see HERE
TINFOIL TRUMP
I'm going to fight my heart out to make sure @realDonaldTrump’s toxic stew
of hatred & insecurity never reaches the White House.
.@realDonaldTrump: Your policies are dangerous. Your words are reckless. Your record is embarrassing. And your free ride is over.
I called out @realDonaldTrump on Tuesday. 45 million saw it.
He's so confident about his "counter punch" he waited until Friday night.
Lame.
He's so confident about his "counter punch" he waited until Friday night.
Lame.
"cool with being called an authoritarian."
There's more enthusiasm for @realDonaldTrump among leaders of the KKK
than leaders of the political party he now controls.
than leaders of the political party he now controls.
Elizabeth WarrenVerified account@elizabethforma
Here’s what else is real: @realDonaldTrump has built his campaign on racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
.@realdonaldtrump is a bully who has a single play in his playbook -- offensive lies thrown at anyone who calls him out.
We get it, @realDonaldTrump: When a woman stands up to you, you’re
going to call her a basket case. Hormonal. Ugly.
going to call her a basket case. Hormonal. Ugly.
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A powerful array of the Republican Party’s largest financial backers remains deeply resistant to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy, forming a wall of opposition that could make it exceedingly difficult for him to meet his goal of raising $1 billion before the November election.
Interviews and emails with more than 50 of the Republican Party’s largest donors, or their representatives, revealed a measure of contempt and distrust toward their own party’s nominee that is unheard of in modern presidential politics.
More than a dozen of the party’s most reliable individual contributors and wealthy families indicated that they would not give to or raise money for Mr. Trump. This group has contributed a combined $90 million to conservative candidates and causes in the last three federal elections, mainly to “super PACs” dedicated to electing Republican candidates.
Up to this point, Mr. Trump has embraced the hostility of the Republican establishment, goading the party’s angry base with diatribes against wealthy donors who he claimed controlled politicians. And he has succeeded while defying conventions of presidential campaigning, relying on media attention and large rallies to fire up supporters, and funding his operation with a mix of his own money and small-dollar contributions.
But that formula will be tested as he presents himself to a far larger audience of voters. Mr. Trump has turned to the task of winning over elites he once attacked, with some initial success. And he has said he hopes to raise $1 billion, an enormous task given that he named a finance chairman and started scheduling fund-raisers only this month.
Among the party’s biggest financiers disavowing Mr. Trump are Paul E. Singer, a New York investor who has spent at least $28 million for national Republicans since the 2012 election, and Joe Ricketts, the TD Ameritrade founder who with his wife Marlene has spent nearly $30 million over the same period of time, as well as the hedge fund managers William Oberndorf and Seth Klarman, and the Florida hospital executive Mike Fernandez.
“If it is Trump vs. Clinton,” Mr. Oberndorf said, “I will be voting for Hillary.”
The rejection of Mr. Trump among some of the party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers reflects several strains of hostility to his campaign. Donors cited his fickleness on matters of policy and what they saw as an ad hoc populist platform focused on trade protectionism and immigration. Several mentioned Mr. Trump’s own fortune, suggesting that if he was as wealthy as he claimed, then he should not need their assistance.
Among the more than 50 donors contacted, only nine have said unambiguously that they will contribute to Mr. Trump. They include Sheldon G. Adelson, the casino billionaire; the energy executive T. Boone Pickens; Foster Friess, a wealthy mutual fund investor; and Richard H. Roberts, a pharmaceutical executive. Mr. Friess wrote in an email that Mr. Trump deserved credit for inspiring “truckers, farmers, welders, hospitality workers — the people who really make our country function.”
/.../
Some major donors have not explicitly closed the door on helping Mr. Trump, but have set a high bar for him to earn their support, demanding an almost complete makeover of his candidacy and a repudiation of his own inflammatory statements.
“Until we have a better reason to embrace and support the top of the ticket, and see an agenda that is truly an opportunity agenda, then we have lots of other options in which to invest and spend our time helping,” said Betsy DeVos, a Michigan Republican whose family has given nearly $9.5 million over the last three elections to party causes and candidates.
But others simply believe Mr. Trump is unfit to serve in the Oval Office. Michael K. Vlock, a Connecticut investor who has given nearly $5 million to Republicans at the federal level since 2014, said he considered Mr. Trump a dangerous person.
“He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard,” Mr. Vlock said.
Mr. Vlock said he might give to Hillary Clinton instead, describing her as “the devil we know.”
“I really believe our republic will survive Hillary,” he said.
At a dinner of the Manhattan Institute in New York earlier this month, Bruce Kovner, a New York-based investor who has given $3.1 million to national Republicans in recent years, argued to a collection of influential conservatives that Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton were both unacceptable choices.
“When I talk to my colleagues and friends in similar positions, they have the same degree of discomfort,” Mr. Kovner said in an interview.
Unless Mr. Trump can win over more benefactors, he is likely to become the first Republican presidential nominee in decades to be heavily outspent by his Democratic opponent, and may find it difficult to pay for both the voter-turnout operations and the paid advertising campaigns that are typically required in a general election.
Both President Obama and Mitt Romney raised over $1 billion in 2012, and Mrs. Clinton is expected to exceed that figure easily.
Charles G. and David H. Koch, the country’s two most prolific conservative donors, are not expected to back Mr. Trump, and their advisers have been scathing in private assessments of Mr. Trump’s candidacy and his policy agenda.
The Kochs, who command a vast network of conservative donors, have scheduled a conference of their allies in Colorado in late July, where much of their 2016 spending may be determined.
Graphic: Where Trump Breaks With the Republican Party
A spokesman for the Kochs, James Davis, said they were chiefly focused on helping Republicans retain control of Congress, and many of their allies, along with other Republican givers, indicated in interviews that they were focused exclusively on the same goal.
Even among the handful of big donors Mr. Trump has won over, doubts persist about both his abilities as a candidate and the political apparatus supporting him.
Mr. Adelson, the most important donor who has endorsed Mr. Trump, has indicated that he will cut big checks to aid his campaign only if there is a credible advocacy group set up for that purpose.
But Mr. Trump still has no sanctioned “super PAC” able to raise unlimited sums to support his campaign. A gathering next month at Mr. Pickens’s Texas ranch that was to be sponsored by one of the pro-Trump groups, Great America PAC, has been called off because Mr. Pickens was not sure he was hosting Mr. Trump’s preferred super PAC.
At a Republican Governors Association donor retreat last week in New Mexico, there was a debate on the sidelines about whether to support Mr. Trump. Mr. Friess argued that the Supreme Court vacancy made it imperative to rally around Mr. Trump. But Mr. Friess acknowledged in an email that enthusiasm for Mr. Trump was limited among his fellow major donors. If some agreed there was “no sensible choice other than to rally around Trump,” Mr. Friess said, many contributors viewed that prospect with “the same enthusiasm as a root canal.”
Walter Buckley, the founder of a Pennsylvania financial management company, said he decided to support Mr. Trump after Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey endorsed him. Predicting that Mr. Trump would shake up Washington, Mr. Buckley, said, “This political system needs a shaking like it’s probably not had in 100 years.”
But Mr. Buckley, who said he would be willing to contribute to the Trump campaign or to a super PAC supporting him, said he remained upset about Mr. Trump’s mockery of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, for having been captured in Vietnam.
“I don’t think anything that anybody’s ever said on the political front has bothered me more than that,” Mr. Buckley said.
Some comments:
nkda2000
Fort Worth, TX 1 day ago
Trump grovelling for Billions of Dollars from the Donor class is the ultimate in hypocrisy. This brazen request for money should give all his supporters pause about Trump the man.
Trump spent the last 10 months stating he was self funded and NOT beholden to the special interest and lobbyists. Now he pivots 180 degrees and wants this same scorned group to pony over a Billion Dollars.
Well, those donors are going to want something for their money. For example, I'm sure Sheldon Adelson is looking for Presidential protection for any of his casino irregularities in the US and overseas.
This is one of the first Presidential tests for Donald Trump and he has failed it miserably. Trump should show the voters he means what he has said.
Trump should Put Up or Shut Up. Trump said he cannot be bought.
Prove it Mr. Trump. Stop asking for any donations like all the other politicians. Show the world you are truly a Billionaire and self fund your entire Presidential run.
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https://electionbettingodds.com/WIN_chart_maxim_lott_john_stossel.html
Trump flip-flops on Libya, Gaddafi
Donald Trump says it was a mistake for the US to intervene in toppling Gaddafi but in 2011 he called for military action to do just that.
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TODAY: 'I Don't Want To Have Guns In Classrooms'...
JANUARY: 'I Will Get Rid Of Gun-Free Zones On Schools'...
JANUARY: 'I Will Get Rid Of Gun-Free Zones On Schools'...
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Trump: " he would like me to visit 10 Downing Street. They put out that invitation about two days ago. "
David Cameron's office denies Trump invite
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How Badly Will Trump Damage the Republican Party?
It could make Goldwater look like a hiccup.
Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Several weeks ago, the Republican Party seemed on the verge of splintering into pro- and anti-Trump factions. A contested convention loomed in Cleveland, and a third-party challenge seemed plausible. Times have changed. Trump not only dispatched his remaining rivals with ease, but also consolidated a giant chunk of the party around his candidacy with remarkable speed. How did it happen?
ISAAC CHOTINER
To analyze the Trump takeover, and the future of the Republican Party regardless of what happens in November, I spoke by phone with Geoffrey Kabaservice, an expert on the GOP and the author of Rule And Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party. We discussed the differences between Trump and Barry Goldwater, how racial appeals work on the electorate, and whether the GOP establishment wants Trump to lose. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
Isaac Chotiner: Have you been surprised by how quickly much of the Republican establishment lined up behind Trump?
Geoffrey Kabaservice: Not really, to be honest. There used to be an old saying that when it came to the party nominee, “Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line.” Things haven’t changed as much as people think they have. I think the Republican leadership understands that division is very bad for the party. They have enough to contend with, without third-party efforts and contested conventions and things of that sort.
Will it only be a matter of time before Paul Ryan endorses?
I think he will eventually endorse.
How has Trump’s takeover of the party changed the way you think about the GOP, assuming you did not predict this, because nobody did?
Yeah, I certainly was not Nostradamus. On the other hand, there are some parallels to the party’s history. The parallel a lot of people have been mentioning is Barry Goldwater in 1964. Goldwater’s seizure of the nomination was as unexpected back in those days as Trump’s was this year. Part of the reason is that Goldwater’s conservatism was not seen as the dominant strain in the party. It frankly had seemed to be an isolated or perhaps even marginal aspect of Republicanism.
I think you are right that Trump is as ideologically surprising as Goldwater, but he seems more surprising in terms of personality and background. Goldwater was a senator; Trump’s personality seems more shocking.
Yes and no. Think back to 1964.
I can’t think back that far, but go on.
