# Trump's Republican primary campaign **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 3, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828 "2015-09-03T18:00:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 118
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2345 "2016-03-11T06:50:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You think **that’s** sick?! In 1968, Nixon used his connections to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks – just then on the verge of a peace agreement – just so the Vietnam War would still be there for him to run against in November. It sets a high bar. Ok, BG but did Nixon ever extol political violence as Trump does with his supporters during rallies? Huh? Did he? As much of a Mussolini impersonator Trump is, Nixon in fact encourage hippie punching in a fairly literal way. Elizabeth Drew, 3/9/2016: [INDENT]it was Richard Nixon in 1968 who enshrined it in a doctrine, the “Southern Strategy,” which he aimed at blue-collar workers as well as Southern whites. Nixon dubbed these people “the silent majority,” including in particular people who weren’t demonstrating against the Vietnam War. But the term came to stand for a more amorphous collection of people described as “going about their own business” and not demanding government handouts—unlike the you-know-who’s. The silent majority wasn’t just anti-black, it was one side in a class war against people of more privilege, mainly kids of college age and their weakling, leftist professors—as Nixon saw it. (As it happens, wages were stagnating then, as they are now.) This came to a head in 1970, during a hard-fought midterm election in which, like now, control of the Senate was at stake. In May, construction workers were encouraged by the Nixon White House to beat up anti-war demonstrators in lower Manhattan. Afterward, Nixon was presented with a hard hat, symbol of the construction workers, by the union president, Peter Brennan, whom he later made secretary of labor. [How Did This Happen? | Elizabeth Drew | The New York Review of Books](http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/03/09/trump-lead-how-did-this-happen/) [/INDENT] Trump remembers Nixon. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2346 "2016-03-11T07:33:30Z")
That’s why I find references to foreign dictators in regards to Trump to be lazy. Everything Trump says and does has an American pedigree. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2347 "2016-03-11T10:00:33Z")
All the fooforah about Trump’s “small hands” reminds me of the possibly-apocryphal story about LBJ: > [@](#): > > Legend has it that LBJ, in one of his early congressional campaigns, told one of his aides to spread the story that Johnson’s opponent fucked pigs. The aide responded “Christ, Lyndon, we can’t call the guy a pigfucker. It isn’t true.” To which LBJ supposedly replied “Of course it ain’t true, but I want to make the son-of-a-bitch deny it.” Of course, it helps that Trump has a long history of reacting to comments about his hand size, so it’s a very easy target. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2348 "2016-03-11T12:37:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You think **that’s** sick?! In 1968, Nixon used his connections to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks – just then on the verge of a peace agreement – just so the Vietnam War would still be there for him to run against in November. It sets a high bar. Reagan took his best shot, sabotaging the hostage negotiations with Iran, promising them a better deal if they’d wait till after the election. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2349 "2016-03-11T15:21:26Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You think **that’s** sick?! In 1968, Nixon used his connections to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks – just then on the verge of a peace agreement – just so the Vietnam War would still be there for him to run against in November. It sets a high bar. I’m no Nixon fan, but I thought that was just an Urban Legend. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2350 "2016-03-11T17:18:35Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I’m no Nixon fan, but I thought that was just an Urban Legend. Recently found evidence and testimonies point to that as not being just a legend. [www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/yes-nixon-scuttled-the-vietnam-peace-talks-107623](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/yes-nixon-scuttled-the-vietnam-peace-talks-107623) ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2351 "2016-03-11T19:22:10Z")
[Trump says it’s appropriate for his supporters to beat up protesters at his rallies because the protesters are violent.](http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/11/3759201/trump-protester-violence-appropriate/) Though there is no evidence of that. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2352 "2016-03-11T19:30:22Z")
[_National Review_ has an interesting article](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432679/donald-trump-melania-trump-immigration-h1b-visa) re: Trump’s stand on H-1B visas. > [@](#): > > Because Donald Trump is a man who knows nothing about almost anything, his mind is “like a seat cushion that bears the imprint of the last person who sat in it.” In the last debate, Trump decided, out of nowhere, that he was reversing his formerly restrictive view of the H-1B visa program, … About five minutes later …Trump announced that he was reversing his reversal. It is natural that Trump is of two minds on the question. There is the third Mrs. Trump to consider. > … The Post-Truth Candidate Donald Trump, a man whose sexual insecurities are such that he feels the need to … boast in his memoirs about his sex life (“Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’”), invested in beauty pageants and a modeling agency. If you are thinking that sounds like a pretty transparent ploy to put himself in the company of economically subordinate women, the fact is that his third/current wife is a former client of the Trump modeling agency, a Slovene by the name of Melanija Knavs, known to the world now as Melania Trump. _ **The third/current Mrs. Trump came to these United States on an H-1B visa.