# 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:** 174
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2016, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3465 "2016-04-11T22:47:53Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > You do realize you are using the exact same argument used by segregationist Dixiecrats to justify [racially exclusive primaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_primaries) in the Jim Crow South, right? National legislation put an end to that. But no national legislation has yet regularized the parties’ primary systems. I’m not commenting on whether such legislation would or would not be constitutional; the point is that it has not happened yet, and there has never been any vigorous political movement for such a reform either. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3466 "2016-04-12T00:43:05Z")
[New campaign adviser won’t deny Trump is considering bribing GOP delegates to fight Cruz’s “Gestapo tactics”.](http://www.salon.com/2016/04/11/new_campaign_adviser_wont_deny_trump_is_considering_bribing_gop_delegates_to_fight_cruzs_gestapo_tactics/) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3467 "2016-04-12T00:47:23Z")
Kasich isn’t the only one… [http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0ect4f/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-me-lover-s-pizza-with-crazy-broad](http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0ect4f/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-me-lover-s-pizza-with-crazy-broad) Pretty funny clip, but if you want the payoff start at 4:00. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3468 "2016-04-12T00:53:06Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > … There are a lot of people that believe that we should be a true democracy and make arguments to that effect. … “A lot”? Really? “A true democracy” at a national scale? Now the latter part, making the choice of representation more transparent and more fully democratic … sure … but “true democracy” was explicitly rejected by the founders of this country and for good reasons. [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#United_States) actually has a fairly good succinct summary of the thinking. Practically speaking I think only a very few actually do _not_ want a representational democracy with built in checks and balances, not a “true democracy.” The differing opinions seem to me to be about how best to implement that representation transparently and fairly. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3469 "2016-04-12T00:53:51Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > I see this over and over again, and I’ve been meaning to correct it, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. This is a republic and representative democracy, not a true democracy. What matters is that the U.S. is or at least should be a democratic republic, as opposed to an aristocratic republic, like the old Venetian Republic – or the states of the antebellum South – or what the whole U.S. has been gradually turning into since 1980. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3470 "2016-04-12T01:02:23Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > “A lot”? Really? > > “A true democracy” at a national scale? Now the latter part, making the choice of representation more transparent and more fully democratic … sure … but “true democracy” was explicitly rejected by the founders of this country and for good reasons. [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#United_States) actually has a fairly good succinct summary of the thinking. > [@](#): > > Direct democracy was not what the framers of the United States Constitution envisioned for the nation. They saw a danger in tyranny of the majority. As a result, they advocated a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic over a direct democracy. For example, James Madison, in Federalist No. 10, advocates a constitutional republic over direct democracy precisely to protect the individual from the will of the majority. He says, > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. > > > > [...] > > > > [A] pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.[20] > > > > ``` Those are not good reasons. They are reasons compelling only to persons of the properties class. > [@](#): > > John Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, said: “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.” That **is** a good reason. But this: > [@](#): > > Alexander Hamilton said, “That a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity.”[21] is not only a bad reason but historically false and dishonest. And so, for that matter, is Madison’s assertion that democracies have been “as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” None of which deaths ever had much to with the mob grabbing the property of the rich, either. That was not the history of the Athenian republic, the Roman Republic, the Dutch Republic, the English Commonwealth, the Swiss Confederation, the cities of northern Italy, or any other historical example of which the FFs could have been thinking. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3471 "2016-04-12T01:14:52Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > This is a republic and representative democracy, not a true democracy. You are using a right-wing 21st century definition. You are allowed to do that, but this definition is not prevalent among the larger community of English speakers. Here is how it looked to the drafters of the US Constitution: “Speech of James Wilson\*” [The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers](https://books.google.com/books?id=FxcN75XdGjkC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=%22three+simple+species+of+government%22+republic+or+democracy&source=bl&ots=SgTXoUdrNG&sig=IKLyZKJ35zVgnivOoHOGQ6rmMIw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh7IGT8IfMAhWHvRoKHRi-DQwQ6AEIKzAF#v=onepage&q=%22three%20simple%20species%20of%20government%22%20republic%20or%20democracy&f=false): > [@](#): > > There are three simple species of government - monarchy, where the supreme power is in a single person; aristocracy, where the supreme power is in a select assembly, the members of