Yes, of course, well, neither of us can. Just as Goldwater was poised to win the nomination after he defeated Nelson Rockefeller in the California primary, he voted against the Civil Rights Act. In so doing, he really took away the glory the party deserved for supporting the act. Republicans had voted for it in greater numbers than Democrats had. Goldwater, having done that, given that he was the party’s presumptive nominee, really threatened to change the identity of the party. And that was in some ways how it played out. Although Eisenhower had received something like 40 percent of the black vote in 1956, and even Richard Nixon had received a third in 1960, with Goldwater it plummeted to 4 to 6 percent and has never really come back. That is why you had William Scranton launching a challenge to Goldwater’s candidacy in June. Almost everyone around the campaign knew it wouldn’t succeed, but they felt it was important to reassert the identity of the party and to show the world that Goldwater’s racial views did not characterize the party.
There has been some of that pushback against Trump, because his unfavorable ratings in the Hispanic community and elsewhere threaten the party and might tarnish its brand among minorities.
But Trump also has this crazy personality, aside from the racial craziness.
Yeah, although Goldwater was bad on television, for example, where Trump may be a new master of the medium. And Trump defeated all 16 of his rivals with some new jujitsu which they had never encountered—by being insulting and using over-the-top statements and hyperbole. It may be the future of campaigning. I hope not, but it could be. So in that sense he is a pioneer, a one-of-a-kind.
I also think people underestimated the degree to which Trump’s nationalism and populism really did resound with a lot of people. And I think the leadership was revealed as out of touch, both people who try to win elections and the people who guard the tablets that determine what the party stands for. Trump has really revealed that many of the dogmas of the Republican Party have become outdated.
It seems like no one has been able to break from that dogma until Trump. Do you think the racial appeals are what allowed him to do so?
I think Trump’s racial appeals are part of who he is and help to explain his success. But I hear a lot of liberal commentators saying that it is the entire secret, and I don’t think that’s true either. I think a lot of the party’s white, less-educated segments have supported Trump because of that white, ethno-nationalist appeal that he has. But some of his message doesn’t have a racial component. Trump has been very consistent since the 1980s in his opposition to trade. And a lot of people feel hard-hit by trade. He is the only person breaking that orthodoxy.
Right, but could another candidate have broken that orthodoxy without those racial appeals?
I have my doubts. I think if it weren’t for the fact that Trump was a volatile, populist character, more of the candidates would have called him out on these issues, where it seems like a lot of these candidates were afraid of him, or didn’t want to engage with him. The other thing is that if you talk about his ideological makeup, he is simply not that conservative, but in the most important, populist sense, he is actually quite radical, just not along the normal liberal-conservative line.
You have written a lot about the death of moderate Republicanism. What does he make you think about the future of moderate Republicanism, given his collection of views?
There could be more room for moderation, because Trump has shown that the base isn’t fixed on complete ideological consistency. It really depends on what happens to Trump in the election. One potential argument, if he does lose, is that Trump’s extremism grew out of the anti-government, anti-institution rhetoric of conservatism, and that this has ceased to be appealing to people outside of the base. The other thing to consider is that most of the doctrines of things like supply-side economics began as tentative hypotheses subject to verification by reality.
Or not subject to verification, as the case may be.
Maybe not, but one of its most enthusiastic proponents was Jack Kemp. Who were the audiences he talked to about this? Often inner-city black communities. He really believed it would work in their favor, and the majority of the gains would be captured by the middle class and the working class. I would like to think Kemp had the intellectual honesty to say, “It turns out, all the benefits are going to the top 1 percent and something is wrong. We need to go back to the drawing board.” There hasn’t been that spirit of revisionism. I think the Trump candidacy has shown that the base doesn’t have that down-the-line conservatism, and is more interested in what will make their lives better. This is hard to determine because Ted Cruz was such an unappealing messenger, but it doesn’t seem like there has been a desire for a complete ideological warrior.
If Trump loses somewhat badly, which seems like the consensus view, and people can’t look this up and laugh at us during his fourth term as president—
Yes.
If he does lose badly, do you think moderate Republicanism could use his defeat to stage a return?
There will be a horrible debate if Trump does lose because there won’t be clear lessons to be drawn, whereas there would have been if Cruz had been the nominee. That would have caused a rethinking like the one that followed the Goldwater defeat. The lessons of a Trump defeat would be much harder to draw. The argument for moderates would be that they constitute one third of Republican voters, and Trump has attracted and repelled them in equal measure. And I think that some self-identified moderates see him as a businessman who is uninterested in the ideological warfare that goes on in national politics. On the other hand, moderates want to broaden the party beyond the usual suspects and make it appealing to minorities and young people. And some of the people who have been the most anti-Trump are the most conservative, such as those in the House Freedom Caucus and Ben Sasse. One suspects that if Trump loses, the same old refrain will come up: We nominated a moderate in 2008, 2012, and 2016 and we lost. Time for a real conservative.
It’s interesting that you talked about some Republicans being exhausted with conflict and partisanship in Washington, because polls always showed that Republicans wanted their leaders to be the more partisan and confrontational with Obama. And now they have chosen a guy who says, “I’m a dealmaker.”
Yeah it’s true. Of course, they think he is a skilled dealmaker.
The best, Geoff, the best.
Right, and the hope is that he will get more than he gives. Part of his critique is that the establishment can’t negotiate and Obama gets the better of them. So yes, he wants pragmatism, but a pragmatism that will win.
I assume the super conservative folks you mentioned, like those in the Freedom Caucus, will all come around.
Yeah. There was always an underlying claim that moderates were never truly committed to the party, and the conservatives would have that charge thrown against them. On the other hand, there are going to be a lot of different levels at which people commit. Some people will try to promote him, some will highlight differences.
I have noticed this courageous distinction between endorse and support.
[Laughs.] Yes, a distinction without a difference.
So based on all you have said: If you are a professional Republican in Washington or someone committed to the party as it was before Trump, it seems like you might want Trump to lose.
It depends on what their salary is. There are a lot of people who have done very well saying more-or-less the same thing for 30 years. And they have secure positions in organizations committed to the traditional line. And Trump is a disruptive force. They worry about that. But he benefits some people. And he offers the possibility for creative destruction. If you worry the party is seen as old and out-of-touch, Trump might change that image. He doesn’t seem old, and he is exciting. Maybe this is the way new ideas and leaders can surface. Maybe Trump can even break the Democratic lock on some of these states.
You do get establishments in parties and organizations and they increasingly support the status quo, even when it doesn’t seem to be working anymore. And to change that ideally you evolve but sometimes evolution happens in sudden jumps rather than gradually. A lot of people would like to keep the good parts of Trump and dump the bad parts. I don’t think that’s possible.
It seems like the one thing he isn’t is someone the establishment can control.
No, he is not controllable, and I don’t know to what extent he can control himself. It often seems like he is acting against his own best interests, but people have been saying that since the beginning of the campaign and he has had the last laugh. But he is definitely a destructive force. What happens to the party depends on both how he does in the election and to what extent people can learn the lessons he has taught the party as a whole.
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Trump’s Asymmetric Warfare
It has been somewhat fascinating and sometimes fun to watch Elizabeth Warren do battle with Donald Trump in alternating salvos of tweets, but in the end I fear that this approach of trying to “beat a bully,” as Warren put it in one of her tweets, is a futile effort.
There is no way to sufficiently sully a pig or mock a clown. The effort only draws one further onto the opponent’s turf and away from one’s own principles and priorities.
There is no way to shame a man who lacks conscience or to embarrass an embarrassment. Trump is smart enough to know what he lacks — substance — and to know what he possesses in abundance — insolence.
So long as he steers clear of his own weakness and draws others in to the brier patch that is his comfort, he wins.
As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said in December, this is asymmetric warfare. Conventional forms of political fighting won’t work on this man. Truth holds little power, and the media is still enthralled by the monster it made.
He is hollow, inconsistent, dishonest and shifty… and those who support him either love him in spite of it, or even more disturbingly, because of it.
He has waffled or equivocated or backtracked on tax plans, releasing his tax returns, his proposed Muslim ban, abortion and any number of issues.
It is hard to know where the hard bottom is beneath this morass of lies and bile. He has changed the very definition of acceptability as well as the expectations of the honor of one’s words. He has exalted the art of deceit to a new political normalcy.
This has made him nearly impervious to even the cleverest takedowns, and trust me, many have tried, comparing him to everyone from P. T. Barnum to Hitler.
But none of these comparisons are likely to shift public opinion. Some people will continue to see him, rightly, as an imminent danger to this nation and the world, and others will continue to see him as a salvation from it.
You see, part of the problem here is that some people believe, improbably, that virtue can be cloaked in vice, that what he says and what he means are fundamentally different, that the former is acting as a Trojan horse for the latter. One of Trump’s greatest pros is that he has convinced his supporters, all evidence to the contrary, that they are not being conned.
We are a society in search of an instant fix to some of America’s most intractable problems. Politicians of all stripes keep lying to us and saying things are going to be O.K.; that broad prosperity is just around the corner, only requiring minor tweaks; that for some of our issues there are clear good and bad options, rather than a choice between bad and worse options.
Into this mess of stubborn realities steps a simpleton with a simple message: Make America great again. We’ll win so much that you will get tired of winning.
Some folks want to be told that we could feasibly and logistically deport millions of people and ban more than a billion, build more walls and drop more bombs, have ever-falling tax rates and ever-surging prosperity. They want to be told that the only thing standing between where we are and where we are told we could be is a facility at crafting deals and a penchant for cracking down.
This streamlined message appeals to that bit of the population that is frustrated by the problems we face and quickly tires of higher-level cerebral function. For this group of folks, Trump needn’t be detailed, just different. He doesn’t need established principles, as long as he attacks the establishment.
This part of America isn’t being artfully deceived, it is being willfully blind.
On the one hand, over Trump’s life and over this campaign he has been so wrong in so many ways that there is a danger that the sheer volume of revelations may render the hearers numb to them.
On the other, as Joe Keohane wrote in the Boston Globe in 2010:
“Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.”
Supporting Trump is a Hail Mary pass of a hail-the-demagogue assemblage. Trump’s triumph as the presumptive Republican Party nominee is not necessarily a sign of his strategic genius as much as it’s a sign of some people’s mental, psychological and spiritual deficiencies.
It’s hard to use the truth as an instrument of enlightenment on people who prefer to luxuriate in a lie.
It has been somewhat fascinating and sometimes fun to watch Elizabeth Warren do battle with Donald Trump in alternating salvos of tweets, but in the end I fear that this approach of trying to “beat a bully,” as Warren put it in one of her tweets, is a futile effort.
There is no way to sufficiently sully a pig or mock a clown. The effort only draws one further onto the opponent’s turf and away from one’s own principles and priorities.
There is no way to shame a man who lacks conscience or to embarrass an embarrassment. Trump is smart enough to know what he lacks — substance — and to know what he possesses in abundance — insolence.
So long as he steers clear of his own weakness and draws others in to the brier patch that is his comfort, he wins.
