although no doubt there are people who wouldn’t vote for him for that reason, there is every indication he would be more likely to win a general election than Trump would. I’ve written several posts on that, too, so I won’t go into the details now.

Cruz is the person the Trumpers fear most as a rival of Trump’s, because Cruz actually is the person who has fought the GOP establishment. He is the natural repository for the votes of those who are in rebellion against it, so various memes must be spread to harm him. The three favorites are (a) he’s nasty and unlikable (b) he’s too religious (as BJ wrote); and (c) he’s really a RINO in disguise.]