** _ > > … Trump Model Management … lied to modeling recruits overseas about their earnings in the United States while raiding such wages as they did earn with undisclosed fees (the structural parallels with prostitution-trafficking rings are too obvious to belabor), and, more to the point as a criminal question, lied to U.S. immigration authorities about those wages, too. _ **Being married to Donald Trump is, as it turns out, another temporary job Americans just won’t do.** _ ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2353 "2016-03-11T19:35:00Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Is Trump basically just an old-style politician? “Old style” as in late 19th century? Circa 1933, I’d say. At Nurem-something-or-other… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2354 "2016-03-11T19:45:12Z")
[Historian of fascism says Trump is more like Mussolini than Hitler.](http://www.salon.com/2016/03/11/trumps_not_hitler_hes_mussolini_how_gop_anti_intellectualism_created_a_modern_fascist_movement_in_america/) ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2355 "2016-03-11T21:42:28Z")
I think the Trump campaign violence deserves its own thread by now. This is truly sickening. I hope the guy in NC gets prison time for this- maybe for assault with a scrawny weapon. I know all of followers aren’t fascist sociopaths, just those that come in contact with protesters. Incredibly, instead of condemning the violence he says it’s justified. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2356 "2016-03-12T00:40:41Z")
Trump just had to cancel a rally in Chicago, right before it was supposed to start. Protesters showed up and things started getting heated between them and the Trump crowd. CNN is showing it right now. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2357 "2016-03-12T00:53:05Z")
Just came here to say that. Wow [http://wgntv.com/2016/03/11/donald-trump-holds-rally-at-uic/](http://wgntv.com/2016/03/11/donald-trump-holds-rally-at-uic/) ---
**Author:** ![Grsz11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Grsz11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grsz11)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2358 "2016-03-12T00:53:08Z")
100% a ploy to make the protestors look like the problem ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Greenjeans](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.greenjeans/32/551_2.png) [@Mr.Greenjeans](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Greenjeans)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2359 "2016-03-12T01:13:32Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I hope the guy in NC gets prison time for this- maybe for assault with a scrawny weapon. If he’s convicted of assault, would that be a felony that might prevent him from voting? Because I might find some humor in that. ---
**Author:** ![Grsz11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Grsz11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grsz11)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2360 "2016-03-12T01:14:42Z")
> [@Mr.Greenjeans](#): > > If he’s convicted of assault, would that be a felony that might prevent him from voting? Because I might find some humor in that. Or owning a firearm. Lol ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Greenjeans](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.greenjeans/32/551_2.png) [@Mr.Greenjeans](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Greenjeans)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2361 "2016-03-12T01:14:43Z")
> [@Tangent](#): > > Trump just had to cancel a rally in Chicago, right before it was supposed to start. Protesters showed up and things started getting heated between them and the Trump crowd. CNN is showing it right now. The protesters are making America great again. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2362 "2016-03-12T01:22:53Z")
> [@Grsz11](#): > > 100% a ploy to make the protestors look like the problem Well, I don’t know about that. Given the number of protesters inside the arena, there’s no way Trump could have held that rally without it descending into chaos. Apparently a rally in St. Louis earlier today saw similar disruptions, with 32 or so arrested. Not sure of the proportion protester/Trumpites. As some commentators are saying, it’s going to be increasingly difficult for Trump to run these things the way he prefers, going forward. He might still have chance if he can somehow dredge some hint of diplomacy out of his bloated carcass and get folks to cool down, but given his penchant for extinguishing fires with gasoline, I’m not optimistic. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think it’s only a matter of time before a fatality or two occurs. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2363 "2016-03-12T01:28:19Z")
I’m honestly torn over this. On one hand, the Trumpers need to see just how much the rest of us hate them and their vile racism and bigotry. On the other hand, I don’t want to cede the moral high ground and let them claim victimhood. Plus, this has the potential to get way out of control and somebody is going to get killed. I think this will be the new normal- people will organize before his rallies in major cities and disrupt his events. I believe the prudent thing for him to do is scale back the size of his rallies to much smaller venues. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/2364 "2016-03-12T01:33:29Z")
Naturally, as the rallies continue to draw protests from multiple sides, the Trump supporters will need a way to reliably identify those who are on their side. Something easily visible in a crowd. Something the supporters can get themselves before coming to the rally. Some kind of improvised uniform. Maybe just a shirt to keep it simple. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828.md?page=117) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828.md?page=119)