As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said in December, this is asymmetric warfare. Conventional forms of political fighting won’t work on this man. Truth holds little power, and the media is still enthralled by the monster it made.
He is hollow, inconsistent, dishonest and shifty… and those who support him either love him in spite of it, or even more disturbingly, because of it.
He has waffled or equivocated or backtracked on tax plans, releasing his tax returns, his proposed Muslim ban, abortion and any number of issues.
It is hard to know where the hard bottom is beneath this morass of lies and bile. He has changed the very definition of acceptability as well as the expectations of the honor of one’s words. He has exalted the art of deceit to a new political normalcy.
This has made him nearly impervious to even the cleverest takedowns, and trust me, many have tried, comparing him to everyone from P. T. Barnum to Hitler.
But none of these comparisons are likely to shift public opinion. Some people will continue to see him, rightly, as an imminent danger to this nation and the world, and others will continue to see him as a salvation from it.
You see, part of the problem here is that some people believe, improbably, that virtue can be cloaked in vice, that what he says and what he means are fundamentally different, that the former is acting as a Trojan horse for the latter. One of Trump’s greatest pros is that he has convinced his supporters, all evidence to the contrary, that they are not being conned.
We are a society in search of an instant fix to some of America’s most intractable problems. Politicians of all stripes keep lying to us and saying things are going to be O.K.; that broad prosperity is just around the corner, only requiring minor tweaks; that for some of our issues there are clear good and bad options, rather than a choice between bad and worse options.
Into this mess of stubborn realities steps a simpleton with a simple message: Make America great again. We’ll win so much that you will get tired of winning.
Some folks want to be told that we could feasibly and logistically deport millions of people and ban more than a billion, build more walls and drop more bombs, have ever-falling tax rates and ever-surging prosperity. They want to be told that the only thing standing between where we are and where we are told we could be is a facility at crafting deals and a penchant for cracking down.
This streamlined message appeals to that bit of the population that is frustrated by the problems we face and quickly tires of higher-level cerebral function. For this group of folks, Trump needn’t be detailed, just different. He doesn’t need established principles, as long as he attacks the establishment.
This part of America isn’t being artfully deceived, it is being willfully blind.
On the one hand, over Trump’s life and over this campaign he has been so wrong in so many ways that there is a danger that the sheer volume of revelations may render the hearers numb to them.
On the other, as Joe Keohane wrote in the Boston Globe in 2010:
“Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.”
Supporting Trump is a Hail Mary pass of a hail-the-demagogue assemblage. Trump’s triumph as the presumptive Republican Party nominee is not necessarily a sign of his strategic genius as much as it’s a sign of some people’s mental, psychological and spiritual deficiencies.
It’s hard to use the truth as an instrument of enlightenment on people who prefer to luxuriate in a lie.
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Trump is the surest way to boost readership and viewership because of the spectacle he creates: the violence, the bigotry, the foul language, the belligerent rhetoric, the name-calling. And he can’t be ignored: He’s the presumptive GOP nominee.
But this doesn’t mean he deserves to be treated as though he were Mitt Romney, John McCain or George W. Bush. He is fundamentally different, operating outside of America’s democratic values and constitutional restraints. He talks about torturing detainees and killing the innocent relatives of terrorists. He talks about restricting First Amendment freedoms to make it easier to sue those who criticize him. He talks of banning members of an entire religion from entry into the United States and forcing those here to register with authorities, as was done in 1930s Germany. He winks at the violence at his events. His words have rallied millions against immigrants, Latinos, African Americans and the disabled. Studies of his language and the attitudes of his followers show he has more in common with fascist leaders than Americans have seen at this level.
Now Trump is attempting to normalize himself, assuming voters have short memories. A large number of Republicans are cravenly choosing party unity above decency. And we in the media need a gut check (even as mine is full of wood pulp): Do we continue to give him endless airtime, essentially free ads? Let him phone into TV shows instead of questioning him rigorously? Credulously analyze the cleverness of his tactics? Scrape the bottom of the barrel to find pro-Trump voices in the name of balance?
This isn’t about ideology; Trump is opposed by intellectuals on the right as much as on the left. Nor is it about an out-of-touch establishment: It’s not an “elite” position to say that Trump is fooling supporters by pretending a 45 percent tariff against China or a border wall paid for by Mexico will solve their problems, or that Trump is lying when he says he’ll eliminate the federal debt while also cutting taxes, increasing defense spending and protecting entitlements.
Trump didn’t win the nomination because most Americans, or even most Republicans, support him. I had to eat my words because feckless Republican leaders were too splintered to provide voters a viable alternative.
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Polling Data
| Poll | Date | Sample | Favorable | Unfavorable | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RCP Average | 3/30 - 5/9 | -- | 30.4 | 63.7 | -33.3 |
| PPP (D) | 5/6 - 5/9 | 1222 RV | 34 | 61 | -27 |
| The Economist/YouGov | 5/6 - 5/8 | 2000 A | 35 | 61 | -26 |
| CNN/ORC | 4/28 - 5/1 | 1001 A | 39 | 57 | -18 |
| IBD/TIPP | 4/22 - 4/28 | 903 A | 36 | 62 | -26 |
| USA Today/Suffolk | 4/20 - 4/24 | 1000 LV | 28 | 61 | -33 |
| GWU/Battleground | 4/17 - 4/20 | 1000 LV | 32 | 65 | -33 |
| NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl | 4/10 - 4/14 | 1000 RV | 24 | 65 | -41 |
| CBS News | 4/8 - 4/12 | 1098 RV | 25 | 63 | -38 |
| ABC News/Wash Post | 4/6 - 4/10 | 1010 A | 31 | 67 | -36 |
| Associated Press-GfK | 3/31 - 4/4 | 1076 A | 26 | 69 | -43 |
| The Atlantic/PRRI | 3/30 - 4/3 | 2033 A | 24 | 70 | -46 |
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Donald Trump says so many things that are offensive, incorrect, and dishonest that it is often impossible to keep up. In just the past few days, he’s flip-flopped on his tax position, his support for raising the minimum wage, and his so-called Muslim ban. He even denied he imitated a public relations executive in the 1980s named John Miller or John Barron, even though he’s publicly joked about it for years and there’s an audiotape to prove it.
But in the thickets of Trump’s statements there are the occasional views that should terrify every American — and which speak openly to the threat that Trump represents to Americans’ political freedoms. He’s basically giving us a preview of how he will abuse his power as president.
Here’s what he had to say this week about The Washington Post and its owner Jeff Bezos. Appearing on Sean Hannity’s television show, Trump complained that he is being inundated with calls from the paper “asking ridiculous questions.” He also said the paper is going to write a book on him, but “the book is going to be all false stuff because the stories are so wrong,” which suggests that among Trump’s many skills he is able to review the content of books that haven’t been written.
But Trump’s attack on the Post quickly pivoted to a darker place. “This is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos who controls Amazon,” Trump told Hannity. “Amazon is getting away with murder tax-wise. He’s using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don’t tax Amazon like they should be taxed.”
This is an oft-repeated claim from Trump, namely that Bezos is using the Post to protect his much bigger prize, Amazon. According to Trump, the negative coverage that he’s received to date from the Post is because Bezos is “worried about me” and he “thinks I would go after him for antitrust because he’s got a huge antitrust problem.”
There is no actual evidence that Amazon’s business interests influence the Post’s anti-Trump position or that Bezos is in violation of antitrust laws. By Trump’s logic, one might think that Bezos owns most of the newspapers in America, considering how many editorial boards around the nation have criticized Trump.
But there’s a good reason why Bezos might be concerned about Trump going after him, if he became president.
Back in February, Trump said about Amazon “if I become president, oh do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.” It was a charge he repeated this week. “He [Bezos] bought this paper for practically nothing,” said Trump, “and he’s using that as a tool for political power against me and against other people … and we can’t let him get away with it.”
He also talked about changing libel laws to make it easier to sue newspapers. But his talk about Bezos is something else altogether. What he’s hinting at is that he would use the anti-trust division of the Justice Department to go after a newspaper publisher who writes stories that he doesn’t like.
This is a direct threat. And even if Trump has no intention of following through, he is clearly trying to intimidate Bezos and in turn The Washington Post from running negative stories about him. Indeed, Trump is trying to get Bezos to use his position as owner of the paper to influence the Post’s coverage.
Trump, who is running for an office in which the oath for that position demands he “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” is actively calling for a measure that would violate the spirit if not the letter of the First Amendment. In an ordinary democracy, comments like these would practically be disqualifying for a presidential candidate. In America 2016, they barely garner notice. If anything, Trump is using it as a campaign selling point. Perhaps he should create a new tab on his campaign website titled “Planned Abuses of Power.”
It is easy to become inured to Trump’s obnoxiousness, crudeness, and know-nothingness. But, make no mistake, a man who so casually suggests using the awesome powers of the federal government to investigate newspaper owners is a direct threat to our democracy.
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Republicans who refuse to support Trump:
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Paul Ryan is willing to step down as convention chairman but won't support Trump
May 10, 2016 at 6:55 am 45Lead Stories, News
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In Monday’s interview, Ryan said he doesn’t know if Trump understands the constitutional role of the president. He gave an unusually candid assessment of the fissures in the Republican Party that have coincided with Trump’s ascent.
Ryan, facing a pro-Trump Republican primary challenge in his own congressional district, described the forces backing his rival as “outside agitators.”
Ryan made waves last week by telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that he’s not yet ready to support Trump as the GOP nominee. A House Speaker rebuking his own party’s presumptive White House nominee in that fashion is unprecedented in the history of modern presidential campaigns.
Ryan told the State Journal that his comments were based on an honest personal evaluation of the schism in the Republican Party.
“We can’t just pretend that our party is unified,” Ryan said. “We have some work to do to unify ourselves so that we can be at full strength in the fall.”
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Российский оппозиционный активист Гарри Каспаров в среду осудил взлет Дональда Трампа, назвав это явление американской версией "путинизма", сообщает Politico. Он также заявил, что избрание Трампа на президентский пост стало бы "главной надеждой" для Владимира Путина и его режима.
Каспаров выразил готовность "не допустить взлета путинизма, будь то в России или в этой стране".
"На протяжении этого цикла выборов мы наблюдаем атаку на американский образ жизни и демократию", - сказал Каспаров на форуме Aspen Institute.
По словам Каспарова, наступление на американские идеалы идет с обоих полюсов политического спектра. В экономическом отношении это делают сторонники Берни Сандерса - "возрождают социализм", сказал он. А взлет Трампа - "атака на свободу", продолжал активист.
На взгляд Каспарова, внешняя политика Трампа станет катастрофой и лишь побудит Путина расхрабриться.
"Какова главная надежда Путина? Дональд Трамп, - сказал Каспаров. - Вот способ ослабить американскую демократию и трансатлантические отношения".
