I'm a Democrat, and I'm voting for Trump in the primary. So should you.

[SlackerInc]

Cool.

[SlackerInc]

The Romney speech makes this a cakewalk, as long as Drumpf can still eke out the nomination. Which makes me more determined to vote for him in the primary.

[SlackerInc]

Exhibit A for why it’s so important to get the GOP to nominate Drumpf: it puts the House in play.

[DSeid]

I am more interested in the combination of one line from that article and an article linked to on the side as a “most viewed.”

First the line:

@your cite

It is, of course, possible that if Trump secured the Republican nomination, he will prove himself to be an exceptionally skilled candidate who mops the floor with Hillary Clinton in ways we can barely imagine today. It is also possible that unpredictable events — terrorist attacks, foreign wars, financial crises — will impinge on the election in ways that badly damage Clinton’s hope.

Yes we mostly all agree such is improbable, but again, it is highly unpredictable.

Meanwhile the next article? It’s titled “The rise of American authoritarianism” and it discusses both how authoritarian tendencies have sorted into the GOP (and I would add some independents) and how Trump is both a symptom of that increased tendency and a potential enabler of its implementation.

How do people come to adopt, in such large numbers and so rapidly, extreme political views that seem to coincide with fear of minorities and with the desire for a strongman leader?

To answer that question, these theorists study what they call authoritarianism: not the dictators themselves, but rather the psychological profile of people who, under the right conditions, will desire certain kinds of extreme policies and will seek strongman leaders to implement them. … According to Stenner’s theory, there is a certain subset of people who hold latent authoritarian tendencies. These tendencies can be triggered or “activated” by the perception of physical threats or by destabilizing social change, leading those individuals to desire policies and leaders that we might more colloquially call authoritarian. …

… when non-authoritarians feel sufficiently scared, they also start to behave, politically, like authoritarians.

But Hetherington and Suhay found a distinction between physical threats such as terrorism, which could lead non-authoritarians to behave like authoritarians, and more abstract social threats, such as eroding social norms or demographic changes, which do not have that effect. That distinction would turn out to be important, but it also meant that in times when many Americans perceived imminent physical threats, the population of authoritarians could seem to swell rapidly.

Together, those three insights added up to one terrifying theory: that if social change and physical threats coincided at the same time, it could awaken a potentially enormous population of American authoritarians, who would demand a strongman leader and the extreme policies necessary, in their view, to meet the rising threats. … As the perception of physical threat has risen, this fear appears to have led a number of non-authoritarians to vote like authoritarians — to support Trump. …

… It is conventional wisdom to ascribe the rise of first the Tea Party right and now Trump to the notion that working-class white Americans are angry.

Indeed they are, but this data helps explain that they are also under certain demographic and economic pressures that, according to this research, are highly likely to trigger authoritarianism — and thus suggests there is something a little more complex going on than simple “anger” that helps explain their gravitation toward extreme political responses. …

… In other words, what might look on the surface like bigotry was really much closer to Stenner’s theory of “activation”: that authoritarians are unusually susceptible to messages about the ways outsiders and social changes threaten America, and so lash out at groups that are identified as objects of concern at that given moment.

That’s not to say that such an attitude is in some way better than simple racism or xenophobia — it is still dangerous and damaging, especially if it empowers frightening demagogues like Donald Trump.

Perhaps more to the point, it helps explain how Trump’s supporters have come to so quickly embrace such extreme policies targeting these outgroups: mass deportation of millions of people, a ban on foreign Muslims visiting the US. When you think about those policy preferences as driven by authoritarianism, in which social threats are perceived as especially dangerous and as demanding extreme responses, rather than the sudden emergence of specific bigotries, this starts to make a lot more sense. …

… Trump’s specific policies aren’t the thing that most sets him apart from the rest of the field of GOP candidates. Rather, it’s his rhetoric and style. The way he reduces everything to black-and-white extremes of strong versus weak, greatest versus worst. His simple, direct promises that he can solve problems that other politicians are too weak to manage.