which either fill up, by election, the vacancies in their own body, or succeed to their places in it by interitance, property, or in respect of some personal right or qualification; a republic or democracy, where the people at large retain the supreme power, and act either collectively or by representation. If James Wilson was alive today, he might detect a fourth category, the constitutional monarchy. “Representative democracy” and “democracy” are synonyms today, as they have been since the eighteenth century except, and recently, among American conservatives. In Wilson’s terms, today, Russia is a monarchy, China is an aristocracy, and the United States is, still, “a republic or democracy.” * * * - From Wikipedia article on Wilson: [Madison and Wilson not only far outdistanced the others at the Convention as political theorists, they were also two of the closest allies in both the convention debates and ratification effort afterward.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson#Constitutional_Convention) ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3472 "2016-04-12T01:21:12Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > “A lot”? Really? Well, yeah, sure. > [@](#): > > but “true democracy” was explicitly rejected by the founders of this country… Certainly it was. Nevertheless, there are “a lot” of people who argue that the founders were wrong. (I’ll also note that this reference to the “Founders” as some monolithic bloc that disagreed on nothing grates on my last nerve. They disagreed on everything. Everything that the U.S. is based on was a compromise.) ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3473 "2016-04-12T01:36:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Direct democracy was not what the framers of the United States Constitution envisioned for the nation. They saw a danger in tyranny of the majority. Many – not all – of the framers of the Constitution hoped to keep the vote out of the hands of those without substantial property. One way they tried to do this was to conflate direct democracy, which had a poor track record and is obviously impractical except in the smallest communities, with normal representative democracy. Note the use, by Hamilton, in #3466, of the phrases “pure democracy” and “ancient democracies” as opposed to just plain democracy, which people would have taken to be representative democracy. At the time of the US Constitutional convention, Pennsylvania already had something close\* to universal male suffrage. People in other states could see how things were going in that direction. * * * - Googling, I can’t find if black men were then allowed to vote in Pennsylvania. It may have varied by locality. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3474 "2016-04-12T02:03:05Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > You are using a right-wing 21st century definition. You are allowed to do that, but this definition is not prevalent among the larger community of English speakers. > > Here is how it looked to the drafters of the US Constitution: > > “Speech of James Wilson\*” > [The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers](https://books.google.com/books?id=FxcN75XdGjkC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=%22three+simple+species+of+government%22+republic+or+democracy&source=bl&ots=SgTXoUdrNG&sig=IKLyZKJ35zVgnivOoHOGQ6rmMIw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh7IGT8IfMAhWHvRoKHRi-DQwQ6AEIKzAF#v=onepage&q=%22three%20simple%20species%20of%20government%22%20republic%20or%20democracy&f=false): > > If James Wilson was alive today, he might detect a fourth category, the constitutional monarchy. > > “Representative democracy” and “democracy” are synonyms today, as they have been since the eighteenth century except, and recently, among American conservatives. > > In Wilson’s terms, today, Russia is a monarchy, China is an aristocracy, and the United States is, still, “a republic or democracy.” > > * * * > > - From Wikipedia article on Wilson: [Madison and Wilson not only far outdistanced the others at the Convention as political theorists, they were also two of the closest allies in both the convention debates and ratification effort afterward.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson#Constitutional_Convention) It has nothing to do with some right-wing definition. I’m a student of history, and the last and only ‘true democracy’ was in ancient Athens, where it was workable because of a relatively small population, and even then you’d have to consider it a special form of representative democracy, with _extremely_ short term limits. In theory, though, every citizen would serve over time. The internet (or at least remote networking) would make it barely possible today, though there would be a multitude of obstacles and costs simply in getting the system up and running. I have a lot of trouble defining China as an aristocracy as well, because (at least post-Plato/neoplatonism) aristocracy is by definition based on familial inheritance. As far as I know, there have been no General Secretaries who were even related to each other. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3475 "2016-04-12T02:16:35Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > I have a lot of trouble defining China as an aristocracy as well, because (at least post-Plato/neoplatonist) aristocracy is by definition based on familial inheritance. I was just going by James Wilson’s definition. Since Plato didn’t speak English, I wouldn’t look to him to find out what an English word means. I think Wilson would say that aristocracies and monarchies today are less often hereditary than in his day. As for China, it is led by the standing committee of the Politburo. The standing committee names it’s successors as members retire. And it names one of its members for a single ten year term as general secretary. This arrangement was set up after Mao’s death because of dissatisfaction with the previous system, where there was a supreme monarch answerable to no one. Xi Jinping is acting more and more like a monarch, and I hope he does leave power at the end of his term. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3476 "2016-04-12T02:22:27Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > I was just going by James Wilson’s definition. Since Plato didn’t speak English, I wouldn’t look to him to find out what an English word means. > > I think Wilson would say that aristocracies and monarchies today are less often hereditary than in his day. > > As for China, it is led by the standing committee of the Politburo. The standing committee names it’s successors as members retire. And it names one of its members for a single ten year term as general secretary. This arrangement was set up after Mao’s death because of dissatisfaction with the previous system, where there was a supreme monarch answerable to no one. Xi Jinping is acting more and more like a monarch, and I hope he does leave power at the end of his term. You realize that ‘democracy’ (the term) derives from the Greek, right? (‘Demokratos’) Btw, post-neoplatonism would start roughly around the fall of the Roman Empire. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3477 "2016-04-12T02:29:18Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > I was just going by James Wilson’s definition. Since Plato didn’t speak English, I wouldn’t look to him to find out what an English word means. “Aristocracy” is a Greek word – that is, a word of Greek origin, which does not necessarily means it has to mean exactly the same thing in English as Plato or Aristotle would have meant by it, but it does mean they should be taken into account. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3478 "2016-04-12T02:30:57Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Btw, post-neoplatonism would start roughly around the fall of the Roman Empire. Compare postmodernism, and despair. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3479 "2016-04-12T02:46:41Z")
Bill O’Reilly may be the only person [more racist than Donald Trump](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/04/11/bill_o_reilly_is_really_racist.html): > [@](#): > > O’Reilly asked Trump how he would appeal to the black community, and the candidate responded that he would do so by bringing jobs back to America. And then O’Reilly said this: > > “But how are you going to get jobs for them? Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it, but it’s true. If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to get jobs for people who aren’t qualified for jobs?” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3480 "2016-04-12T02:47:40Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Compare postmodernism, and despair. Hey, you ancients! Get off my lawn! Damn ancients… ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3481 "2016-04-12T03:16:18Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > It has nothing to do with some right-wing definition. I’m a student of history, and the last and only ‘true democracy’ was in ancient Athens, where it was workable because of a relatively small population, and even then you’d have to consider it a special form of representative democracy, with _extremely_ short term limits. In theory, though, every citizen would serve over time. The problem is you are equating only “direct democracy” with “true democracy” while I think both direct and representative democracy is “true democracy” if they are established on the principle of mass participation, with the goal of maximizing popular involvement. That said, while I’m not some Zinnite-SJW 'tard who dismisses all the Founders as cisheteropatriarchal racist genocidal imperialist warmongers or whatever, I don’t see why their particularistic views and prejudices (which often were aristocratic) in a drastically different America of some 4 million people in a primarily agrarian-commercial society that was overwhelmingly of British descent and Protestant should be automatically applicable to the drastically different America of to-day. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3482 "2016-04-12T03:20:28Z")
I just saw [this](http://elections.ap.org/content/ivanka-and-eric-trump-wont-be-voting-their-father-ny-0) pop up on the AP and thought it was worth posting: [ > [@](#): > > **Ivanka and Eric Trump won’t be voting for their father in NY** > > Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s children may be among their father’s most loyal cheerleaders. But only one of his three oldest children will be able to vote for him in next Tuesday’s Republican primary in New York. > > New York City voter registration records show that neither Ivanka Trump nor her brother Eric Trump registered with the Republican Party in time to cast their ballots for their father under the state’s arcane voting rules. > [@](#): > > While many states make it easy for voters to participate in their primaries, New York’s voter laws set Oct. 9, 2015, as the enrollment deadline for changing party enrollment in order to participate in the state’s 2016 party primaries, said New York Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin. > > That means any voters who wanted to change their party enrollment in time to vote in the presidential primaries would have had to do so by that date. Enrollment changes submitted after that date won’t take effect until the first Tuesday after the 2016 general election in November. ]([http://elections.ap.org/content/ivanka-and-eric-trump-wont-be-voting-their-father-ny-0](http://elections.ap.org/content/ivanka-and-eric-trump-wont-be-voting-their-father-ny-0)):smack: Hilarious! Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there! ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3483 "2016-04-12T03:25:03Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Bill O’Reilly may be the only person [more racist than Donald Trump](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/04/11/bill_o_reilly_is_really_racist.html): Wow. That’s something else. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3484 "2016-04-12T04:54:42Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there! I’m sorry, the quarry went down the rabbit-hole. Which thing has got to be, for all practical purposes at this point, just as old as the original. See “1920s-Style Death Ray,” and despair. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828.md?page=173) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828.md?page=175)