Каспаров, не чинясь, раскритиковал президента Обаму и госсекретаря Керри, отмечает автор. "Боюсь, если Керри и Лавров пробудут в одной комнате слишком долго, Керри вернет России Аляску", - сказал активист
Trump’s feud with Silicon Valley
Elon Musk is not a fan of Donald Trump
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Trump's previous opinions on Hillary Clinton:
Trump praises Hillary Clinton (VIDEO)
Trump in 2008: Hillary Clinton would make a "great" president
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The Ryan-Trump Divide
The election is about more than the GOP presidential nominee.
Donald Trump reacted with pique to Paul Ryan’s statement Thursday that he isn’t ready to endorse the presumptive GOP nominee for President though he hopes to be able to someday. But if he were wise the New Yorker would understand this is an opportunity. The Speaker is looking out for his House majority and his party’s reform principles, and Mr. Trump needs both more than he thinks.
The “bulk of the burden on unifying the party” will have to come from Mr. Trump, Mr. Ryan said in a Thursday interview. “I think what a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard-bearer that bears our standards.”
The businessman replied in a statement that “I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda.” Mr. Trump’s aides were less subtle, telling political reporters that Mr. Ryan is unfit for the Speakership. Mr. Trump’s media proxies like Newt Gingrich explained GOP resistance to Mr. Trump as little more than “a state of psychological hysteria” among “pseudo-intellectual right-wingers.” Mr. Gingrich has always been an expert on that score.
The truth is that Mr. Ryan is a conviction politician who ran for Congress to reform government and pass policies that help the economy grow to lift incomes for all. Political parties are institutions that exist to advance principles, and some people join them for reasons other than power and ego.
The businessman replied in a statement that “I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda.” Mr. Trump’s aides were less subtle, telling political reporters that Mr. Ryan is unfit for the Speakership. Mr. Trump’s media proxies like Newt Gingrich explained GOP resistance to Mr. Trump as little more than “a state of psychological hysteria” among “pseudo-intellectual right-wingers.” Mr. Gingrich has always been an expert on that score.
The truth is that Mr. Ryan is a conviction politician who ran for Congress to reform government and pass policies that help the economy grow to lift incomes for all. Political parties are institutions that exist to advance principles, and some people join them for reasons other than power and ego.
For Mr. Trump—and Mr. Gingrich when he was Speaker—politics is a series of transactions with winners and losers. The substance matters less than the art of the deal and appearing to come out on top. The policies matter less than “winning.”
And sure enough, within 48 hours of becoming the presumptive nominee, Mr. Trump reversed himself on the minimum wage and self-financing his campaign. He also suggested he was “not necessarily a huge fan” of some of the details in his own tax plan, which he told us in November he had written himself.
Mr. Trump and his mouthpieces say other Republicans need to understand the reality of his primary victories, which is true enough. But the businessman also needs to understand the reality that other elected Republicans aren’t going to abandon their principles simply because Mr. Trump won a plurality of voters in the most divisive primary election in memory. Mr. Ryan needs a Republican President to pass the reform agenda that he and his House colleagues are formulating, but Mr. Trump also needs the support of Ryan Republicans to win the White House and succeed in office if he wins.
Some in the Trump entourage think he doesn’t need support from Republicans in Congress and would be better off running against them. They’re dreaming. The last four GOP nominees won more than 90% of the Republican vote, and that will be crucial again in this era of straight-ticket voting. If Mr. Trump sheds only a few percentage points he’ll lose in a rout, and some Republicans will stay home or support someone else if they don’t trust that as President he’ll work with a conservative Congress.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan are never going to commune on trade or immigration, but the candidate could broker some good will if he acknowledged that the entitlement state is unsustainable and needs reform. Mr. Ryan didn’t take the risk of reforming Medicare because he thought it was easy. He did it because he knows it is necessary, and the point of being a politician is to do the right thing for the country.
The other reality Mr. Trump must accept is the tremendous political risk to which his campaign exposes other Republicans. If he loses as badly as the current polls say he will, the Senate will likely flip to Democrats and the House majority could be endangered as well. By putting some distance between himself and Mr. Trump, Mr. Ryan is giving cover to Republicans in tough districts to do the same.
Mr. Trump’s goal between now and the convention in Cleveland should be to behave in a way that causes fewer Republicans to feel they need to keep their distance. That means more than declaring that the GOP is now his to mold into whatever shape he desires. One reason Ronald Reagan succeeded in 1980 is that he grabbed the agenda that Jack Kempand other Republicans were already pushing in the House. Mr. Trump would be smart to do the same.
Flush with his victory this week, Mr. Trump may not realize that his fate may be determined by whether he is able to unite his party, and to look and sound more like a potential President, in the next 30 or 60 days. If he can’t or won’t show more expansive, accommodating leadership, then he’ll lose and deserve to.
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Neither Clinton Nor Trump
The Donald Trump New Normal
This morning we woke up in a nation where Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States. No “Game of Thrones” analogies. This is the real thing.
“We’re going to start winning again and we’re going to win bigly, believe me,” he said on primary night. It had been quite a day. His chief opponent held a press conference to announce that Trump was an “utterly amoral” narcissist and friend to rapists who was “proud of being a serial philanderer.” Armed with that information, Indiana voters raced off to the polls and awarded Donald a huge win.
In his victory speech, Trump spoke in the much-promised “presidential” style, and the big news is that when Donald Trump is being presidential he is incredibly boring. Also pretty incoherent:
“We have great relationships with many foreign countries, but they have to respect us and they have to understand where we’re coming from. And you know it is a two-way street. And the two-way street means that we’re going down one side and they’re coming up the other.”
Or: :
“Now, we can keep things going and we’re going to keep things going very nicely. But we owe, soon, $21 trillion. … And we’re just not in the position that we were in 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, when a lot of these things took place and began taking place.”
His family assumed the same vacant-eyed aspect we’ve seen so many times when Chris Christie is in the background. This is not going to work over the long run. Trump can’t deal with an unresponsive audience. His entire platform is constructed around big applause lines. Last year when he announced his candidacy, the crowd roared when he brought up Mexican rapists. If they’d gone crazy when he mentioned leaf removal, his campaign would have been all about mulching.
In between, he learned that Trump was connecting his father with John Kennedy’s assassination. Now, Rafael Cruz is a really terrible person, who claims gay marriage is a socialist conspiracy and suggested Barack Obama be sent “back to Kenya.” But there is nothing tying him to Lee Harvey Oswald except a picture run in The National Enquirer. It showed Oswald handing out pro-Castro literature in the company of several other unidentified people, one of whom looked a little like the elder Cruz. Except there was no evidence the two men knew each other, were ever in the same place at the same time, or … well, you know. National Enquirer.
“That was reported, and nobody talks about it,” Trump said indignantly.
People, this is the point at which I’m supposed to make you feel better by pointing to all the terrible presidential campaigns of the past. I could remind you that the first Republican presidential candidate, John Charles Frémont, was accused of being a cannibal. Or that poor Grover Cleveland was tortured by newspaper stories claiming he was “a boon companion to Buffalo harlots, a drunken, fighting, roistering roué.”
We have had a lot of crazy, scandalous charges in presidential races, some from sources even more unreliable than The National Enquirer. But not by the candidates themselves. You didn’t have James Buchanan strutting around the podium saying, “Oh yeah, I know Frémont. Tasty Bits John, we call him.” Or James Blaine taunting: “Ho, ho, ho, it’s Grover the Rover. “
Trump has a lot to do before the convention in July. He has to put the finishing touches on his financial plan — it currently includes big tax cuts, hiking military spending and paying off the national debt in eight years. Which would leave us with a budget of pretty much zero for everything else. No need to fight about shutting down the government! The government would vanish on its own.
Plus, there’s the veep selection. “I think that, you know, a lot of people are talking about certain names, and certainly those are the names that we’re thinking of,” said Trump. As only he can. Once you eliminate all the people who have already announced they’d rather be kidnapped by manatees, there’s a pretty short list. Maybe Chris Christie? Never in modern America have we had a presidential ticket composed entirely of guys who specialize in insulting people and yelling at the top of their lungs.
Maybe Ted Cruz? Personally I would really enjoy having a vice-presidential candidate who is on the record as calling the head of the ticket a “pathological liar.” And he does need cheering up.
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Even in an election cycle that's exposed extreme and very public divisions within a GOP, Ryan's decision to withhold his support from Trump was remarkable, as the GOP's top elected leader, second in line to the presidency, turned his back on his own party's presumptive nominee.
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Kristol Calls For Third Party Candidate: "Important That Trump Not Be Face Of American Conservatism"
Trump Takes The Reins And GOP Descends Into Chaos... Some Republicans Ready To Defect... Last GOP Presidents Deny Donald!...CONFUSION: Senator Will 'Support' – But Won't 'Endorse'... Trump's Enablers Face To Face With The Nightmare They Created...
New York Daily News
"Slickest Con Man Out of NYC": Donald Trump Set to Be GOP Nominee Despite Links to Organized Crime
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Getty
Katie Johnson said she was 13 at the time of the alleged incident
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A critical view from the left on how Trump changes the campaign.
"In many respects, Trump is the perfect foil for the Clinton campaign; thanks to him, she might not have to take a firm stand on the economic question at all. She can run an identity-based campaign, seeking support from African-Americans, Latinos, and women, tinged with a show of policy expertise that reveals a superior fitness for office. She can play to people’s fears about Trump instead of their hopes, always an attractive option in politics, without needing to emphasize economic justice or rebalancing the inequality scales.
This means that the general election could feature far less detail about Clinton’s plans for financial reform or health care or education than the primary against Sanders has. The emphasis will be on tolerance and respect for immigrants or women, and the basic question of whether you want Donald Trump in control of the nuclear launch codes. Why talk about Obama’s track record when you can talk about Trump’s?
That’s likely a winning strategy. A coalition of professionals, minorities, and people freaked out about the prospect of a Trump presidency will likely amount to a majority of Americans for this election. But it isn’t a majority that’s going to push a Clinton presidency to prioritize the struggles of the working class. And I don’t know if there’s a way to change that, to turn an election featuring Donald Trump into an election about ideas."
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Они хотят создать такой мир, где президенты Путин, Трамп, Марин Ле Пен и канцлер Фрауке Петри договаривались бы с китайскими руководителями о разделе мира на сферы влияния.
С каждым годом эта угроза становится все ощутимее.
Они хотят создать такой мир, где президенты Путин, Трамп, Марин Ле Пен и канцлер Фрауке Петри договаривались бы с китайскими руководителями о разделе мира на сферы влияния.
С каждым годом эта угроза становится все ощутимее.
>эта угроза становится все ощутимее.
Для меня она стала ощутима недавно, в связи с фантасмагорическим подъёмом Трампа - и объективно этот, американский фланг угрозы важнее всего, потому что США - страна незаменимая. Думаю, что интриги Москвы - далеко не главная из причин этого явления, которое я прозвал "дуракофашизмом" (луддитский бунт отставших, некомпетентных и профнепригодных против элит и инородцев). Главная причина IMO - быстрый прогресс человечества, сказывающийся в постиндустриализме и глобализме и вызывающий реакцию; та же причина и у исламофашизма.