And, perhaps most importantly, his willingness to flout all the conventions of civilized discourse when it comes to the minority groups that authoritarians find so threatening. That’s why it’s a benefit rather than a liability for Trump when he says Mexicans are rapists or speaks gleefully of massacring Muslims with pig-blood-tainted bullets: He is sending a signal to his authoritarian supporters that he won’t let “political correctness” hold him back from attacking the outgroups they fear.

This, Feldman explained to me, is “classic authoritarian leadership style: simple, powerful, and punitive.” …

Put those together please.

Trump might win and the risk of his winning is the risk of putting an authoritarian in charge. There is a population of non-authoritarians who can be “activated” to support an authoritarian demagogue by a perceived outside physical threat. A meaningful attack by ISIS on American soil might be all it takes to activate enough to vote for the classic authoritarian leader to pull off a win. We have no control over that and the only thing that is predictable is that ISIS might reasonably attempt something during an election season.

We likely will have no choice but to fight that risk but we would be foolish to work to enable it.

Fascinating article and the whole thing is worth a read.

[SlackerInc]

Yeah, I’ve read the authoritarian article.

Think about it this way, though: if there is some sort of authoritarian wave out there, Drumpf will get the nomination without help from Democrats crossing over. But if he needs our help to get more than 50% of the delegates, then there is not authentically such a wave and he is little threat in the general election.

The potential chance to retake the House (and Senate, obviously–a much easier “get”) along with a Democrat in the WH is too rich a prize to act like scaredy cats over something that has such a remote chance of happening (that is, not just happening but needing our help to happen).

[elucidator]

At this point in time, I really don’t think they are going to let him have it. Most likely, they will dither and stall right up to the convention, in the hope that he will have made himself so unpopular, they can get away with sticking it to him. But stick it to him they will!

And Willard waits by the phone! Pale, tired, and ill-prepared, he waits for his county’s call…

[SlackerInc]

I aim to do my part to help make it as hard as possible for them to avoid the disaster that is Drumpf.

[Disgruntled_Penguin]

@Fiveyearlurker

This is sort of where I’m falling. I think he has the slimmest of chances of beating Clinton, but at the end of the day, if forced to choose among Trump, Rubio, and Cruz, I think he actually would be the least bad choice (sadly). So, I’m hoping for Trump to increase the Democrats odds, and to hedge against something worse.

Of course, if the convention is brokered, we could still end up with Jeb! somehow!

We could end up with Ryan and that scares me more than these guys. He could actually win.

[Disgruntled_Penguin]

@BigT

Hell yes. They would make the country more conservative. They would somewhat make the national debt worse, but not as bad as Trump.

A Trump presidency moves us into possible World War III category, because he cannot ever be remotely diplomatic. He’s always got to be the bully and try to win. He’s always got to save face. He escalates, expecting the other side to blink.

Cruz and Rubio I disagree with politically. Trump I greatly fear may be the last President of the United States.

I gotta call BS on this. We all love to call Trump stupid but he clearly isn’t. He’s flawed but not dumb. Nor is he mentally ill/ He may not have orchestrated all the situations that made him rich but he made enough right moves to get to where he is now, both in business and his new political career.

Real estate guys are also deal makers. The man is not going to forget everything that made him a dealmaker just because he’s a megalomaniac. He got Christie onstage with him man, the dude can make deals. Maybe diplomatic is over rated sometimes. I see no reason to believe he won’t know when to back off. He made nice to Megyn Kelly.
I truly think that Trumps dream now isn’t to become president but to be the most terrific president ever. For that he has to be popular. He won’t be remembered well if he’s not a unifier. He has a reason to compromise. He’s not doing this to tarnish his legacy. I think approval at this point is his highest motivation.
This guy frightens me much less than Tedd Cruz and Cruz is in second place.