Для меня она стала ощутима недавно, в связи с фантасмагорическим подъёмом Трампа - и объективно этот, американский фланг угрозы важнее всего, потому что США - страна незаменимая. Думаю, что интриги Москвы - далеко не главная из причин этого явления, которое я прозвал "дуракофашизмом" (луддитский бунт отставших, некомпетентных и профнепригодных против элит и инородцев). Главная причина IMO - быстрый прогресс человечества, сказывающийся в постиндустриализме и глобализме и вызывающий реакцию; та же причина и у исламофашизма.
Вмордувинд
Воздух дерзко в морду бьёт:
Это жизни вызов вечный,
Это просто ветер встречный
От движения вперёд!
Зря вы думаете что Трамп будет с Путиным договариваться. Он просто скажет один раз, а потом будет давить. Рейган кстати был популистом ничуть не меньше.
>Зря вы думаете что Трамп будет с Путиным договариваться.
Он это обещал... Но - я ни слова об этом не сказал. Ваши слова лишены связи с тем, на что они непосредственно отвечают. А Australiano - говорила не о конкретных договорённостях фюреров, а о создании такого мира, где такие договорённости (или их отсутствие) всё определяли бы!
> Рейган кстати был популистом ничуть не меньше.
Это ни в малейшей степени не так! Реаган был человеком последовательных, логичных, внятно изложенных принципов: мало в политике людей, столь ясно и связно говорящих . Его слова обязывали, их можно было проверить. Полная противоположность популисту-демагогу! И проверка - показывает, что на практике он провозглашённых принципов держался в гораздо большей степени, чем подавляющее большинство политиков. Обещал снизить подоходный налог со всех, от края до края, на 30% - и снизил в первый же год на 25% плюс индексация: вышло даже больше, чем обещано. (А ведь президент это сам не решает: он добился этого от конгресса!) Обещал массивную дерегуляцию и сделал; никогда не было столько старт-апов, как при нём.. Обещал покончить со стагфляцией и запустить быстрый экономический рост - и сделал; - именно тем способом, какой назвал (теперь это зовут Рейганомика). Обещал последовательную борьбу с "Империей Зла" как ось всей внешней политики - и сделал. Обещал массивное перевооружение и сделал. Я мог бы продолжать долго...
Высказывания Трампа, напротив, - пурга расплывчатых, полубессмысленных, противоречащих и друг другу и фактам словосочетаний: "Да, это я устрою - вот так - а может и совсем не так - мало ли, что я говорил вчера; но - будет невероятно, неимоверно хорошо, верьте мне, верьте МНЕ - будете ах как довольны". Но - можно всё же выловить из этих звуков программу (потому можно, что программа эта - не только Трампа, это программа того бунта лузеров, который он возглавил.) Она диаметрально противоположна и программе, и практике Рейгана.
Главные её пункты:
Вот что такое Рейган.
Он это обещал... Но - я ни слова об этом не сказал. Ваши слова лишены связи с тем, на что они непосредственно отвечают. А Australiano - говорила не о конкретных договорённостях фюреров, а о создании такого мира, где такие договорённости (или их отсутствие) всё определяли бы!
> Рейган кстати был популистом ничуть не меньше.
Это ни в малейшей степени не так! Реаган был человеком последовательных, логичных, внятно изложенных принципов: мало в политике людей, столь ясно и связно говорящих . Его слова обязывали, их можно было проверить. Полная противоположность популисту-демагогу! И проверка - показывает, что на практике он провозглашённых принципов держался в гораздо большей степени, чем подавляющее большинство политиков. Обещал снизить подоходный налог со всех, от края до края, на 30% - и снизил в первый же год на 25% плюс индексация: вышло даже больше, чем обещано. (А ведь президент это сам не решает: он добился этого от конгресса!) Обещал массивную дерегуляцию и сделал; никогда не было столько старт-апов, как при нём.. Обещал покончить со стагфляцией и запустить быстрый экономический рост - и сделал; - именно тем способом, какой назвал (теперь это зовут Рейганомика). Обещал последовательную борьбу с "Империей Зла" как ось всей внешней политики - и сделал. Обещал массивное перевооружение и сделал. Я мог бы продолжать долго...
Высказывания Трампа, напротив, - пурга расплывчатых, полубессмысленных, противоречащих и друг другу и фактам словосочетаний: "Да, это я устрою - вот так - а может и совсем не так - мало ли, что я говорил вчера; но - будет невероятно, неимоверно хорошо, верьте мне, верьте МНЕ - будете ах как довольны". Но - можно всё же выловить из этих звуков программу (потому можно, что программа эта - не только Трампа, это программа того бунта лузеров, который он возглавил.) Она диаметрально противоположна и программе, и практике Рейгана.
Главные её пункты:
/1/ закрыть нелегальную иммиграцию, а всех понаехавших депортировать;Всё это невыполнимо, Трамп врёт, это обещая - но это другой вопрос... сравним это по пунктам с наследством Рейгана:
/2/ покончить с экономическим глобализмом, свободной торговлей, торговым дефицитом, вернуть в страну утекшие рабочие места; вернуть прежнюю, индустриальную экономику, предшествовавшую пост-индустриальной;
/3/ покончить с политическим глобализмом, сменой режимов, насаждением или защитой демократии за границей, преследовать только узко-национальные интересы..
/1/ Массивнейшая в истории амнистия нелегалам 1986 г.
/2/ Свободная торговля и глобализм: “Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets … The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations.”
Всё, что ненавидят бунтующие трамписты: ВТО, НАФТА... -его дети; снижение мировых тарифов, глобальное экономическое сотрудничество - его работа. Это он дважды ветировал протекционистские текстильные квоты. "By 1988, his last year in office, American spending in the global economy had nearly doubled, to $663 billion" .
/3/ Глобальнейшая внешняя политика от Афганистана до Ливии, до Гранады и Панамы; установление демократии в большей части Латинской Америки, в Корее, Тайване, на Филиппинах - и, главное, развал Империи Зла, смена режимов во всей Восточной Европе!
Вот что такое Рейган.
- " her negatives are higher than Trumps!"Trump supporters are reduced to blatant factual untruths like this because they have no leg to stand on.Trump has higher negatives than Hillary or than anyone else. Among the Republicans, he has got, so far, ~37% of votes and ~47% of delegates - so the delegate allocation system, about which he whines, actually works _in his favor._ Denying him the nomination, if he gets 1236 delegates or less, will be entirely fair, and politically very wise.With Cruz, the GOP may win or may lose the White House - the polls are uncertain - but it will keep the Congress - and, most importantly, it will keep _itself_, as a Reaganite, conservative, limited-government party.With Trump,all will be lost, and there will be a new party representing only those left behind by technology and globalization, benighted Luddites in hope for a miracle from an omnipotent lying leader: a sure-loser party of sore losers.
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- What does "telling it like it is" mean when the meaning of "it" changes all the time?
- After Obama's soothing and sophisticated spin, Trump's incoherent fury and outlandish promises can feel like a welcome change.
- When the protesters reached Yanukovych's residence, its interior revealed garish riches on a scale that can only be described as Trumpian
- ...Trump, a bully who targets the most vulnerable. Perhaps the clearest break with the best New York values is on immigration. New Yorkers are open to the world and to its tempest-tossed citizens, not afraid of them.
- In the span of a generation, the symbol of American innovation went from the moon landing to a slightly larger iPhone. Trump represents the worst of it all. He is an Angry Bird instead of an Apollo mission. He is a symptom of fake values who trades in false promises and divisiveness. He attacks the immigrants that built this great city and this great country, dodges the taxes the working class can't avoid and claims to represent the hard-working New Yorkers he exploits. Most alarmingly, he imitates Putin and other dictators by conjuring enemies against whom only he can protect us, the most dangerous type of fascist propaganda
- He believes that the rights and ideals expressed by the American Constitution are expendable. He tells us that the American experiment of freedom and inclusiveness is over. New Yorkers should tell him that he is very wrong on both counts.
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******** ******** *8****** ******** ******** ******** ******** ********
Would Donald Trump Fans Support Hitler? (SOCIAL EXPERIMENT) (VIDEO)
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-silvio-berlusconi-italy-213797#ixzz45wpOm2PL
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Zombie nominee: These new Trump poll numbers are hideously, unbelievably awful
Marvel at these findings: Trump is viewed unfavorably by
67 percent of Americans overall;
75 percent of women;
74 percent of young voters;
91 percent of African Americans; 81 percent of Latinos;
73 percent of college-educated whites;
66 percent of white women; and
72 percent of moderates.
Could Trump win somehow by running up a huge margin among white voters — particularly blue collar whites and white men? Well, Trump is viewed unfavorably by
59 percent of whites overall, and he is even viewed unfavorably by majorities of
non-college whites (52 percent) and
white men (51 percent).
And Trump’s awful numbers among college educated whites and white women (detailed above)
make the run-up-the-white-vote strategy look still more far fetched.
Vanity Will Be The Donald’s Undoing
Trump thinks he is so rich, famous and athletic that he can skip a real campaign.
Donald Trump campaigning in Rome, N.Y., April 12. PHOTO: REUTERS
‘He can run, but he can’t hide,” Joe Louis once said of fellow boxer Billy Conn. The same might be said of Donald Trump. In March the Republican front-runner gave three long, revealing interviews—two with the Washington Post and one with the New York Times—that were not reassuring.
Mr. Trump, who has often displayed his ignorance about myriad policies, added to the impression of not having thought through his presidential bid. Quizzed by the Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa about how long it would take a Trump administration to get rid of the $19 trillion national debt, he replied, “I would say over a period of eight years.”
Federal outlays under current law will total $38.6 trillion between 2017 and 2024, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last year. Mr. Trump would have to slash the budget nearly in half each year of his two full terms to fulfill his pledge without raising taxes. Oh, and he promises to leave entitlement programs, the chief driver of the debt, untouched. Mr. Trump was not pressed on his inane answer.
How would he restore international respect for America? “Through the aura of personality,” he told the Post reporters. They asked if Russian President Vladimir Putin would respect the U.S. under President Trump. “He said very positive things about me,” The Donald replied, confirming that he is easily misled by flattery from anti-American dictators.
He further demonstrated his ignorance by complaining to the Times’s David Sanger and Maggie Haberman about how Iran is spending the billions released to it under the nuclear deal. “They’re buying everything, they’re buying from everybody but the United States,” he said. When Mr. Sanger reminded the celebrity TV star that U.S. sanctions prevent American companies from selling to Iran, Mr. Trump was reduced to saying, “Uh, excuse me?”
His lack of knowledge shouldn’t be surprising, given that Mr. Trump is his own principal foreign-policy adviser. When Mr. Sanger suggested foreign affairs was “not an area you focused on in your business career,” Mr. Trump responded that he “had an aptitude for it,” and “would read about it.”
Asked what he had read, Mr. Trump said “various newspapers.” Pressed about his failure to attract experienced advisers, he responded, “Many of them are tied up with contracts working for various networks.” Strange how other campaigns don’t have the same problem.
In all his interviews, The Donald expressed a high opinion of himself, assuring the Post’s reporters, “I’ll do a fantastic job.” Later he added: “I’ve gotten unbelievable political things done.” What kind of political things? Zoning changes! “I’ve gotten as many zone changes as any human being on earth, probably.”
Mr. Trump revealed almost clinical narcissism, crowing that his television series, “The Apprentice,” was “a very, very successful show” that made $213 million, a figure that “was certified.” In a conversation with the Post’s editorial board, he asked a revealing question: “Do I get more publicity than any human being on the earth?”
That isn’t all. “My life has been about victories,” he boasted to the Post reporters. “Even in sports, I always won. I was always a good athlete. And I always won. In golf, I’ve won many club championships. Many, many club championships.” He’s a veritable Jordan Spieth.
Mr. Trump also believes he can project whatever image he wants whenever he wants. “After I win,” he said, “I will be so presidential that you won’t even recognize me.” Soon, Donald Trump will become synonymous with grace and class. We’ll all forget that when the Post’s editorial board asked why he felt compelled during a presidential debate to talk about the size of his private parts, he defended himself by saying, “I don’t want people to go around thinking that I have a problem.”
Mr. Trump’s newfound class was on display this week, in reaction to Saturday’s state GOP convention in Colorado. Lacking almost any organization, Team Trump was smoked. Sen. Ted Cruz took all 34 delegates. In response, Mr. Trump tweeted, “The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them” and warned, “This will not be allowed!”
Actually, it will be. The state Republican executive committee voted unanimously last August to select delegates through a convention, not a primary or caucus. Mr. Trump, running initially as a lark, failed to organize in states like Colorado. Now he demands that the rules be changed because he didn’t prepare and lost.
Mr. Trump has been running a vanity campaign. His looming victory in next week’s New York primary may discourage him from doing so, but at some point, maybe he should run a real one.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is the author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
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comment
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Uh...Good luck with that.
" We gotta do some stuff. Really, really good stuff. I'm talking stuff like you've never seen. Trust me you're gonna love it. You're gonna be very happy. I will hire the best experts on this stuff you've ever seen."
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- Uh...Good luck with that." We gotta do some stuff. Really, really good stuff. I'm talking stuff like you've never seen. Trust me you're gonna love it. You're gonna be very happy. I will hire the best experts on this stuff you've ever seen."
Most Republicans Say Kasich, Cruz Ready to Be President, Not Trump
Most Republicans Say Kasich, Cruz Ready to Be President, Not Trump
By Rasmussen Reports
Most Republicans think Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich have what it takes to be president, ...
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From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: Trump
Can America Learn to Love Ted Cruz?
6:23 AM ET
|
He has a plan to take the GOP nomination from Donald Trump. But first he must heal old wounds
Ted Cruz was trying to play nice in Waukesha, Wis. Wearing Texas boots, blue jeans and his Princeton class ring, he rolled through a campaign speech perfected long ago, a precise list of one-liners delivered in a growling, apocalyptic style. Think Moses on high, tablets firmly in hand.
After each complete thought–abolish the IRS, stop amnesty, beat back federal regulators “who have descended like locusts”–he paused, chuckled and nodded his head, as if suddenly impressed. This tactic to elicit applause infuriates his rival Donald Trump, the Queens-born brawler, whose own rambling run-ons and fragments are more suited for the barstool than the pew. “Five-second intermission between sentences,” Trump complains of the Cruz rhetorical style. But for the former college debater who argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, the spaces between words work like a metronome, building suspense, adding somber layers of gravitas.
o it was something to see when the most hated Senator in Washington began to sound like the Great Unifier for the Grand Old Party before an American flag the size of a prairie barn and an entranced crowd. This was a Senator who had campaigned for months as the anti-Establishment, anti-Washington rebel, deriding his own party’s leadership as a criminal cartel of bloodsuckers. This was a Republican who had been called a “jackass” by his own former House Speaker and a “wacko bird” by John McCain. For months on the trail, Cruz would joke that he might need food tasters to eat in the U.S. Senate dining room. And now he was suggesting the long war would come to an end, with himself as the cohering force.
“Let me say, what you are seeing here in Wisconsin, and across the country, is the 65 to 70% of Republicans who recognize that nominating Donald Trump would be a disaster,” he said, before a nod, chortle and pause for applause. “Of the 17 Republican candidates who started, five have now endorsed this campaign.” Another pause. “You are looking at the entire spectrum of the Republican Party. The entire ideological spectrum, coming together and uniting.”
This is what it looks like when Rafael Edward Cruz tries to pitch a bigger tent. Blink and you might miss it. His national political career is no older than Barack Obama’s second term, and up to now, the Cruz brand has never wavered. He stands for ideological purity. Obstruction over compromise. Confrontation despite the odds. He has built an appeal that is narrow by design, “in bold colors, not pale pastels,” leaving few elected politicians in America who can claim a position to his right. Until now, he has not worried much about conversion.
Which is why Republicans now face an extraordinary and painful choice: Which flawed, disliked flag bearer do they want to go into battle against Hillary Clinton? The Cruz path promises a return to the purity of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan’s broad-shouldered muscle and the idealism of Ayn Rand. The Trump path leads to uncharted territory of conflict and possible realignment, where a self-described great man promises to do great things beyond the reach of ideology or history because of a great instinct honed by great real estate moxie. The two men have stood 11 times on the same debate stage, but they don’t speak anything like the same language. The choices are as stark as any in history at this point in the process: Free-market purism or disruptive trade wars. Dismantle the federal entitlement system or strengthen the Social Security safety net. Return to American dominance on the world stage or threaten withdrawal from South Korea and NATO. End federal funding for Planned Parenthood or defend the women’s health group. Then there is Trump’s plan to force the relocation of 11 million people.
And if these options were not jarring enough, it is not even clear that Republican voters will decide, in the end, who is preferable. American democracy is not always democratic, especially when it comes to intraparty disputes–the majority does not rule, and the people may not decide. And the complex rules of the Republican Party suggest that the choice of the ultimate nominee hinges on a process far more mysterious than who gets more people to the polls on primary day.
After his loss in Wisconsin, Trump’s only certain path to the nomination is to win 60% of the remaining pledged delegates, an unlikely feat. But Cruz would need to win an even less likely 92%. If neither reaches the 1,237 delegates needed on the first ballot in Cleveland, the process will be thrown open to the crowd, whose names are still largely unknown and motivations subject to dispute. If both Cruz and Trump struggle to get majority support after several ballots, there is even a slim chance that a third person, such as current House Speaker Paul Ryan or also-ran Governor John Kasich of Ohio, could wind up the nominee.
As a result, the unity that Cruz now peddles remains more of a wish than a thing. Many people who openly dislike Cruz have simply chosen him as their vehicle to stop Trump on the convention floor in Cleveland–for now. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the five candidates to endorse Cruz, says he is “holding my nose” for no other reason than utility. “As many differences as I have with Ted Cruz, which are real, they pale in comparison with the differences I have with Donald Trump,” Graham told TIME. The Club for Growth spent $1 million on a television ad in Wisconsin that told moderate voters, “Stop Trump, vote for Cruz.” Never mind Cruz himself.
In Washington, among the so-called cartel of power brokers and party bosses, Cruz has, for the moment, become the best foil to maintain some control over the party, an irony not lost on either his supporters or detractors. Republican insiders have started to compare Cruz to a parking lot, the safest place to keep your car idling for now. “Are you really for Cruz or are you trying to run up Cruz’s delegates so that Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot?” asks Richard Hohlt, a veteran GOP consultant. “That appears to be what’s going on.”
Cruz, in other words, still has his work cut out for him before he can unify his parking lot. There will be more lurches and jolts before anyone accepts the nomination in Cleveland. “There is an ancient Chinese curse,” Cruz told his supporters in Waukesha. “May you live in interesting times.”
The following evening, after changing from his Texas jeans into his election-night suit and powder blue tie, Cruz sat down with TIME for an interview. Sitting on the hotel sofa, the candidate was at ease, relishing what by then was a clear victory. He had coalesced a broad swath of GOP voters for the first time, winning nonevangelicals and evangelicals, young and old, of all ideological bents. “This race is very simple,” he said. “If we unite, we win. If we do not, we lose.”
Good politicians know how to recast their message for the moment. The great ones seem to do it without contradiction, alienation or any actual change in position. This is the leap that Cruz is now attempting. He won the Iowa caucuses with devotion and red meat. His rallies began like prayer circles and continued into fury. He would describe the hatred for him from his own party as “the whole point of the campaign.” He promised not just to repeal Obamacare but to rescind “every word” on Day One. More than unwind the Iran nuclear deal, he vowed to rip it “to shreds.” He would not just destroy Islamic extremism, he would find out if “sand can glow in the dark.”
Those bold positions all remain, but their packaging has been muted. The clenched fists are now open arms. “From the beginning, our objective was to reunite the old Reagan coalition to bring together Republicans and independents and libertarians and Reagan Democrats,” he said. “I believe the path to winning the Republican nomination and winning the general election is standing up for hardworking men and women of America who have been left behind by Washington.” The conservative caterpillar is becoming a general-election butterfly.
This same pivot animates his campaign. After Wisconsin, Cruz planned to work hard to move beyond the white, evangelical, mostly male voters who have always been his core supporters. In his campaign speeches, he has begun to address “single moms” and “working moms” directly, with a message of economic populism to match the appeal of Trump and the Democrats. The day after Wisconsin, he traveled to a meeting with black and Latino pastors in the Bronx, spoke halting Spanish with reporters afterward and repeatedly referred to “our community” when talking about Latinos.
Then there are the gauzy new references in his public remarks. The speech he had prepared for the network cameras the night he won Wisconsin included a quote from former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill about ending the quarrel between past and present to focus instead on the future. He would even quote Democratic President John F. Kennedy, who Cruz has long argued, improbably, would be a conservative Republican if he were alive today. “We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future,” Cruz said, repeating Kennedy’s words.
But it is another President who he said gave him hope his gambit could succeed. “Throughout the course of this campaign, as others have gotten nasty and gotten personal, have engaged in a war of insults and petty personal attacks, I haven’t responded in kind,” Cruz explained, referencing, among other things, Trump’s recent attack on the appearance of his wife Heidi. “That is very much the model of Ronald Reagan, even when Reagan primaried Gerald Ford in ’76.”
Many of Cruz’s Senate colleagues, who wear the scars of Cruz’s own tactics, would take issue with his new unilateral disarmament campaign. If anything has defined Cruz’s rise as a freshman Senator, it has been a willingness to publicly and privately sacrifice members of his own party when it served his interests.
Even his closest friend, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, suffered a Cruz ambush in October at an otherwise unremarkable hearing on a Lee bill to reduce sentences for nonviolent federal offenders. Cruz shocked all present by announcing his opposition in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, suggesting the bill would unleash violent “illegal aliens” on the streets and weaken Second Amendment protections. The bill died on its way to the Senate floor, and Lee eventually endorsed Cruz anyway.
This has been a pattern. In his brief Senate career, Cruz seemed to go out of his way to make enemies, fundraising for groups that oppose incumbent Republicans, leading a hopeless charge in 2013 to shut down the government in the name of repealing Obamacare and objecting to procedural moves that would have prevented Republicans from taking difficult votes to raise the debt ceiling. In 2015, he took to the Senate floor to call Republican leader Mitch McConnell a liar. (In reply, McConnell sent word to the GOP lobbying class that they supported Cruz at their peril.) Cruz’s home-state colleague, Texas Senator John Cornyn, has pointedly refused to offer an endorsement, even after Cruz won 44% of the state’s primary vote, nearly 17 points more than the second-place Trump. At the same time, in a sign of the conflict, Cruz has warned his colleagues that “voters are upset” and that if the Establishment is seen “undercutting their will, that could be a powder keg.”
Cruz has begun the process of trying to charm his detractors. He has urged Lee and former Senator Phil Gramm to try to heal old wounds with some in the Senate, though not yet McConnell. Cruz himself has been holding lengthy private sessions with Republican leaders, according to one Cruz insider with knowledge of the meetings. But under Republican rules, it is not elected officials or even powerful Senators who pick the nominee at a contested convention. That decision will be left to 2,472 delegates, mostly state and local party boosters and officials, chosen through local processes so complex, they make tax law seem fun. Most of those delegates will be bound only on the first ballot to vote for a candidate chosen by their state’s GOP voters.
The prospect of four days of televised political chaos has led GOP chairman Reince Priebus to move in recent days to take back his party. Republican governors in 31 states have been challenged by party leaders to try to get control of these delegations now and seed them with seasoned loyalists. Local party bigwigs and lobbying groups are leaning on the GOP governors to put some muscle into the effort.
Perhaps sensing a counter-revolt, Trump has hired Paul Manafort, a floor manager for Gerald Ford at the last contested convention in 1976, to help ensure that Trump people are appointed to Trump delegate spots as well as to the party’s rules, platform and credentialing committees. The fight will be long, ugly and expensive. It costs a lot of money to attend a convention, and state parties sometimes dun delegates for extra cash to help pay for rooms, travel, parties, hospitality suites, political swag and transportation. Under Federal Election Commission rules, delegates can accept sums of money to attend the convention without disclosure, a loophole that might lend party leaders an assist with maintaining party discipline. “You can pay delegates off,” explains Rick Tyler, Cruz’s former spokesman. “I think it’s unethical, but it’s not illegal.”
Meanwhile, there is little mystery about who has the best operation for wrangling, recruiting and securing delegates. From Tennessee to Colorado, Cruz’s delegate-hunting operation has dominated, with his aides confident that around 200 Trump delegates will swing to Cruz after the first ballot. In Virginia, where Cruz finished a distant third, the campaign is hustling to install supporters in the state’s 13 at-large delegate slots. In Louisiana, Cruz is set to pick up as many as 10 more delegates than Trump, despite losing the Bayou State primary by four points. In a show of organizational muscle, 18 of 25 delegates elected at the North Dakota state convention backed Cruz. In Georgia, where Cruz finished a distant third, his allies have dominated preference polls of the party activists showing up at precinct and county meetings. “We’re going to make sure we get dealt four aces,” says a member of Cruz’s delegate operation. “You don’t just want Cruz supporters. You want fighters. At the national convention, there will be more browbeating and arm twisting than you can imagine.”
Consider what has been happening in Arizona: Trump romped to victory in the state on March 22, crushing Cruz with 47% of the vote. The win netted Trump all 58 of the state’s delegates–but only for the first ballot. Cruz’s operatives in the state have been working for weeks to secure activists who are inclined to support the Texas Senator once they’re no longer bound to Trump. The result is an intimate lobbying campaign, carried out through phone calls and texts, emails and in-person contacts at party gatherings and Tea Party functions, gun shows and forums held by taxpayer groups.
“You’re not trying to move thousands of people,” says Constantin Querard, Cruz’s Arizona state director. “These meetings usually have 30 to 200 people. It’s feasible to contact everyone.” Cruz boosters estimate that anywhere from half to 90% of the Arizona delegates will switch to Cruz after the first ballot.
Cruz has made the shadow campaign a personal priority. While Trump planned his next megarally, Cruz left the campaign trail three days before the critical Wisconsin primary to speak to the North Dakota state convention in Fargo. Cruz also found time to campaign in Wyoming, with only 29 delegates. “It’s good old-fashioned grassroots politics,” says Quin Hillyer, a conservative columnist who is part of a group that has met to discuss how to stop Trump. “Cruz and his team are showing that they’re masters at it.”
At least so far. The result in Wisconsin, where Cruz trounced Trump 48% to 35%, by no means ends the suspense. The coming terrain in the Republican battle will be far friendlier to Trump than the landscape of the past two weeks, and Trump has signaled a retooling of his operation to get back on track. The real estate developer still polls above 50% in his home state of New York, which votes April 19, and has been endorsed by Governor Chris Christie in nearby New Jersey, which votes on June 7, where the popular-vote winner will take home all the delegates.
The most likely outcome at this point is that Trump will approach, but not meet, the required threshold of 1,237 delegates, opening up a spectacle unlike anything since the unscripted Florida recount of 2000. Former Trump adviser Roger Stone, a unrepentant practitioner of the political dark arts and former business partner of Manafort’s, has promised to organize “days of rage” outside the hotels of the delegates, with thousands of Trump voters protesting any effort to hand the nomination to anyone but the candidate who got the most votes. Stone predicts that Cruz has made a deal with the devil by making common cause with Establishment leaders who are not truly on his side. “They will drop him like a hot potato,” Stone said. “This man has no friends.”
Back in Milwaukee, with exit polls already predicting his big night, Cruz showed no concern at the prospect of battles in the streets of Cleveland. “There’s no doubt Donald Trump has energized and excited a great many people,” Cruz said, before ticking off issues that Trump has focused on–immigration, trade, low wages. “Those issues will continue to resonate. And they are issues on which I am fighting and leading every day.”
The notion that Trump’s primary appeal is through a set of issues is a quaint one, which few Republican strategists would share. But then Cruz, the college debater, has always tried to frame his moves in the most advantageous ways. And that style has taken him further and faster than his colleagues ever expected.
From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: Trump
|
From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 9:41 AM
Subject: Re: Trump
A New Campus Trauma: The Very Word "Trump"
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From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 7:06 AM
Subject: Re: Trump
|
He quoted John Kennedy:
"We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. "
From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 4:56 PM
Subject: Re: Trump
The quintessential Trump: Bully and liar (Jennifer Rubin )
An Open Letter to Trump Voters From His Staff Defector
Sent from Yahoo Mail. Get it now
From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: Trump
Can America Learn to Love Ted Cruz?
6:23 AM ET
|
He has a plan to take the GOP nomination from Donald Trump. But first he must heal old wounds
Ted Cruz was trying to play nice in Waukesha, Wis. Wearing Texas boots, blue jeans and his Princeton class ring, he rolled through a campaign speech perfected long ago, a precise list of one-liners delivered in a growling, apocalyptic style. Think Moses on high, tablets firmly in hand.
After each complete thought–abolish the IRS, stop amnesty, beat back federal regulators “who have descended like locusts”–he paused, chuckled and nodded his head, as if suddenly impressed. This tactic to elicit applause infuriates his rival Donald Trump, the Queens-born brawler, whose own rambling run-ons and fragments are more suited for the barstool than the pew. “Five-second intermission between sentences,” Trump complains of the Cruz rhetorical style. But for the former college debater who argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, the spaces between words work like a metronome, building suspense, adding somber layers of gravitas.
o it was something to see when the most hated Senator in Washington began to sound like the Great Unifier for the Grand Old Party before an American flag the size of a prairie barn and an entranced crowd. This was a Senator who had campaigned for months as the anti-Establishment, anti-Washington rebel, deriding his own party’s leadership as a criminal cartel of bloodsuckers. This was a Republican who had been called a “jackass” by his own former House Speaker and a “wacko bird” by John McCain. For months on the trail, Cruz would joke that he might need food tasters to eat in the U.S. Senate dining room. And now he was suggesting the long war would come to an end, with himself as the cohering force.
“Let me say, what you are seeing here in Wisconsin, and across the country, is the 65 to 70% of Republicans who recognize that nominating Donald Trump would be a disaster,” he said, before a nod, chortle and pause for applause. “Of the 17 Republican candidates who started, five have now endorsed this campaign.” Another pause. “You are looking at the entire spectrum of the Republican Party. The entire ideological spectrum, coming together and uniting.”
This is what it looks like when Rafael Edward Cruz tries to pitch a bigger tent. Blink and you might miss it. His national political career is no older than Barack Obama’s second term, and up to now, the Cruz brand has never wavered. He stands for ideological purity. Obstruction over compromise. Confrontation despite the odds. He has built an appeal that is narrow by design, “in bold colors, not pale pastels,” leaving few elected politicians in America who can claim a position to his right. Until now, he has not worried much about conversion.
Which is why Republicans now face an extraordinary and painful choice: Which flawed, disliked flag bearer do they want to go into battle against Hillary Clinton? The Cruz path promises a return to the purity of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan’s broad-shouldered muscle and the idealism of Ayn Rand. The Trump path leads to uncharted territory of conflict and possible realignment, where a self-described great man promises to do great things beyond the reach of ideology or history because of a great instinct honed by great real estate moxie. The two men have stood 11 times on the same debate stage, but they don’t speak anything like the same language. The choices are as stark as any in history at this point in the process: Free-market purism or disruptive trade wars. Dismantle the federal entitlement system or strengthen the Social Security safety net. Return to American dominance on the world stage or threaten withdrawal from South Korea and NATO. End federal funding for Planned Parenthood or defend the women’s health group. Then there is Trump’s plan to force the relocation of 11 million people.
And if these options were not jarring enough, it is not even clear that Republican voters will decide, in the end, who is preferable. American democracy is not always democratic, especially when it comes to intraparty disputes–the majority does not rule, and the people may not decide. And the complex rules of the Republican Party suggest that the choice of the ultimate nominee hinges on a process far more mysterious than who gets more people to the polls on primary day.
After his loss in Wisconsin, Trump’s only certain path to the nomination is to win 60% of the remaining pledged delegates, an unlikely feat. But Cruz would need to win an even less likely 92%. If neither reaches the 1,237 delegates needed on the first ballot in Cleveland, the process will be thrown open to the crowd, whose names are still largely unknown and motivations subject to dispute. If both Cruz and Trump struggle to get majority support after several ballots, there is even a slim chance that a third person, such as current House Speaker Paul Ryan or also-ran Governor John Kasich of Ohio, could wind up the nominee.
As a result, the unity that Cruz now peddles remains more of a wish than a thing. Many people who openly dislike Cruz have simply chosen him as their vehicle to stop Trump on the convention floor in Cleveland–for now. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the five candidates to endorse Cruz, says he is “holding my nose” for no other reason than utility. “As many differences as I have with Ted Cruz, which are real, they pale in comparison with the differences I have with Donald Trump,” Graham told TIME. The Club for Growth spent $1 million on a television ad in Wisconsin that told moderate voters, “Stop Trump, vote for Cruz.” Never mind Cruz himself.
In Washington, among the so-called cartel of power brokers and party bosses, Cruz has, for the moment, become the best foil to maintain some control over the party, an irony not lost on either his supporters or detractors. Republican insiders have started to compare Cruz to a parking lot, the safest place to keep your car idling for now. “Are you really for Cruz or are you trying to run up Cruz’s delegates so that Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot?” asks Richard Hohlt, a veteran GOP consultant. “That appears to be what’s going on.”
Cruz, in other words, still has his work cut out for him before he can unify his parking lot. There will be more lurches and jolts before anyone accepts the nomination in Cleveland. “There is an ancient Chinese curse,” Cruz told his supporters in Waukesha. “May you live in interesting times.”
The following evening, after changing from his Texas jeans into his election-night suit and powder blue tie, Cruz sat down with TIME for an interview. Sitting on the hotel sofa, the candidate was at ease, relishing what by then was a clear victory. He had coalesced a broad swath of GOP voters for the first time, winning nonevangelicals and evangelicals, young and old, of all ideological bents. “This race is very simple,” he said. “If we unite, we win. If we do not, we lose.”
Good politicians know how to recast their message for the moment. The great ones seem to do it without contradiction, alienation or any actual change in position. This is the leap that Cruz is now attempting. He won the Iowa caucuses with devotion and red meat. His rallies began like prayer circles and continued into fury. He would describe the hatred for him from his own party as “the whole point of the campaign.” He promised not just to repeal Obamacare but to rescind “every word” on Day One. More than unwind the Iran nuclear deal, he vowed to rip it “to shreds.” He would not just destroy Islamic extremism, he would find out if “sand can glow in the dark.”
Those bold positions all remain, but their packaging has been muted. The clenched fists are now open arms. “From the beginning, our objective was to reunite the old Reagan coalition to bring together Republicans and independents and libertarians and Reagan Democrats,” he said. “I believe the path to winning the Republican nomination and winning the general election is standing up for hardworking men and women of America who have been left behind by Washington.” The conservative caterpillar is becoming a general-election butterfly.
This same pivot animates his campaign. After Wisconsin, Cruz planned to work hard to move beyond the white, evangelical, mostly male voters who have always been his core supporters. In his campaign speeches, he has begun to address “single moms” and “working moms” directly, with a message of economic populism to match the appeal of Trump and the Democrats. The day after Wisconsin, he traveled to a meeting with black and Latino pastors in the Bronx, spoke halting Spanish with reporters afterward and repeatedly referred to “our community” when talking about Latinos.
Then there are the gauzy new references in his public remarks. The speech he had prepared for the network cameras the night he won Wisconsin included a quote from former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill about ending the quarrel between past and present to focus instead on the future. He would even quote Democratic President John F. Kennedy, who Cruz has long argued, improbably, would be a conservative Republican if he were alive today. “We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future,” Cruz said, repeating Kennedy’s words.
But it is another President who he said gave him hope his gambit could succeed. “Throughout the course of this campaign, as others have gotten nasty and gotten personal, have engaged in a war of insults and petty personal attacks, I haven’t responded in kind,” Cruz explained, referencing, among other things, Trump’s recent attack on the appearance of his wife Heidi. “That is very much the model of Ronald Reagan, even when Reagan primaried Gerald Ford in ’76.”
Many of Cruz’s Senate colleagues, who wear the scars of Cruz’s own tactics, would take issue with his new unilateral disarmament campaign. If anything has defined Cruz’s rise as a freshman Senator, it has been a willingness to publicly and privately sacrifice members of his own party when it served his interests.
Even his closest friend, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, suffered a Cruz ambush in October at an otherwise unremarkable hearing on a Lee bill to reduce sentences for nonviolent federal offenders. Cruz shocked all present by announcing his opposition in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, suggesting the bill would unleash violent “illegal aliens” on the streets and weaken Second Amendment protections. The bill died on its way to the Senate floor, and Lee eventually endorsed Cruz anyway.
This has been a pattern. In his brief Senate career, Cruz seemed to go out of his way to make enemies, fundraising for groups that oppose incumbent Republicans, leading a hopeless charge in 2013 to shut down the government in the name of repealing Obamacare and objecting to procedural moves that would have prevented Republicans from taking difficult votes to raise the debt ceiling. In 2015, he took to the Senate floor to call Republican leader Mitch McConnell a liar. (In reply, McConnell sent word to the GOP lobbying class that they supported Cruz at their peril.) Cruz’s home-state colleague, Texas Senator John Cornyn, has pointedly refused to offer an endorsement, even after Cruz won 44% of the state’s primary vote, nearly 17 points more than the second-place Trump. At the same time, in a sign of the conflict, Cruz has warned his colleagues that “voters are upset” and that if the Establishment is seen “undercutting their will, that could be a powder keg.”
Cruz has begun the process of trying to charm his detractors. He has urged Lee and former Senator Phil Gramm to try to heal old wounds with some in the Senate, though not yet McConnell. Cruz himself has been holding lengthy private sessions with Republican leaders, according to one Cruz insider with knowledge of the meetings. But under Republican rules, it is not elected officials or even powerful Senators who pick the nominee at a contested convention. That decision will be left to 2,472 delegates, mostly state and local party boosters and officials, chosen through local processes so complex, they make tax law seem fun. Most of those delegates will be bound only on the first ballot to vote for a candidate chosen by their state’s GOP voters.
The prospect of four days of televised political chaos has led GOP chairman Reince Priebus to move in recent days to take back his party. Republican governors in 31 states have been challenged by party leaders to try to get control of these delegations now and seed them with seasoned loyalists. Local party bigwigs and lobbying groups are leaning on the GOP governors to put some muscle into the effort.
Perhaps sensing a counter-revolt, Trump has hired Paul Manafort, a floor manager for Gerald Ford at the last contested convention in 1976, to help ensure that Trump people are appointed to Trump delegate spots as well as to the party’s rules, platform and credentialing committees. The fight will be long, ugly and expensive. It costs a lot of money to attend a convention, and state parties sometimes dun delegates for extra cash to help pay for rooms, travel, parties, hospitality suites, political swag and transportation. Under Federal Election Commission rules, delegates can accept sums of money to attend the convention without disclosure, a loophole that might lend party leaders an assist with maintaining party discipline. “You can pay delegates off,” explains Rick Tyler, Cruz’s former spokesman. “I think it’s unethical, but it’s not illegal.”
Meanwhile, there is little mystery about who has the best operation for wrangling, recruiting and securing delegates. From Tennessee to Colorado, Cruz’s delegate-hunting operation has dominated, with his aides confident that around 200 Trump delegates will swing to Cruz after the first ballot. In Virginia, where Cruz finished a distant third, the campaign is hustling to install supporters in the state’s 13 at-large delegate slots. In Louisiana, Cruz is set to pick up as many as 10 more delegates than Trump, despite losing the Bayou State primary by four points. In a show of organizational muscle, 18 of 25 delegates elected at the North Dakota state convention backed Cruz. In Georgia, where Cruz finished a distant third, his allies have dominated preference polls of the party activists showing up at precinct and county meetings. “We’re going to make sure we get dealt four aces,” says a member of Cruz’s delegate operation. “You don’t just want Cruz supporters. You want fighters. At the national convention, there will be more browbeating and arm twisting than you can imagine.”
Consider what has been happening in Arizona: Trump romped to victory in the state on March 22, crushing Cruz with 47% of the vote. The win netted Trump all 58 of the state’s delegates–but only for the first ballot. Cruz’s operatives in the state have been working for weeks to secure activists who are inclined to support the Texas Senator once they’re no longer bound to Trump. The result is an intimate lobbying campaign, carried out through phone calls and texts, emails and in-person contacts at party gatherings and Tea Party functions, gun shows and forums held by taxpayer groups.
“You’re not trying to move thousands of people,” says Constantin Querard, Cruz’s Arizona state director. “These meetings usually have 30 to 200 people. It’s feasible to contact everyone.” Cruz boosters estimate that anywhere from half to 90% of the Arizona delegates will switch to Cruz after the first ballot.
Cruz has made the shadow campaign a personal priority. While Trump planned his next megarally, Cruz left the campaign trail three days before the critical Wisconsin primary to speak to the North Dakota state convention in Fargo. Cruz also found time to campaign in Wyoming, with only 29 delegates. “It’s good old-fashioned grassroots politics,” says Quin Hillyer, a conservative columnist who is part of a group that has met to discuss how to stop Trump. “Cruz and his team are showing that they’re masters at it.”
At least so far. The result in Wisconsin, where Cruz trounced Trump 48% to 35%, by no means ends the suspense. The coming terrain in the Republican battle will be far friendlier to Trump than the landscape of the past two weeks, and Trump has signaled a retooling of his operation to get back on track. The real estate developer still polls above 50% in his home state of New York, which votes April 19, and has been endorsed by Governor Chris Christie in nearby New Jersey, which votes on June 7, where the popular-vote winner will take home all the delegates.
The most likely outcome at this point is that Trump will approach, but not meet, the required threshold of 1,237 delegates, opening up a spectacle unlike anything since the unscripted Florida recount of 2000. Former Trump adviser Roger Stone, a unrepentant practitioner of the political dark arts and former business partner of Manafort’s, has promised to organize “days of rage” outside the hotels of the delegates, with thousands of Trump voters protesting any effort to hand the nomination to anyone but the candidate who got the most votes. Stone predicts that Cruz has made a deal with the devil by making common cause with Establishment leaders who are not truly on his side. “They will drop him like a hot potato,” Stone said. “This man has no friends.”
Back in Milwaukee, with exit polls already predicting his big night, Cruz showed no concern at the prospect of battles in the streets of Cleveland. “There’s no doubt Donald Trump has energized and excited a great many people,” Cruz said, before ticking off issues that Trump has focused on–immigration, trade, low wages. “Those issues will continue to resonate. And they are issues on which I am fighting and leading every day.”
The notion that Trump’s primary appeal is through a set of issues is a quaint one, which few Republican strategists would share. But then Cruz, the college debater, has always tried to frame his moves in the most advantageous ways. And that style has taken him further and faster than his colleagues ever expected.
From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: Trump
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From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 9:41 AM
Subject: Re: Trump
A New Campus Trauma: The Very Word "Trump"
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From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 7:06 AM
Subject: Re: Trump
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He quoted John Kennedy:
"We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. "
From: Jan Wasilewsky
To:
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 4:56 PM
Subject: Re: Trump
The quintessential Trump: Bully and liar (Jennifer Rubin )
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